Film TitleAsphalt Watches

Log LineA True Story

ContactDelusional Brothers

asphaltwatches@gmail.com

Shayne Ehman, filmmaker shayne_ehman@yahoo.ca

(807) 345 6969

Seth Scriver, filmmaker scriver2002@yahoo.ca

(416) 591 0156

TechnicalRunning time: 94 minutes

Exhibition format: DCP, Blu-ray, DVDAspect ratio: 1.85:1 Languages: English

Year of production: 2013Produced in: Canada

www.asphaltwatches.ca

Synopsis Asphalt Watches is a true story. A feature-length animation based on a real-life hitchhiking trip taken by the two filmmakers, Shayne Ehman and Seth Scriver, Asphalt Watches details the hilarious and harrowing journey of Bucktooth Cloud and Skeleton Hat as they travel eastward across Canada in the summer of 2000. Asphalt Watches begins with the two protagonists – Bucktooth Cloud, a floating cloud holding an umbrella, and Skeleton Hat, a grey nebbish with part of a moustache – in Chilliwack, BC trying to hop a train, using an outdated train-hopping manual from 1988.

They arrive at the CN crew change spot only to discover it has burnt down and their plan to haul an old couch onto a boxcar and “travel in comfort” is foiled. They decide to hitchhike instead. They receive some very bad advice from a talking stick that looks like a dog which tells them to “stay on the side roads”. After realizing they should go to a highway, they unknowingly start hitchhiking in front of a maximum-security penitentiary. Eventually, Skeleton Hat and Bucktooth Cloud get a ride.

On this epic road trip they meet unforgettable characters like a foul-mouthed mom, a surprisingly polite young man with a knife in his belly asking for a ride to the hospital, and a real Santa Claus who makes the protagonists promise to meet him in the same spot next year for “intensive Santa training.” A huge cast of personalities are voiced by the two filmmakers and their friends and family, including a special cameo from their neighbor, 93 year-old Great Grandma Chiu.

On their odyssey, Bucktooth Cloud and Skeleton Hat inadvertently take part in everything from a domestic rave to a local beauty contest. As they make their way across Canada, we see a country full of wonderful freaks with amazing stories.

The film pivots on a ride near Wolseley, SK with three gnarly headbangers who almost bring Skeleton Hat and Bucktooth Cloud to their demise. Our two travellers narrowly escape death and so live to tell this marvelous tale. Asphalt Watches is an instant classic and a true adventure story for our delirious, improbable times.

Both accomplished visual artists, Ehman and Scriver hitchhiked from Vancouver to Toronto together in 2000. While on the road, they created the original storyboard of Asphalt Watches. With original music and hand-drawn Flash animation, the film was created entirely by Ehman and Scriver over 8 years.

Mutants of the glowing racetrack ...on a raft sur-rounded by death... cross

the threshold of safety and into the void of the un-

known...

Filmmakers FAQ How long did the actual hitchhiking trip take?8 days, which, in making the film, became 8 years. Time to completely regenerate every cell in the body...

What was it like to work on the film?We would animate in intense sessions and really freak out for 6 weeks at a time. We lived and worked in very small rooms filled with inspiring stuff, cold basements also filled with inspiring stuff, and large empty galleries that we slowly filled with inspiring stuff we found from thrift store donation bins next door. We’ve worked in Toronto, Thunder Bay, Sackville, Tokyo, Kyoto, and Vancouver.

Why did you animate the film with Flash?It’s easy to use, without fancy computers or crazy equipment: the file sizes are small but you can export it extra-large, because it’s vector-based. We use it for 2D digital animation made in a classical style, with frames and layers. We also saw Gary Panter’s Flash animation Pink Donkey right before leaving on the trip in 2000 we had it in our minds. Haha is this a Flash ad?

Is everything in the film actually true? Yes, things may seem skewed or even impossible at times, but we like to use metaphors to combine and encapsulate abstract elements of the story.

Did anything happen on the trip that didn’t make it into the film? A bunch of things. For example, just before we left Vancouver, I (Shayne) was involved in a strange battle with the neighbors across the street. I had Christmas lights up in my room and had no curtain. One day, the children from across the street came over and said that their grandpa had hit their grandma over the head with a frying pan and it was my fault because I had Christmas lights in my room which were red and my room directly faced their house. A battle of lawn decorations ensued. It was clearly a good time to leave Vancouver...

We also got hassled by police North Bay, and there was also an incident with bagpipers and ear protection near Medicine Hat.

Bios

Asphalt Watches is the first feature film created by Shayne Ehman and Seth Scriver. Both Shayne and Seth are visual artists whose work have been exhibited widely nationally and internationally.

