Tara and Tatyana's Artist Statement: Dil and Duh Go Get Coffee

    In "Dil and Duh Go Get Coffee," Tatyana and Tara wanted to spoof a normal event, meeting a friend for coffee, by adding a surreal twist using Dil and Duh, two matchbox-sized Play-doh shoes, and making a human-sized kitchen look like an expansive and arduous landscape.  Along the way, Dil and Duh encounter any hiccup possible: water, dirty dishes, refrigerators and ovens.  Viewers are able to relate to the shoes’ journey if they have ever experienced a day where it seems like they would never get to their destination because they hit every obstacle along the way, but what separates viewers from the shoes is the obstacles they face are not the obstacles humans face, and their destination is one that would take us two steps, which creates a humorous effect.   Many of the stop-motions shown in class were thought provoking because the artist slightly shifted reality, such as the one with the man making guacamole, and the event appeared believable because photographs seem to provide evidence that it happened, yet it is fantastical, because the viewer knows it cannot happen.  We played on this contradiction in thought that stop-motion creates by portraying a believable scenario in an unbelievable way, literally and metaphorically providing a new perspective on a familiar setting.  Dil and Duh is short for Diligent and Dumb, symbolizing the characters’ personalities and approaches to their journey; Dil is focused and aware on his journey, while Duh seems oblivious and lost.  A third character is introduced, that of a ubiquitous owl who appears throughout the video whenever the shoes experience a problem.  He seems to be responsible for the obstacles the shoes face, and serves as a constant to balance out the two extremes, to unify both the shoes’ turbulent travels.  Lastly, we used narration and dialogue for sound.  The shoes’ speech can be described as “stream of consciousness,” because they voice what is on their mind, and narrate what is happening to them as it’s happening.  Without speech, the stop motion runs the risk of looking like a string of random events, the shoes wouldn’t be as relatable, and their motives wouldn’t be as clear from the beginning.  Also, the hyper speech and dramatic inflexions compliments the stop-motion’s quick tempo.  Lastly, we chose to duplicate some of the images, especially close-ups of the characters, to create dramatic and/or awkward moments, where we wanted to grab the viewer’s attention.