A blog developing a corpus of short films, originally in conjunction with Professor Jeffrey Middents' course Literature 346/646, "Short Films," at American University during Summer 2006, Fall 2008 and Fall 2011.
The original post argued that Drinking Out of Cups is an experimental film. I disagree with this categorization. The original argument is that because Drinking Out of Cups has no narrative than it is experimental. I think that this is simplification of what an experimental film is.
If Drinking Out of Cups is experimental, than what is the experiment? An experimental film is trying to do something different with structure, technique or writing. Drinking Out of Cups is certainly not something that we would normally watch in a movie theater, but it is completely within the normal elements of its context.
Drinking Out of Cups is not an experimental film, it is just a meme film. For a youtube video that is intended to be funny, plotlessness is not only not experimental, it is par for the course. I do not find Drinking Out of Cups to be particularly odd for a youtube video. This makes it unexperimental.
Sintel is the story of a girl name Sintel who by chance comes across a wounded baby dragon. After taking the baby dragon in, healing it, and naming it Scales, a older dragon captures scales and takes it away. Sintel then goes on a perilous journey across the world in order to get her dragon friend back. However, when Sintel finally finds scales again, certain events lead to a sad and shocking ending.
When I first saw Sintel I was blown away by the graphics, cinematography, and the story. However, as I watched the short over and over again I began to realize that something was missing. That something depth meaning that this film gives off a feeling that your being rushed through a complicated story. In other words, Sintel feels like it should be a two and half hour epic instead of fifteen minutes of rushed mediocrity. While the various landscapes and shots are stunning, this movie is really disappointing because this deep and amazing story is rushed leaving the viewer wanting more.
However, Sintel is a different type of film than any of the other films posted so far on this blog. Sintel is a free open source movie created on a open source 3D program called Blender. The main purpose of this film was to raise money through DVD sales to help fund the Blender Foundation, which oversees the Blender 3D program. In fact, it's through my interest in the program Blender that I came across this movie and it stuck with me ever since. In case you are unfamiliar with what an open source movie is, it's a movie where by purchasing the DVD you receive all of the files used to make the movie. This unfortunately means that the main reason this movie doesn't stand up well is because it's meant to sell DVDs for the content instead of the story. By rushing the story and making it complicated, the Blender Foundation was able to create tons of content to put on the DVDs that makes them a better deal but at the same time kills the magnificent story.
This still isn't an excuse for ruining an amazing story and Sintel is still an amazing short film. However, in order to see it's beauty you have to really look deep into it's rushed story line and imagine what it would look like if it wasn't rushed. Hopefully at some point in the future, they decide to redo this short and flush it out so the story really gets a chance to shine.
Sometimes you watch something that asks more questions than it answers. This short is one of those things. It begs questions like, what is this, who did this, and why? The information that the poster/creator gives you does not answer any of these questions.
But when you think about, your reaction to the short mirrors the plot (if you can call it that) of the short itself. You stumble upon a strange person doing a strange thing and begin to repeatedly question them. In the short the bird gets his answer in the form of an explanation that seems completely ridiculous to us. The viewer of the short does not get a ridiculous explanation from the short itself, but I think I may have provided one.
But this brings me to a larger point about animation, especially in short film. We have no real idea whether or not the explanation that Billy gave to the bird was ridiculous in the context of the world they exist in. All animated films, movies and shows create a world with rules that different than ours. As long as these rules are internally consistent then we simply accept the creative license that the animators are taking.
However, in a short film, there is no time for the rules of the world to be established. Eating sand is a great example of this because it is so short. We have no idea what if what is going on here is at all normal in this world. Do all of the things there speak in a series of horn notes? Could one house a civilization of sand castle building insects in his stomach? I have no idea, and neither do you.
Now this is not to say that animation cannot be successful in a short film. I love animated shorts. But I think to make them successfully, one has to understand that they work best when they are using surprise. Whether this surprise is unnerving, funny, or (in the case of Eating Sand) just odd, I think that if a short like this can come along and surprise us, then it is not a waste of time.
I had been planning on talking about Pixar's Geri's Game when this animated short by former Pixar animator Rodrigo Blaas was linked to me. I watched this film and was absolutely blown away. I do want to say that you must watch the film before reading the rest of this entry as it is not a film you want to be spoiled for.
The concept of this film is a rather simple one. A young girl, Alma, is walking through the snow-covered streets of a town when she sees a doll that resembles her in the window of a shop. The door opens on its own and she goes in, her doll seeming to disappear and reappear until she finds it on a shelf. When she touches it, there is a flash of images and suddenly the only sound is her breathing and the view now from the doll's eyes, looking around frantically. Alma has become her doll. The end of the film is another doll slowly coming up in the frame of the window, showing the next victim.