Collaborative artworks related to Asphalt Watches, such as drawings, paintings and short excerpts of the film, have been exhibited at the MOCCA (Toronto), Art Basel Miami, Tokyo Wondersite, and as part of the animation tour Cartunez Express across the U.S., including stops at the LACMA (Los Angeles) and the Hirshhorn Museum (Washington, DC).

Shayne Ehman’s work includes animation, painting, poetry, zines, drawing, songwriting and film sound.

Sketching from life and dream, his artwork explores themes of form sympathy and consciousness, meditation and magic of intention and visualization for healing, and deep spark mutation semantics. He has published writing and exhibited art consistently over the past 15 years. Some recent projects include sculptural works shown in Krakow, Poland and at M+B Gallery in Los Angeles as well as painted poetry included in The Last Vispo, an anthology of visual poetry published by Fantagraphics (2012). Shayne Ehman lives in Thunder Bay.

Seth Scriver’s work includes drawings, airbrush paintings, comics and sculpture, exploring compelling characters and real-life tales from the totally insane world we live in. His book, Stooge Pile (2010), published by Drawn & Quarterly, was nominated for a Doug Wright “Pigskin Peters” Award, awarded to the best experimental and non-narrative works in Canadian comics. His short solo animations have been exhibited at Images Festival (Toronto), Impakt Festival (Utretcht) and Flashkino (Berlin). Seth Scriver is represented by Katharine Mulherin Gallery, Toronto, and lives in Toronto.

Other artists who have lent their talents to Asphalt Watches include cartoonist Marc Bell and filmmaker Amy Lockhart.

Press Coverage

“…the most intriguing work [in Pulp Fiction, a group art show at the MOCCA, Toronto] are the animated films, particularly the hurly burly narratives of Seth Scriver and Shayne Ehman… It’s a mash-up of Jack Kerouac, Goin’ Down the Road, hip-hop, and the Residents and it should be a Saturday morning cartoon. Call the NFB, I’ve found the next Log Driver’s Waltz!””

- Terence Dick, art critic, Akimbo.ca http://www.akimbo.ca/akimblog/?id=300

“Asphalt Watches… is not only ingeniously drawn, caustically satirical and very funny, it is also, perhaps unexpectedly, extremely charming. Building on the tried-and-true trope of two pals lighting out for the territory… Scriver and Ehman posit themselves as fearless, cross-country travellers… When the film begins, the two are sitting on a reach of emerald-green grass (the colour of the film is dazzlingly rich and saturated), steadfastly perusing a 1988 copy of a Train-Hopping Manual in preparation for their long trip. It’s a wise picaresque journey - full of richly inventive characters… and gloriously implausible situations... There are even moments of great lyrical beauty - such as a twinkling constellation of stars shaped like a hamburger, winking in the midnight sky.”

- Gary Michael Dault, art critic, The Globe and Mail http://www.katharinemulherin.com/dynamic/news_info.asp?ExhibitID=388

“The high point of the exhibition [Pulp Fiction at the MOCCA] is the new work in progress by Seth Scriver and Shayne Ehman... The film offers a hilarious visual account of the pair’s Toronto-bound hitchhiking trip from Vancouver, animated in a funky, homespun, South Park visual vernacular. At the centre of the action are two protagonists... They make their way through a quintessentially Canadian landscape…A landscape of endless highways, mountains and tar sands. (Once they make it to Alberta, giant drinking straws dot the horizon, dripping crude oil. Prosperity is glimpsed ironically, and from afar.) ...What lifts this work above the norm, though, is its underlying critique of materialism... It’s a little pit stop in Marxist political thought, a mini-essay on alienated labour...”

- Sarah Milroy, art critic, The Globe and Mail http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/pulp-fiction-in-contemporary-canadian-art/article4282269/

Production Stills

Left column: packs on the road, the origi-nal storyboard drawn while travelling

Right column: painted car hood and hitchhiker’s suitcase, cardboard condo, waiting in a ditch near Canmore

Credits

Written, animated, directed, edited, and produced byShayne Ehman & Seth Scriver(Delusional Brothers Inc.)

Music Shayne Ehman

Additional musical instrumentation and arrangementsSeth ScriverRobin FryPatrick Erling HornEchen Hsu

Best friends during productionErin ZimermanAmy LamZoe Gordon

Voice Actors Shayne EhmanSeth ScriverLydia KlenckKaty MorleyMaura DoyleErin ZimermanStewart ScriverEmily GreenMarc BellRobin FryMike ConstableAirin McGuintyPaul HendersonJodi MasonJon McurleyTerry PierceyAxel EhmanCece ScriverAmy LamGreat Grandma ChiuAmy LockhartIan McGettiganZoe GordonCharlie ShaugnessyGregor Gordon