Once in a while, I’ll come across a video on YouTube that I find equally as baffling as I do charming. The idea behind the story has potential to be a piece of comfort media for people struggling with infertility, or struggling to fit in as an outsider. I acknowledge that it isn’t easy to tell a story within fifteen minutes, so I imagine that the writers must have felt pressure from the limited time run. It’s no “Rapsitte St Kids” levels of quality, it surpasses that film in many ways. However, it stumbles mainly in the story department as it doesn’t explain things very well.
I agree with all the comments which state that this is a film that would have benefitted from being a full feature length film. I’d say that if it was given anywhere from forty minutes to an hour and twenty, it might have been able to flesh out the story in a more natural way.
It’s for this reason that, when I approached this iceberg of a topic, I half expected it to be a window into partial lost media. This was because, at least to me, it has the symptoms of being a proof of concept short film that you’d present to studios or television channels. It has breakneck pacing, amateurish voice acting and off lip synching at times. For a proof of concept, it’d be a decent pitch to a smaller studio.
This mysterious piece of animation has a lot of mystery and intrigue surrounding it. Who commissioned this animated short film? Who animated it and why? And most of all, who is this made for?
I love how most of the comments are just as befuddled as I am. Perhaps even more so than I am, because I understand that the story focuses on the titular character becoming the recipient mare for an embryo transfer. To be fair though, not everyone took an equine genetics and reproduction course like I did in order to become certified to work as an equine vet assistant. I’ll be honest, even though I am aware of embryo transplantation being a thing in equine reproduction, I still was confused by Dr. Pablo’s explanation at first.
Prior to starting this deep dive, I went in with three questions:
1. Why was this made?
2. Who was responsible for this animation?
3. What did I just watch?
Believe it or not, a few clues about the people involved in the film can be found in the film itself.
This character is named “Prince Deerfields”, named after “Deerfield Stables” which specialized in breeding Irish Cob Horses (formerly known as Gypsy Vanners).
This cat is called “Tuffy McDuffy”. It doesn’t seem significant at first, except that it was the name of the lane which Deerfields Stables was located. Don’t believe me?
According to Google, the stables appears to have closed down at some point within the last few years. I couldn’t find any information as to why, but I assume the pandemic played a significant role in the closure due to the timing. Or maybe they quietly rebranded. I’m not sure either way and can only speculate.
The farmers, “Jim and Dennis” seem to be based on Dennis Thompson and James Wilson. Their names aren’t all that special unless you’re familiar with the history of Irish Cobs in North America. From what information I was able to find, they were responsible for being among the first to import the horses into North America back in the 90s. As a matter of fact, Dennis Thompson and his wife were responsible for bringing them over in 1996. In 2011, an article written about Deerfields stables was written. Both are interesting reads, especially if you’re as fascinated with the Irish Cobs as I am.
The short film was uploaded by a Shawn Sussma, a sound engineer who uploaded it as part of his portfolio. I hope he managed to find a career in sound engineering after working on Mule Mom.
The film itself has a 15 minute runtime, which appears to be an advertisement for Gypsy Gold’s Mule Surrogacy progra. According to the website itself, apparently an equine reproduction veterinarian found that when a female mule was used as a surrogate mother that she took better care of the foal than the mares did; as evidenced by the foals being stronger and more resilient compared to those raised by surrogate mares. I’m not sure if there’s any additional scientific data on this, but I’m open to reading said data and updating this blog post if need be.
Here’s another interesting thing I learned during this deep dive:
That explains why rabbits, chickens and pheasants were given as much spotlight as they were.
As seen here. They ultimately didn’t move the story forward, but I can understand why the owners would want them to make a few appearances. Most likely to flesh out the world that is Farmer Jim’s farm. It leads me to wonder if Morf and Velcro might also be based on real horses (or loosely inspired by real horses residing on the farm).