When a friend initially linked this to me, she mentioned it was creepy but I could have never predicted this. This film flows nicely but is entirely incongruous within itself, leaving its ending entirely in the dark and surprising for the ending. It's one of the most satisfying endings I have seen in a film, short or feature-length, because I didn't seen it coming and it was appropriately terrifying in its simplicity and lack of explanation. The start of the film seems humble and charming with its airy, pleasant score to the sight of a young girl walking in the snow. There is nothing ominous at its beginning which gives the audience a false sense of security which, in turn, is what makes the subsequent scenes in the store so much more haunting.
For the animation itself, it is soft in its line and Blaas' past with Pixar is extremely evident. It's very charming in its fantasy-like European setting and wins over the audience from the very start of the film. Blaas does an excellent job at setting up the most simplest of scenarios but still making the scene that comes next unknown to the audience, leaving them in the dark. When Alma becomes the doll, the audience is entirely unsuspecting of it. There was, clearly, something strange about the shop but the audience, like Alma, could not have predicted what.
This animated short is absolutely now one of my favorites and I think it was executed in a very mature and meticulous manner. I highly recommend it to anyone.
The link leads you to the second episode of a series of web-based comics called Salad Fingers. It is not at all necessary to watch the first episode in order to understand the second, because Salad Fingers makes no real sense no matter how much of it you've seen. I choose this episode because I think it best encapsulates the tone and composition of the entire series, and also because it is the most disturbing episode.
The first question most people have when watching Salad Fingers is, what is this? The simplest answer is that Salad Fingers is process art. It is strongly implied throughout the authors materials that all of his works are made under the influence of acid. Salad Fingers is a trip through one man's bad trip. But why would a video that is a simulation of a bad trip get 8 million views on Youtube?
I think that Salad Fingers is interesting because it reveals the way the online forms of film distribution tend to reward videos that are singular. Salad Fingers, in spite of any critique you might make of it, is not really like anything else that the average viewer has ever watched. Its like a point of view video of someone who is completely insane. It is worth noting that this episode is the only instance in Salad Fingers where a person appears to be normal, and they get cooked. The video series asks us to accept a character in Salad Fingers himself you is obviously a complete maniac as our anchor in watching this. It makes no narrative sense, and most of the design is intended to be as off-putting as possible. This is not a film that should be popular.
But Salad Fingers is popular, because it is singular. It is one man's twisted vision and that makes it interesting. And in an internet environment that gives you a million options all competing for your attention at once, something truly interesting, something that you can not stop watching, becomes a masterpiece of the form. Whatever you think of Salad Fingers, once you start watching it is hard to look away, and in the environment that it was created in and for, that is a triumph.
The embedded video is a trailer for Stanley Pickle, the full short is unavailable online.
I have an issue with Stanley Pickle. Its an issue that I think a lot of films share with Stanley Pickle. I find that Stanley Pickle does not recognize how insane its own characters are. The film treats what is arguably criminal insane as some sort of twee charm.
The main character in this film has taken all of the people in his life who have died (we can only hope that they died of natural causes), emptied out their organs and reanimated them as clockwork automatons to do imitations of what they did in life. if a real person was caught doing this, they would immediately be carted off to an asylum.
On some level, the filmmaker understands this, and Stanley does take on a certain evil tone at points. But all of these are clearly intended to be sight gags more than acknowledgement of how insane the entire proceeding is.
Over the course of the film, Stanley becomes obsessed with a strange girl but refused to contact her. Then he reanimates her dead pet and it attacks her. Then he decides to leave the little world of insanity he's built for himself. And this is all portrayed as a simple coming of age story.
It's a shame that this film has this problem, since their are several strong points in the film. The style of filming, which the director describes as animation, is a kind of live-action stop-motion. It is extremely cool and fits the world of the short well. But the entire thing is ruined by its refusal to make its tone match the insanity of its protagonist.
Directors: Arnold Mathieu & Laurent Riboulet, France,
2007, 7 Minutes
The film has no dialogue, only sounds, its about a guy
driving on the highway. As he speeds along the highway he needs to tale a
number 2, he sees a rest areas and parks. While gong to the bathroom an alien
crashes into the hood of the car in a craft the size of a small grill. The
alien says something in alien and puts a spell on the guy and flicks the rest
of his toilet paper roll over a mountain.After he gets the toilet paper he throws it and chases it again. The
ending credit has him in outer space capturing and re- releasing to the toilet
paper again.
