The Url Witches, a film by Chris Ott

Making 'The Url Witches.' Photo by Jim West. 2018

Two years ago, I began a new hobby working with miniatures.

I began by experimenting, shooting photographs that suggested a sense of story, without having any actual story in mind. I call this series 'The Tavern.'

But gradually I began to form a story in my mind as I worked, which became 'The Url Witches,' a story of a woman who learns of her real identity and destiny as a powerful witch.

I uploaded the beginning of that movie today, and the segment, which works as a promo for the method I use, is below.



One who knows my history would not be surprised that this is what I do. I began in animation, and later got my undergraduate degree in cinema from the University of Southern California. Incidentally, for the opening scene, I made everything, including the shirt, the pants, and that hat, as clothes had not yet arrived from China.

Synopsis

Veronica is about 28 and lives on an Island in the outer banks of North Carolina. She has tons of money, collects and does art, goes to the gym, but otherwise has no friends and no life. Each night she goes out to the local bars alone, and is known to the bartenders. She also has no idea who she is, or her past. She only remembers her parents dying when she was a girl and being raised by nannies and a governess. She feels like she was never born.

One day a strange little girl gives her a note on the beach. It's cryptically written in Russian, and contains a telephone number.

Veronica gradually builds up the nerve to call, and a strange sounding Russian lady comes over the phone and gives her directions to a Moscow apartment. Arriving at the apartment, a woman named Helga greets her and explains to Veronica her awful past. She was born to a coven of witches, and rescued from a fire during the burning of the witches' village, and then smuggled away to America. There she grew up in a mansion in the outer banks, never knowing her own past.

Veronica learns she's a witch

Helga then tells Veronica why she has called her. Veronica must travel to Mongolia, where there is a strange tavern in the desert, and from the people there she must discover the whereabouts of a small female child. The journey across the desert is treacherous and long, and Veronica begins to turn into a true heroine as she crosses the Russian steppes. Finally, after following the guidance of the men in the tavern, in an oasis, in a flowering Buddhist garden, she is brought the little girl. The garden is lit by Chinese lanterns, has the sound of tiny bells, and has an air of magic.

From there Veronica and the child return to Helga, and receive a second mission. The entire story turns into an epic, and after a final show-down and 'boss fight,' the evil witch is defeated, all wrongs righted, Veronica discovers she has great powers and is in fact made queen on the spot, and the story ends with the child, raised in a buddhist garden in Mongolia, giving a rousing speech about peace and harmony.

We cut to the future, and Veronica is now older, married and has a child. We zoom in on the child staring out the back of their SUV as they hit the road, closing in on her strange eyes, evoking thoughts of a sequel.