Lantern & Bone Animation presents
A film without words about a dog with nowhere to be — and one night to get there.
Grand PrixFestival of the Small Hours
Official SelectionOmbra Animation Week
Audience AwardNorthline Shorts
Logline
A dog is turned out of a shuttered depot at midnight. Twelve minutes and four miles later, the sun comes up. Stray follows one crossing of one city — alley to overpass to laundromat to roof — told without a single word, at twelve drawings a second.
The film runs in real dark. Every light in it is borrowed: sodium lamps, a moon behind haze, a laundromat that never closes, and finally the one light nobody owns.
EXT. CANNERY ALLEY — 11:58 PM
A roller door closes for the last time. The dog stands in the wet lane between two buildings that never learned his name, one sodium lamp doing the work of a moon. Somewhere under the dumpster, a cat decides he isn't worth the trouble. He starts walking because standing still is worse.
EXT. INTERCHANGE 9 — 1:14 AM
Above his head, the city keeps leaving itself: headlights west, taillights east, nobody stopping. Down here the freeway is just weather — a river heard from under its bridge. He crosses the gravel in and out of two lamp pools, small and certain, the only thing in frame moving at the speed of legs.
EXT. TUMBLE'S COIN LAUNDRY — 3:40 AM
The warmest room in four miles is one he can't enter. Inside, a night attendant folds towels with the patience of someone paid by the hour, and the dryers turn like slow planets. He sits at the edge of the light spill — close enough to borrow the heat off the glass, far enough to leave when he has to. This is the shot on the poster.
“A nocturne with paws. The year's most patient chase scene — and nothing is chasing him but morning.”The Provincial Reel
The Making
Every frame was drawn twice: once in pencil on paper, once in paint. Backgrounds are gouache on grey stock, scanned at dawn so the studio light matched the film's. The dog was animated on twos — twelve drawings a second — because a stray moves like he's saving something for later.
EXT. ROOFTOP, WREN STREET — 5:52 AM
A fire stair he wasn't supposed to find. Laundry someone forgot to bring in. And then, between a water tower and a city that spent all night pretending to be empty, the sun — arriving the way it always does, for everyone, without checking names. His tail comes up for the first time in the film.
He doesn't look back. That was never the direction he was going.
Written & Directed by
Ines Kovač
Produced by
Marisol Teng
Animation Director
Felix Abara
Key Animation
Pilar Osei · Tomi Van Ryn · Rook Delacroix
Backgrounds & Colour
Rue Oyelarangouache on grey stock
Compositing
Dana Petrić
Edit
Saul Winterberg
Music
Hale Nakamurabrushed drums, tape piano, one accordion
Sound Design
Bram Van Daal
Foley
One pair of boots, one bag of gravel
The Dog
Drawn from lifeMeridian Street, 2 a.m.
Festivals
Festival of the Small Hours — Grand Prix
Ombra Animation Week — Official Selection
Northline Shorts — Audience Award
Hearthlight — Closing Night Film
With Thanks To
The night shift at every laundromat that leaves the lights on
A Lantern & Bone Animation Film · Portland & Zagreb · © MMXXVI