I really like the animations in this short.I thought the story started out very ordinary
and took a complete detour as far as where I thought the storyline was going.
They main issue is the character needs to use the bathroom, then he becomes
only concerned with chasing the toilet paper not even having it. It’s a weird
film but I like how its left open to interpretation. My favorite cinematic
scenes are the part where he is chasing the toilet paper and jumps in slow
motion to get that paper, I thought it looked cool, and I liked how the
directors played with time. Although the storyline was very puzzling the studio
showed they could make a funny animation, it kind of reminded me of the show
Roadrunner because of the desert setting. I think the main moral of the story
is to chase what you want in life, go far and never stop desiring.
There is a man with an extremely large rabbit in his apartment. We're given no information about where this rabbit came from, how it got so big, or why the man seems so concern with keeping the rabbit and hiding it from everyone else. It doesn't sound like much of a story.
But I think that Egmont Mayer does a great job of creating a story with a surprising amount of depth without telling the audience anything. He establishes the man's isolation from the world with one shot of the lock he has put on his door. He also does a great job showing the man's complicated relationship with the rabbit. The man is embarrassed, affectionate and covetous of the rabbit, all at the same time.
In his description of the film, Mayer describes the rabbit as representing "habits that start out small and grow into something life threatening[.]" And suddenly we all recognize the story being told. We all have a friend who starting playing too many video games or got a little too in to collecting something. And they shut themselves off with their growing rabbit. When you read this into the film, the story fills out. That's what I love about this movie. That and the giant rabbit.
LAPSUS
D: Juan Pablo Zaramella, Argentina, 2007, 3 minutes
Juan Pablo Zaramella's animated shorts are at once profound and amusing, whether he uses clay, ink or stop-motion live action. In Lapsus, a black-and-white nun finds that living in a black-and-white world can be very dangerous indeed. Armed dialogue entirely consisting of "ohmygod!," the little nun's curiosity gets the better of her as she is transformed many times over.
In fact, this curiosity is what makes Lapsus a bit more profound that your run-of-the-mill animated video. Should a devout nun be testing such curiosity? Look what happens to her when, down to the eyeballs, she bounces back into the (white) world! Zaramella may indeed be operating with tongue-firmly-in-cheek here about Catholicism in general. We might be easy to dismiss such an argument, if a glance at some of Zaramella's other shorts did not also indicate a social agenda of sorts: while Sexteensis clearly also made as a public service announcement of a sort, there is also moralistic judgment here. The same could be said for Lapsus, who rightly gives the nun a come-uppance when, knowing what she knows, she investigates just one more time...
Zaramella's work has traveled the film festival circuit extensively; this one was featured at Sundance and won awards at his animation festivals in Hiroshima and Sao Paolo, and his new one, Luminaris, won awards at Annecy and screens this weekend at Telluride (paired brilliantly with The Artist). (Lapsus may be the only short animated film to offer a hilarious "behind the sins" short as well.)
This film was originally posted by Paul Klein. I agree with his assessment that this clip represented classic Muppets at their best. The short features the traditional Muppet ending of an explosion. It features one of the principles of comedy; faster is funnier. The song speeds up as the short progresses. Also, I appreciated that Beaker was center stage. Too often in sketches he was in the background, while Bunson Honeydew was center stage, receiving most of the attention.
One of the questions raised by the original post was, are Muppets animation. This is an issue I struggled with. The fundamental issue is whether puppets can be considered animation. The main similarity is that no motion will occur without human action, however I came to the conclusion that puppets are a separate category from animation.
Muppets and claymation are both forms of puppetry. In both an object exists in the physical world, and there are physical restrictions on what the puppet can and cannot do. In animation, be it computer or hand-drawn, there are no physical limitations on what a character is capable of. Also, puppets exist in the physical world, whereas animated characters do not. A human can touch a claymation character or a Muppet, but no one can actually touch an animated Bugs Bunny or Wall-E.
Another interesting point raised by the original post was online distribution via YouTube. Disney posting Muppet clips on YouTube is a way to interest new audiences in the Muppets, as well reconnect with older fans. People in college may remember the Muppets, but only as a childhood memory in the back of the mind. Rediscovering a clip on YouTube may remind a viewer of how much he or she enjoyed the Muppets at an earlier age, and may encourage a rekindled interest in the Muppets, eventually leading to the desire to purchase a CD, DVD, or other Muppet product.
