Images of Native American art morph into a crisp shot of the moon orbiting the earth, which in turn becomes a pregnant belly framed against a clear morning sky. So begins “Hope,” a short film based on the teachings of Cherokee folklorist Willy Whitefeather and directed by Catherine Margerin, an artist committed to activism.

An honorary chief of the Black Creek Cherokee of Florida and a collector of ancient traditions, Whitefeather is a storyteller, author, healer and outdoorsman who travels the U.S. promoting peace and personal responsibility. His message is that “the power of peace is within each of us” — a message that inspired Margerin, producer Mary Mathaisell and Luna Media, a non-profit production company founded by Margerin, to make the film.

“What is important to us is that the emotional impact of the film is translated into concrete, positive action.”

Choosing a Path

“Hope” is a collage of music, sound and images, combining animation, archival footage and live action in a multi-layered, non-linear story that owes much of its creation to Final Cut Pro, Motion and DVD Studio Pro. “Without Apple technology, this project would not have been possible,” says director of photography Eric Peltier. “A few years ago, it would have cost millions to produce anything like this.”

The plot of “Hope” centers on the journey of an “everyman.” He starts out living simply, in balance with nature, respecting the interconnectivity of all living things. Then he comes upon a fork in the road and faces a choice of two paths.

The path he chooses leads him to accumulate material goods, which he ends up having to fight to protect. The escalating violence of this life eventually shakes the foundations of the earth itself and almost destroys the man. The “hope” of the title comes at the end of the film, when the other path is revealed: one of cooperation, social change and connection with others.

To tell this story, Margerin and her team of 10 animators created hand-drawn, hand-painted images evocative of Native American traditions, including Pueblo pottery, Sioux painted hides, Hopi murals and ancient rock drawings. They then interlaced these scenes with live footage showing the growth of civilization and the effects of violence.

As richly layered as its visual palette, the film’s soundtrack blends the sounds of a beating heart and breathing with cedar flutes, drums, rattles and a traditional Cherokee lullaby. An original score by five-time Oscar-winning composer Normand Roger completes the soundscape.

Seamless Blending

While the animators strove to recreate an ancient look with modern tools, the live action crew was all high tech and high def. Led by Peltier, the team captured original HD footage on location in San Francisco and Taos, New Mexico. They shot at 24fps using a Sony HDW-F900/3 Cine Alta HD camcorder with Fujinon HD CINElenses and the Sony HDVF-C30W color viewfinders (a component that Peltier calls “a blessing”).

The blending of hand-drawn animation, digital HD footage and archival footage in varied formats was “seamless thanks to Apple technology,” says Peltier. “Final Cut Pro HD made it very easy to create an offline project by capturing and compressing the footage on the fly, using the offline photo-jpeg codec. No complicated down-conversion. No DVcam dubs were made. And the project stayed at 23.98fps throughout the whole production.”

Peltier edited the offline project on his PowerBook G4 using Final Cut Pro HD. “The photo-jpeg format does not have quite as much resolution as the DVCAM capture, but the color is 4:2:2,” he says. “This means if you do color correction in the offline, and then simply apply it in the online, you are going to get a pretty good result.” This technique allowed Eric to edit offline in 23.98fps, and then bring his entire Final Cut Pro project into the online session with numerous effects, settings, layers and a good portion of the color correction already done.

Next Page: Spreading the Word of Peace