James Dashiell is a dick. The toughest P.I. in all of Palookaville. At least that's how he fancies himself. Truth is he's flunked out of the police academy five times, and has little more than a lost kitten to his case credits but when Wanda Warrendoffleekhifenstein walks into his life, that all changes. Her brother's sister's aunt's uncle's mother's friend's son was murdered and she wants Dashiell to find the killer. Now he has to scour the seedy underbelly of the city, running afoul of busboys, waitresses, film fanatics, hobos, hookers, horny geriatrics, and even the police. If he wants the truth, he'll have to keep digging. If he wants fame and fortune, he'll have to stay alive.
PRODUCTION
The Case of the Midnight Murderer is an 84 minute animated film noir murder mystery comedy, written and directed by myself.
I’ve been in love with film noir since before I even knew what film noir was. The noir aesthetic from Batman: The Animated Series, and a little bit even from Jim Henson’s Dog City, were the gateways into a life long obsession with grizzled private investigators and a good old fashioned murder mystery. The Case of the Midnight Murderer originated as a short story that I wrote in high school, born out of that still only partially tapped investment in the genre.
Several years later, with art school and a few years worth of animation work experience under my belt, and a growing interest in classic films of the 1940s thanks to Turner Classic Movies, I started toying with the possibility of adapting that short story into a feature length script and injecting it with my then fully formed love of noir. The intent, originally, was only to write the script, almost as a writing exercise if nothing else, and possibly play around with some character designs, which I always enjoy doing with or without an endgame in mind. I wrote the script. I did some drawings. I got carried away.
Realizing that the script leaned heavily on dialog and atmosphere and less on action, like the films that inspired it, I started thinking that maybe the undertaking of animating the whole film myself might actually be doable. So while I was only intending to tinker a little more when I moved on from character designs to storyboards, the next thing I knew I was actually animating the thing, and eventually I was passed the point of no return. I ended up recruiting some friends and family for voices. Managed to fenagle a couple of era appropriate songs from a local singer, and hit the royalty free jackpot of film scores thanks to one Kevin McCleod. And wouldn’t you know it? I made the whole movie.
The whole thing was quite the learning experience as you can imagine and there’s very little in the movie that I wouldn’t do differently on another go around. But while I’m not the least bit blind to it’s flaws and its rough edges, I am pretty proud of the accomplishment. It even got into a couple festivals and brought home an award. I may one day even revisit this world in fact. We’ll see.
