Sonsie’s new holiday film, Where Does the Garden Go?, is 83 seconds long. Making it sounds like the stuff of movie magic—it took eight months, a team of more than 20 people, 11 handmade puppets and 1,668 frames, each one posed and photographed by hand.
One of those puppets is a miniature Pamela Anderson. She’s made of tissue paper and wire and wears a handmade copy of Anderson’s real sweater. “I love the papier-mâché version of me in my Row sweater and jeans, which are all gifts from my sons. It’s so cute and kinda funny looking too,” Anderson says. “Quirkiness is part of my charm.”
A true family affair, the film came out of a collaboration between Anderson and her son Dylan Jagger Lee, Sonsie’s co-founder and chief brand officer. He produced it, came up with the concept and co-directed it with Paris-based artist Alix Bortoli, who also animated it and built its sets and puppets. The story asks a simple question: When winter arrives, where does the garden go? As frost covers the brand’s garden, woodland creatures head to a magical greenhouse where everything is still growing, and they spend the season making and wrapping gifts by hand. Anderson then steps into that world before Zeus, the family dog, carries her across the night sky to deliver Sonsie gifts.
“The garden is our metaphor for beauty, and this campaign asks where it goes in winter. Our answer is that it doesn’t go anywhere. It just gets more magical,” Lee says. “Real and authentic is everything at Sonsie, so stop-motion was the first idea, and matte painting, the way they made The Wizard of Oz in 1939, let my mom actually step into that world.”
When asked whether anyone pushed for a faster or cheaper route, Lee’s answer is direct: There were no shortcuts. “The whole team was fully on board with taking the ‘harder’ route from day one. Nobody wanted to do it any other way.”
The production numbers show how much harder that route was. The film was animated at 12 frames per second, so each second on screen needed 12 separate hand adjustments to the puppets and sets. Over 10 days of shooting, Bortoli animated 139 seconds of footage, close to 170 hand-posed frames a day, before it was edited down. The workshop scene took nearly four days for a single shot. The treehouse workshop set took three full weeks to build. Mini Pamela took four days and mini Zeus took two, his coat made to shine like the real dog’s.
So that Anderson could walk into the miniature world, the team rebuilt parts of it at full size in a real garden. They made a grass floor, a tree painted on wood and a greenhouse built from the same wood, raffia roof and clear windows as its stop-motion version. Every gift in the film was made twice, once in miniature and once life-size, and Anderson helped wrap the big ones herself.
For Anderson, the hard work is the point. “The serious part is that many hours of hard work went into this, all by hand. It is a romantic way of working, labor intensive. It is very Sonsie: the storytelling, commitment and cadence,” she says. “I feel we have found Sonsie’s voice. We are on a roll. It’s exciting to see the community we are building. It’s kind of analog and rebellious.”
She also wanted the project to have a bigger purpose. “We love to support artists who are young and interested in this kind of artistry. No shortcuts,” she says. “The boys find such incredible people to work with. We may have a small team, but everyone is passionate, which makes the hard work fun and meaningful. And we are succeeding. It’s wild to watch in a world of so many brands with so much money. We are grassroots and fighting for it.”
Working with family has its ups and downs, both sides say. “The world knows her as Pamela Anderson, but obviously I got to see her as a woman and a mom first and foremost,” Lee says. “I didn’t live her life, but I got to watch almost every chapter of it, and Sonsie is where all of that wisdom landed. Most people building a brand have to go find the story. I grew up inside this one, so I get to tell it alongside her.” The hardest part? “We sometimes have different ideas, and then we have to figure out whose is actually better!”
Anderson admits that’s usually Lee, the team’s unofficial voice of reason. “I’m so proud of Dylan. He has vision and knows how to execute. It’s a tremendous skill,” she says. “I have so many ideas I can get lost or overwhelmed. Dylan is like Buddha. He reels us in. But he also makes complete sense. In the end, he’s right. He keeps the ship on course.”
Brandon Thomas Lee, Sonsie’s co-founder and chief marketing officer, connects the slow production to the brand’s lineup of five products. “Hand-building the campaign meant every frame had to be worth the time. We think about skincare the same way,” he says. “We’re not chasing the next launch. We’re usually asking how to make what we have better, or how to make it even simpler. Made with care means nothing goes in just to fill a label. We use proven ingredients and rely on a few that do the heavy lifting, like niacinamide in our Super Serum ($64) and glycerin in our Multi Moisture Cream ($48). It’s five products that work together and get out of the way, because skin care should give you time back, not take more of it.”
The film’s idea of a garden that keeps growing through winter matches how Anderson thinks about getting older. “Seasons are what life is about. Some seasons are more focused when less abundant with superficial rewards,” she says. “Fall is the season of the soul—magical, poetic and a time to dream. Try new things, new ways of being. It’s a thoughtful time, and it inspires giving.”
Her own giving routine is simple, as she likes to keep a few boxed Sonsie lip balms on her to hand out. “I have given plenty of lip balms out in my travels to stewardesses, baristas and new moms that I meet,” she says. “All the products have given me the best skin I’ve had in decades. It’s the real deal. If I have an extra one on me, it’s all yours.” The brand has also left Sonsie Journals in free book boxes on the street. “I like to feel like a fairy dropping stardust wherever I go,” Anderson says. “Just a little joy here and there. I’m lucky to have this role. It is something I’ve prayed for.”
The film launches alongside the Sonsie Holiday Shop. Gift sets range from The Hydration Duo ($100) to The Sonsie Bundle ($198) which puts all five of the brand’s essentials in one set.
