The Funhouse Waltz
Premier 26 October 2017

The Funhouse Waltz First Trailer
June 2008

The Funhouse Waltz Second Trailer
November 2017

The Funhouse Waltz Third Trailer
October 2018

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The Funhouse Waltz is an stop-motion-animated short film, produced and directed by Carvin Knowles.

HISTORY

The Funhouse Waltz began as a work of music. A programmatic concert suite for strings, organ, percussion and theremin, it described a journey through an abandoned funhouse, with each strain of the waltz describing a different episode within the dark ride. Carvin Knowles composed the first draft of The Funhouse Waltz Suite on 13 October 1995 and recorded it the same day at Sound Asylum Studio in Pasadena California. The original intended use was for a Halloween party called "The Feast of Souls."

When the clock struck midnight at The Feast Of Souls, the lights went out and The Funhouse Waltz began, with it's slow, creepy introduction. With the first announcement of the first waltz strain, people began dancing. In a moment, the entire party was waltzing in their ghostly costumes to the wild and discordant music. For Carvin, the immediate popularity of the waltz came as a total surprise. "I had combined Viennese Waltz with harsh Viennese Serialism. The dissonance is a bit challenging. I was certain that no-one would like it."

Encouraged by the Halloween party response, Carvin wrote out the episodes of the tone-poem as prose and presented them and the Waltz to a professional ballet company in early 1996. They rejected the idea immediately. At the time of this writing there has been no authorized performance of a ballet or modern dance show based on The Funhouse Waltz.

The first characters for The Funhouse Waltz take shape in Carvin's Hollywood apartment, December 2006.
Photo by Carvin Knowles

With that rejection, the idea was born to turn The Funhouse Waltz into an animated film. "I had several friends who were animators, so I took the idea to them" Carvin writes, "they loved the concept, but they were all busy working. No-one had time to start a major project."

After several years of trying to find a producer and director for his short film, Carvin decided that he would build and animate The Funhouse Waltz himself. Not knowing where to begin, he consulted friends in animation to learn process and technique. He commissioned wire armatures for some of the characters. He studied the works of Ray Harryhausen, watched the documentaries about King Kong and Jason and the Argonauts.

"Ding-Dong" the Clown prepares for the first shot in "The Funhouse Waltz, 12 March 2007.
Photo by Carvin Knowles

In December 2006, he began building sets and characters. In January of 2007, he began shooting the first test-shots of the characters. On 14 March, 2007, he began the slow process of shooting The Funhouse Waltz.

At the beginning, it was intended to work like a music-video. There was no script other than that first story outline. At best, the "script" was like a treatment. The plan was to build the necessary rooms of a funhouse and shoot the characters moving in time with the music.

Shooting continued until February 2008, when Carvin left Hollywood and moved to Auckland, New Zealand. While waiting for the production to arrive in New Zealand by ship, he cut together the first trailer for The Funhouse Waltz and posted it on YouTube on 30 June, 2008.

In New Zealand, production resumed in early 2009. During that time, Carvin submitted a TV advertisement to Cadbury for their Easter-egg campaign using characters from The Funhouse Waltz. The ad was rejected, but served as a test-run for more shooting. By mid-july, the first section of the film, the "Clown" portion of the funhouse was complete.

The second portion of the film, the "Haunted House" scenes were begun in mid-September. The sets for the Haunted House were more complex and highly detailed than the "Clown Rooms," including several hand-painted portraits hanging on the walls, a staircase and bookshelves filled with hundreds of individual books. Shooting in the Haunted House was completed in October 2010.

The third, and most challenging portion of the film, the "Crypt" scenes required over a year's worth of pre-production. Shooting for the "Crypt" scenes began in late December of 2012. Production on The Funhouse Waltz finished in February 2017.

Since completion of The Funhouse Waltz, the film has won dozens of awards on the film festival circuit, including Best Original Score, Best Animation, Best Production Design and Best Music Video. In May 2018, it was featured at the Festival de Cannes Animation Pavilion, opening for Yellow Submarine

On the set of The Funhouse Waltz, on the floor of Carvin's Hollywood apartment, March 2007.
Photo by Carvin Knowles