Director Casey McIntyre and the MPC Creative crew in LA embrace an open brief from Motionpoems, combining cel animation with After Effects and CG to interpret “Weighing In,” Rhina Espalliat’s ode to growth and experience.

Director Casey McIntyre at MPC in LA: “We were immediately drawn to an illustrative approach for the animation that would allow us to play with all the themes in the poem and capture the different emotions like childhood happiness, adventure and melancholy in a spirited way.”

“To capture the essence of the poem, the visual idea of scale was developed as a metaphor, framing the duality of one’s own weight and the weight of the world around a central character.”

“Weighing In” was a passion project for the small team of designers and animators at MPC who spent several months on the film in between other projects.

Weighing In, Rhina Espalliat

What the scale tells you is how much the earth
has missed you, body, how it wants you back
again after you leave it to go forth

into the light. Do you remember how
earth hardly noticed you then? Others would rock
you in their arms, warm in the flow

that fed you, coaxed you upright. Then earth began
to claim you with spots and fevers, began to lick
at you with a bruised knee, a bloody shin,

and finally to stoke you, body, drumming
intimate coded messages through music
you danced to unawares, there in your dreaming

and your poems and your obedient blood.
Body, how useful you became, how lucky,
heavy with news and breakage, rich, and sad,

sometimes, imagining that greedy zero
you must have been, that promising empty sack
of possibilities, never-to-come tomorrow.

But look at you now, body, soft old shoe
that love wears when it’s stirring, look down, look
how earth wants what you weigh, needs what you know.

Film by
MPC Creative

Poem by
Rhina Espailat

Director
Casey McIntyre

Executive Producer
Todd Boss