A quiet bus ride home from the city library turns into an aural nightmare for a book-reading commuter. With every stop the bus fills with people and sounds, becoming a chaotic cacophony joyful to everyone but her. Only when the bus finally reaches her seaside stop does she find escape, slipping back into her natural habitat where we discover she is not the average commuter.
trailer
MISOPHONIA is a richly layered world that transcends the humble discarded materials it’s made from. Filmed with live-performed puppetry on a multiplane stage, puppets made from pizza boxes move through cityscapes of vintage papers and painted cellophane, immersed in an ever building atmosphere of sound.
Misophonia is a 9 minute film by The Stringpullers Puppet Company, written and directed by Linda Wingerter, commissioned by Heather Henson’s Handmade Puppet Dreams Film Series, and supported in part by the Green Feather Foundation and Ibex Puppetry.
SCREENINGS + awards
Handmade Puppet Dreams at Center for Puppetry Arts Atlanta, Georgia May 17, 2024
SOUND/off virtual / international December 3, 2023
*DIRECTOR’S CHOICE* International Fine Arts Film Festival Santa Barbara, CA USA November 1, 2023
*BEST ART DIRECTION* Mystic Film Festival Mystic, Connecticut USA October 19-22, 2023
*BEST ANIMATED SHORT* Travel FilmFest International Film Festival Limassol, Cyprus October 20, 2023
Woods Hole Best of the Fest Cotuit, Massachusetts USA October 10-11, 2023
New York State International Film Festival Albany, New York USA September 22-23, 2023
*SPECIAL MENTION* Bridgeport Film Fest Bridgeport, Connecticut USA September 10, 2023
Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival Middlebury, Vermont USA August 24, 2023
International Puppet Fringe Festival NYC New York, New York USA August 10-13, 2023
*RUNNER UP ANIMATED SHORT* Woods Hole Film Festival Woods Hole, Massachusetts USA August 4, 2023
*BEST FILM* Reel Puppetry Film Festival College Park, Maryland USA July 18-20, 2023
Coney Island Film Festival Brooklyn, New York USA May 5-7, 2023
*BEST SOUND DESIGN* Blackbird Film Festival Cortland, New York USA April 28-30, 2023
Karakulit International Shadow Puppet Festival Pécs, Hungary April 20-22, 2023
*BEST PUPPETRY FILM* Underexposed Film Festival yc Rock Hill, South Carolina USA March 22-25, 2023
Puppet Festival Mississauga Ontario, Canada March 8-15, 2023
Providence Children’s Film Festival Providence, Rhode Island USA February 17-25, 2023
*FINALIST* Snowtown Film Festival Watertown, New York USA February 4, 2023
*SPECIAL MENTION* Silence is Golden Film Festival New Belgrade, Serbia November 18, 2022
stills
filmmaking process
Misophonia was made and filmed in The Stringpullers Puppet Company studio at Artist Alley in Ithaca, New York. The puppets were created by third-generation puppeteer Linda Wingerter with discarded materials like frozen food packaging. For the project, Linda built a 4 foot wide multiplane camera, a system pioneered by stop-motion animator Lotte Reiniger. The series of glass shelves over a light box allows for shadow and paper puppetry to be filmed with a sense of depth and parallax. Some scenes in Misophonia used as many as 14 layers of glass.
Two performers created all of the movements of the people and environments with live action puppetry rather than animation. Everything was created with practical effects in camera, and filmed with an 11 inch Apple iPad Pro using the Filmic Pro app.
See the Making Misophonia series of articles on the Stringpullers’ studio blog.
Click the thumbnails to enlarge the image:
Each scene is built on the multiplane by placing separate elements on each layer. See a short video showing the process:
credits
Written & Directed by: Linda Wingerter
Production Company: The Stringpullers Puppet Company
Editor: Linda Wingerter
Camera: Linda Wingerter
Sound Design: Linda Wingerter
Puppet Builder: Linda Wingerter
Puppeteers: Linda Wingerter, Evgeni Nudelman
Production Assistants: Evgeni Nudelman, Judy Wingerter
Executive Producer: Heather Henson
Producers: Jessica Simon, Alex Griffin, Linda Wingerter
press kit
Email Linda at linda.wingerter@gmail.com for a link to the downloadable press kit.
company
The Stringpullers are explorers of all forms of puppetry and object performance. We build puppets, teach construction and manipulation, provide puppeteers and puppeteer training, and make shows for the stage, street, and screen. The Stringpullers is Linda Wingerter and a rotating roster of artists from New York, Connecticut and Vermont, with studios in Ithaca, New York and New Haven, Connecticut.
contact
linda.wingerter@gmail.com
social media
IG: @pollysonic
website
For more about The Stringpullers Puppet Company visit stringpullers.com.
interviews
My interview with Adeel Ahmad on the Misophonia Podcast, Season 6 Episode 21. Interview transcript and many other interviews with misophonics on the Misophonia Podcast website.
Thanks to Heather Henson, Handmade Puppet Dreams, Ibex Puppetry, and the Green Feather Foundation for supporting this film!
