Paraphernalia Short Film

"Paraphernalia" is Sage Cotugno's third year student film for Calarts, released on Youtube April 30th, 2011, and to Vimeo May 1st, 2011. It is a 4 minute film with no dialogue, directed by music and sound, centered around earlier versions of a couple characters that would go on to become main characters of The Glass Scientists, Henry Jekyll and Rachel Pidgely.

> "A story in which a little recluse girl makes a friend, at the expense of her ceiling."
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It precedes The Glass Scientist's creation by about 5 years, and its story and universe are now rather separate despite containing analogous elements. The characters' backstories, personalities, and designs have since been changed and developed considerably from their start in Paraphernalia.

## Background and Development

Though made for Calarts, it was mostly made at Gobelins school in Paris.

In his Paraphernalia notes, Jekyll is first noted as "Young Adventurer", though he'd be noted as "Henry Jekyll" most anywhere else, as seen in early concept art of both Jekyll and Hyde, as his story then entwined with an earlier version of Frankenstein's. Paraphernalia was developed as a sort of prologue for that story, soon entitled "The Pseudoscientists".

The next and final official installment of "The Pseudoscientists" is The Cliffs of Insanity, a flash comic storyboard featuring Jekyll, Frankenstein, and Frankenstein's Creature. Like Paraphernalia, TCoI is no longer canon to TGS, pertinent only as an adjacent developmental work. By 2014, the universe of The Glass Scientists would supersede "The Pseudoscientists", debuting with Bleeding Heart, TGS's prologue.

Rachel was noted on Sage's Tumblr to have originally been inspired by little pet mice Sage kept in 2011.

Paraphernalia notably features 4 different Easter egg characters besides Jekyll and Rachel, noted on their Tumblr as follows:

* The Time Traveler
* Chance
* Haruki
* M'emo (the dog)

## Summary

The film opens up outside the ivy and briar covered iron gates of a run down and boarded up estate. The grounds are overgrown, and the house is in a state of disrepair. Inside, it's full of mountains upon mountains of personal belongings, books and dolls and all manner of curious other things stacked precariously on top of each other. In the center of it all sits a girl, her black hair tied back in a ponytail, wearing a simple dress with a bow at the back. She sits at a table, arranging what appears to be a makeshift teaspread, candles sat in jars and jewelry boxes and the cups and plates all chipped. She looks upon them with a certain tender pride, running her fingers across the surface.

However, her peaceful reverence is interrupted by a loud crashing sound from above. She startles briefly before settling, but it sounds again, louder. She looks up in confusion to see her ceiling cracking. Horrified, she can do nothing but watch as the ceiling caves in, quickly burying her in curios and debris from above.

Startled, but seemingly thankfully mostly unharmed (though the same can't be said about her spread), she pulls herself from the rubble by stacks of nearby books, looking around for what it was exactly that fell. She quickly comes upon an unfamiliar man, covered in fallen and broken things, fainted from the fall. The girl observes him for a moment, looking over his clothes and dark tousled hair and the large aviator goggles on his head, but the stack of books she'd perched herself upon gives out from under her, and she quickly falls on top of him. The man wakes up to see her, and flustered, she backs herself off of him and runs a safe distance away behind other stacks of things. The man gets up, bewildered, but the girl only hides herself from him.

Confused, the man looks around, only to see his aviation machine, stuck halfway through the ceiling. At once he runs over to assess the damage, quickly finding it too dark to see in the cluttered room. He produces from his bag a curious lighting device, much to the wonder of the girl. As he assesses his machine, the girl quickly gets closer to see, ending up just behind the man, but hiding again when the man turns to see her. He kneels down to her and offers the device for her to see.

Curiosity winning over her mistrust, she watches in wonder as the man pushes a button on the device, and with a hiss of steam, it opens up, releasing floating light particles, floating up to the cieling and illuminating model hot air balloons.

Seeing them, the man points, and sets the device down, hitting another button. It closes again and produces a lens, becoming a slide projector. The man takes out pictures to show the girl, placing them in his projector and telling her stories about how he came to fall through her roof. He shows her a picture of him in a hot air balloon like her models, and she slowly comes out to sit next to him to better hear him. The man smiles, and shows her a picture of him working on his aviation machine, then one of him flying it over a field, and then of him having crashed it in a tree. The girl giggles a bit, before looking over, admiring him as he tells his story, though perhaps a bit too closely. He looks over, and she pulls away, embarrassed, though he only smiles sheepishly.

Suddenly, he seems to be struck with an idea, and gets back up, excitedly patting the wings of the machine and seemingly offering the girl to come with him. The girl hesitates and refuses, but the man continues his explanation, indicating to the engine, and the girl flinches as he pulls it, and it hisses to life with a puff of smoke.

When the smoke clears, the engine's on, proving it's good to fly. The man turns to give the girl a thumbs up, only to see that she's fled, frightened, back behind the piles of things. He runs over, but she hides from him, and hesitantly, the man takes that as answer enough and goes to leave the girl to her devices. He goes to push his machine back through the roof and go before he makes any further mess of things.

The girl regretfully watches him go, catching sight of the final picture he'd left in the projector: a picture of him, posing with a tall man in goggles and a white coat, a freckled boy with matching aviator goggles, a shorter boy with a sketchpad in hand, and a large dog.

Sadly she looks down... to see that the man's aviator goggles had fallen off in his rush to go. She darts out to pick them up, finding them unharmed. She smiles gently in their reflection. The brief moment is broken, however, by the harsh roar of a motor. She looks up to see through the hole in her roof the man on his aviation machine, prepared to leave. Suddenly determined, the girl makes a decision.

She makes to climb to the roof, scaling one of the many piles of belongings to catch the man before he leaves. She knocks over a teacup in her climb, and it easily shatters in pieces on the floor below. She looks to it, despairing, but quickly steels herself and resumes her climb.

When she finally makes it to the rooftop, the machine is already taking off. She gasps and runs to catch it, and just barely manages to catch one of its ties, tethering it to the ground. Surprised, the man looks back to see the girl, smiling up at him. Delighted, he smiles back.

The film ends with a still of the two of them flying on the aviation machine together.

## Gallery

1. ↑ TCoI Part 1, DeviantArt Release, August 22nd, 2011.
2. ↑ May 1st, 2011 Reblog of Paraphernalia, originally posted to Tumblr by Sage's friend Becky.
3. ↑ An ask answered December 20th, 2017 on the official Glass Scientists Tumblr.