While we are on the topic, I also wonder if the same rings true for Jack and Elizabeth the mare:
I don’t think it’s a big stretch to make this assumption since the Gypsy King is based on a real stallion of the same name:
This is his stud information. As you can see, he was far more handsome in real life:
As for the titular character herself, I believe she is an animated representation for all the mules used in theMule Mom surrogacy program. It should also be noted that the mule surrogates helped propagate the number of Irish Cobs born every year, and so they should be thanked for that much. It’s one of those business quirks that sound insane at a glance, but they make full sense once you see the full picture.
I hope that gave you a little bit of context about the film itself, because without it the short film seems pretty nonsensical.
Fun fact #1: He was the first to upload the full movie, but Ross Monroe dropped the trailer for it on June 29th, 2010.As shown here. This video is of interest because it identifies some of the people who worked on this film:
Story: James D Wilson, based on concept by Dennis Thompson
Writer: Virginia Thompson
Director-Writer: Ross Munroe
Songs written by Angela Rust
Singers: Alyssa Roy, Angela Rust and Isabella Shields
Producers: Ross Munroe, Martin Julian and Oliver Guse
According to this this here EBay listing, there even was a DVD release. And, There still exists an activity book for sale based on this animated short.
Here’s an archived version of the activity book that I found.
I tried to find a clean version of the songs featured in the short; specifically “Flo’s Song” and “Shine on Me” to confirm as to whether or not those were one song spliced into two. Unless I’m searching for the wrong terms, I haven’t been able to find any additional music by Angela Rust or the singers. Which is a shame, because I lowkey like the song.
In conclusion, the Mule Mom movie serves as being part of an advertisement campaign while also being a passion project. If it had a longer run time, then I think the story would have gotten a chance to flesh out the conflicts between Morf, Flo and Velcro. Maybe we would’ve seen instances of Flo taking care of weanling foals while longing for motherhood herself.
I haven’t reached out to any of the people involved in the movie because I don’t even know how many of them even remember working on this movie. Keep in mind that production finished at some point prior to June 29th, 2010. That’s over fourteen years ago as of writing, which leads me to doubt that many of the cast and crew likely don’t remember what went during production.
I also still haven’t found any information on the animators, but I did find the DeviantArt profile of a gentleman from the Philippines who worked on the worked on the activity book and DVD cover. I’m not even sure if he had anything to do with the animation itself. Some people have speculated that the animation was produced by the same people who brought us this monstrosity:
Although some of the arguments are almost convincing, (similar art style and strange pacing of the dialogue/story), I’m not entirely convinced it was the same studio. While I wouldn’t be surprised if the animation was outsourced to a smaller studio, I also wouldn’t be surprised if it was done in-house in Canada either.
For now, I think it’s safe to call it an American-Canadian collaboration.
I have come out of this deep dive with some additional questions myself, but I’m glad to have found a few answers to questions I previously had. As I haven’t found any of the original audio for the songs featured in the film, aside from the “Mule Mom Piano Jingle” that played twice in the film, I think it’s safe to say that they’re partially lost media. That is, if there even is an original version of the song.
Maybe Shawn Sussman still has the intact songs. But it’s also been over fourteen years since Ross Monroe dropped the trailer so it’s hard to say where it is. If it exists at all still. Despite that, I’m glad that this isn’t a deep dive which turned into tragedy of any kind. As someone who watches a lot of lost media iceberg/deep dives on YouTube, a lot of them end up turning out to be on the darkest corners of the internet. Aside from the Gypsy King himself dying of old age, there’s nothing dark over here which is a relief.
There were some people that suspected this film had ties to a cult, which thankfully isn’t the case.
The fact that I now know it’s mostly a passion project allows me to have a newfound appreciation for it, as I tend to enjoy looking at other people’s projects. It doesn’t have the same budget as a large studio would have, so to me it’s good for what it is. However, I can only say that because I now have context for it. How many people out there are going to look into this the same way I did to reach that conclusion?
I hope someday to hear the full version of “Shine on me”, if it even exists.
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