Pluck
Pluck
Eva Louise Hall
Eva Louise Hall
Pluck will be a 16-minute, stop-motion surrealist horror short created with physical sets, animated puppetry, and experimental animated media. This film will tell the story of Amaia, a veteran star in the swimming world, poised to break an all-time record in her sport. While training to achieve the impossible, she is ultimately at odds with the inevitable as her body struggles to persist despite a terminal diagnosis. As her health declines, her symptoms manifest in the growth of chicken-like feathers and an egg-like tumor that she attempts to hide from those around her.
As her body plays host to this malignant growth, she fears she will not be able to realize her final achievement before she loses all control of her physical and mental self. Everything comes to a head when she has a seizure mid-practice and must finally face the fact that she is declining rapidly. While seizing, Amaia is transported back to the farmstead of her childhood to memories of her beloved pet chicken, Portobella, and the trauma of experiencing the animal’s suffering after being brutally attacked by a fox. Her inability to keep her pet alive and the prolonged suffering it experienced as a result of her working in vain to nurse it back to health haunts her memory and reminds her that some cruel fates are truly worse than death once a physical body has been damaged past the point of no return. Surreal vignettes throughout the film will serve as transitionary elements between her past and present, externalizing Amaia’s physiological terror as a series of horrifying chicken mutations the further her disease progresses. Envisioning Amaia’s vulnerable interior through her surreal transformation into a chicken will offer a unique, emotional lens through which the audience can draw parallels between the regret she has from her childhood and how it informs the challenges she faces in the present.
Animation, Experimental Film, Film/Moving Image, Narrative Film
2026
About Eva Louise Hall
Kansas City, MO
Eva Louise Hall is a professional, independent screenwriter and animator who specializes in stop motion animated filmmaking. Since earning her MFA in Visual Narrative from the School of Visual Arts in 2020, she has been working to create a name for herself as a director through her intimately hand-crafted and emotionally powerful films. Through the use of textural aesthetics, tonal horror, and arresting visual metaphor, her stories explore the darkest parts of the human condition while exploring our potential for beauty and kindness. Her most recent short, ‘Mira,’ toured the festival circuit to great success throughout 2023-2024, winning top awards in animation and horror categories at Fantastic Fest and SCAD Savannah Film Festival. Additionally, She was invited to Sony Pictures in 2024 as one of 30 nominees for the Sony Future Filmmaker Awards out of over 5,000 candidates. Outside of her creative professional practice, she is passionate about arts education and advocacy and works full-time as an Assistant Professor of Animation at the Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City, MO.
Eva Louise Hall is a professional, independent screenwriter and animator who specializes in stop motion animated filmmaking. Since earning her MFA in Visual Narrative from the School of Visual Arts in 2020, she has been working to create a name for herself as a director through her intimately hand-crafted and emotionally powerful films. Through the use of textural aesthetics, tonal horror, and arresting visual metaphor, her stories explore the darkest parts of the human condition while exploring our potential for beauty and kindness. Her most recent short, ‘Mira,’ toured the festival circuit to great success throughout 2023-2024, winning top awards in animation and horror categories at Fantastic Fest and SCAD Savannah Film Festival. Additionally, She was invited to Sony Pictures in 2024 as one of 30 nominees for the Sony Future Filmmaker Awards out of over 5,000 candidates. Outside of her creative professional practice, she is passionate about arts education and advocacy and works full-time as an Assistant Professor of Animation at the Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City, MO.