Aaren Rackett’s Short Shaping a Dress Celebrates Self-Discovery
Still from Shaping a Dress.
In Aaren Rackett’s short film Shaping a Dress, an early 19th-century tailor goes through the quiet ritual of making a gown for themselves as part of their coming out process with their family. The film navigates coming out with patience and intimacy, and its original piano score, composed by Calgary musician Timothonius, evokes the soft, soaring lyricism of Studio Ghibli: notes flutter and swell, echoing the animation’s delicate rhythms, and shaping the emotional heartbeat of the story.
Rackett created the short film through Quickdraw Animation Society’s Straight-Ahead Scholarship and Production Residency, a program supporting neurodivergent artists in their artistic development. Rackett’s short, Shaping a Dress, will premiere at the Northern New Wave showcase during GIRAF21, marking the culmination of his residency.
“I had done a lot of different, small pieces but it felt time to see if I had it in me to actually do a proper story,” Rackett says. When the opportunity arose to apply for the Straight-Ahead Scholarship, Rackett said the program was a perfect fit. The residency offered something rare, not just mentorship, but in-person connection as well as a physical workspace. “Since 2020, I really had not left the house much,” he says. “So the opportunity to go to more classes in person, as well as have studio space at Quickdraw, I saw as a great opportunity to get myself used to leaving the house again. If I'm going to do something that I love. If I'm going to go animate, that's good motivation.”
Rackett’s interest in historic clothing, particularly with Regency-era fashion, informs the film’s visual style. “For a while I have done historic hand-sewing and I make clothing for myself in that style,” he explains. “It has been a really interesting experience in self-expression, specifically as a trans person. So, I wanted to take [that style] and flip it a little bit for the film, because it's not meant to be auto-biographical in any way. It's just inspired by that experience.”
At its heart, Shaping a Dress focuses on the kindness and community found in coming out, instead of on spectacle. “I did just want a trans story that was just very warm, and soft, and uncomplicated where it does not have to be a whole thing. It can just be,” Rackett says.
The story’s simplicity allows the viewer to linger on the act of creation itself. And the music, composed in collaboration with pianist Timothonius and sound designer Brock Geiger, accentuates every careful movement. Timothonius recalls the process of composing for the short: “I think the beauty of Aaren's vision is Aaren is a pianist himself, he's not only an a very amazing artist and filmmaker, but he has a musical vision as well. So, he came back to me with a couple notes and he's like, ‘I love the piece. Maybe at this point in the song, you do this little trill’ and then he recorded himself playing it... So, it was really cool. There was sort of like this back and forth process. So, after a couple revisions, we had the full composition.”
For Timothonius, the project became a long-held dream realized. “I was very much into animated film, that was very much something I was passionate about growing up… once I saw Aaren's work, I was just so stunned by what he did. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is like composing for a Ghibli film.’”
“I love the Ghibli reference because that was movie’s big inspiration for the vibe of the movie. Timothonius kind of shared that brain wave,” Rackett says.
The final recording took place at BuckingJam Palace, a historic Mount Royal home and jazz venue. “It was really amazing working with [Timothonius and Brock],” Rackett says. “Even the first draft after just my scattered bit of notes was already amazing.”
Sound engineer Brock Geiger, helped refine the mix that would shape the emotional pulse of the film. “I think it turned out so beautifully,” he says. “It has such delicate and nicely paced storytelling… it’s really cool to use the animation format to tell a story like this that is very inclusive and references a different time period.”
The short film has taken two years from conception to completion, and has taught Rackett much about artistic endurance, “It's crazy, because the longest project I've ever done before this only took me about two months and with pre-production, this has taken me two years,” he says. “So, it's been a big thing building my stamina as an artist. But I'm like already starting to feel the itch to do it again.”
He plans to continue animating, perhaps exploring new tempos and tones. “With Shaping a Dress I did really want to like broaden my horizons of what I'd done in animation before by doing something that was much slower paced with slower movements and a lot of hand details. So probably I will mix it up again.”
Shaping a Dress will screen on November 13 during the Northern New Wave showcase during GIRAF21.