Calico Pie: The Movie

Suzanne Birrell

The voice, the music and the sensibility at the centre of Calico Pie. Every one of the ten films begins with a song she wrote and sings.

Primarily a bassist and vocalist — four- and five-string electric, acoustic and upright — Suzanne also plays oboe, saxophone, drums and percussion, and writes and arranges her own material. She composes, records and performs across jazz, country, rock and more, and teaches middle-school theatre and band. Her albums include Calico Pie and Other Poems by Edward Lear (2010), Cats with Class: Other People’s Money (2014) and Suzanne Birrell — Her ’08 Album.

Suzanne studied scriptwriting at Webster University and Fullerton College. Her screenplay Time Before the Fall won the Wiki Scriptwriting contest and was a semi-finalist in the 2022 Miami Screenplay Contest; her TV pilot Sally Norma was a Best Short nominee. In 2013 she founded Screenwriters and Actors of Hollywood, and in 2017 Screenwriters and Actors of Santa Fe. She is a SAG-AFTRA actor and the author of the novel Magpies & Yellow Roses.

More about Suzanne →

Charles Paul Jones, Director

Charles Paul (Chuck) Jones is a serial entrepreneur, inventor, and fine art photographer with over 40 years of experience building technology companies and mastering light. His photographic journey spans 60+ years and 300,000+ RAW images, and his adventures include documenting vanishing cultures across eight years and 56,000 miles in Mexico.

An early pioneer in micro-computer technology, remote desktop technology (Carbon Copy) and digital commerce (U.S. Patent 5,500,681 with 345+ citations), Chuck brings precision and innovation to his art. His platinum palladium prints employ an 1873 patented process requiring meticulous hand-coating with precious metals on Arches Platine paper. These prints last possibly a thousand years or longer—if the paper survives, the image never fades or discolors.

Chuck’s consciousness-based filmmaking and photography philosophy, influenced by Eastern thought and panpsychism, seeks to find extraordinary elements in overlooked places, whether documenting a Chichimeca warrior in San Miguel de Allende or capturing the quiet dignity of rural Mexican life. In the partnership, he brings technological innovation, visual documentation expertise, decades of mastering light, and pioneering AI research and development skills.

Birrell Jones Productions ↗

How the films are made

Ten poems, ten songs, ten films. Each one is built the same way, in the same order, against the same rules. Nothing is drawn until the record has been listened to a great many times. Each episode is exactly as long as its song; every cut lands on a line of Lear. The animation was built around the record, never the other way round.

The look is called Paper & Fabric Texture Cutout: paper with a torn edge, felt with a nap, calico with a print, thread you can see. Each character starts as one approved picture and every later scene is made from that anchor. Continuity and colour are measured, not eyeballed; a frame that sits outside the family is rejected, however pretty it is on its own.

On the use of AI

Yes, these films use artificial intelligence. Suzanne wrote and recorded the music. Charles Paul Jones directs: he chooses what each poem looks like, writes the scenes, builds the characters, sets the rules of the style, and decides what stays, what is thrown away and what is made again — scene by scene, a few seconds at a time. The image and video models are where the drawing happens. They are not where the deciding happens.

What the tools give one small production company in Chimayó is the reach that used to need an animation house. What they do not give is a point of view, a song worth animating, or the responsibility to make the thing mean something. Those stay with the people whose names are on it.

Behind the Picture Show → · Full statement, “How These Are Made” ↗

Contact

Birrell Jones Productions · Chimayó, New Mexico
Screenings and press: screenings@birrelljones.com
calicopie.com · birrelljones.productions