REJECTED Directed by Don Hertzfeldt, United States, 2000, 9:21 Source: Bitter Films
Steve's choice of Rejected well represented the types of shorts we analyzed throughout the class. There are shorts within a short (Don's thirty second rejected cartoons), experimental (the lack of narrative structure in the rejected cartoons), commercials (Don's cartoons advertised companies), political (Don's tongue-in-cheek response to advertising Johnson & Mills: "I'm a consumer whore!" written over the child, "And how!" for father), and animation (the short is completely hand drawn on pencil and paper). On top of that, this was an award-winning short that swept the film festivals and received the Oscar for best animated short.
What I love about Rejected is how creative it is. As Steve said in his post, "the animation techniques at the end of the film, when the creator begins to go crazy, are very edgy and incredibly well executed." The style of animation reminds me of another short film, that is Oscar-nominated for this year: I Met The Walrus. Like Rejected, I Met The Walrus uses beautiful, eye-popping animation to tell the unique story of a 14-year-old interviewing John Lennon in an interactive, creative way. However, Rejected does not feature the massive amounts of After Effects and Photoshop that I Met The Walrus does.
The main point is that these two shorts are creative. Walrus heavily relies on out-of-the-box animation while Rejected relies on simplistic, paper-and-pencil animation. But if either style was made into a feature length, it would degrade the uniqueness of the short.
When it comes to short films in regards to features, I feel like filmmakers can do a lot with a short amount of time. They focus more on what to create rather than what to fill. With a shorter time, the quality is higher. With a longer time, the quality is harder to create; quantity is the key of the game when it comes to features.
So if Rejected was made into a feature, about rejected cartoons, the uniqueness of the short would be trying on the viewer by the twenty minute mark or so. I feel it would also be trying on the creator as well, having to animate for a longer, more complicated story for a longer amount of time. The uniqueness of Rejected stems from its simple plotline with outrageous, non-sequiter cartoons.
This is a testament again to how in a short amount of time, directors/animators have the freedom to be as creative as possible. Quality is emphasized, rather than the quantity. And in this short amount of time, different aspects of shorts can be referenced.
Although I obviously left this blog to the last minute with no idea as to what short film I was going to choose as a quintessential, with one glance at the label 'muppet', I knew this was the short for me. Growing up solely as a Nickelodeon child, the muppet family was my family. I loved the re-runs of the 1970's variety show and baby muppets definitely was a plus as well. Even better, Beaker was, no lie, my favorite muppet, AND Beethoven's 9th is beautiful, so the combination of the two were more than I could ever ask for.
The idea that puppets/muppets and animation could go hand in hand really fascinates me. The fact remains that animation holds multiple meanings these days with growing technology, so who's to say that puppeteering--arguably easy to maneuver ( in comparison to other forms of entertainment, that is) can't be considered animation? Just as Paul pointed out, Beaker is an extremely animated muppet and shows his true colors very well within the context of this hilarious short. He attempts to be creative and show off his multiple talents (all at once), but, as usual, multiple things go wrong and in the end, Beaker gets hurt in more ways than one. If anyone watched the muppets growing up, they'd understand that it's just how Beaker is and will always be.
Bjork's visual art has always been just as interesting as her music. Throughout her solo career she has teamed up with some of the more acclaimed music video directors of the time (Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham among others) to deliver arresting short form cinematic expressions like this one. In Jihyun's original posting on this video she stated, "I do not really understand what relationship her music videos have with her song lyrics." I think that's a reasonable reaction, as there often isn't very much explicit thematic or narrative correlation between the two. Instead, I think she's more concerned with creating a mood and visual aesthetic that compliments the music. In such design, she often returns to a common theme regarding the marriage of technology and nature.
In the case of this particular short, Jihyun was apt to discuss the techniques used to create the video as Bjork's visual media work remains some of the most innovative in the industry. It remains difficult to separate the thematic content of the videos from their production. Here, we see Bjork herself being constructed in a sterile industrial facility in the form of an android. The film concerns itself with the sensuality of the human form within the context of a purely mechanical environment. The parallel can be clearly seen in her music as well. Her song writing frequently incorporates Earthy imagery and sexual or anatomical content, while her arrangements and functional music-making have become increasingly digital over the years (with the stark exception of Medulla, a nearly 100% vocal album). Personally, this balance proves refreshing and particularly compelling, in a time where much of the world feels divided between a sort of technological paranoia and environmentally-ignorant industrial mindset.
It stands to be determined exactly how these videos function within the wide realm of short films as a whole. I believe the very basis of this interplay between technology and nature drives the meaning of her videos. They exist as singular non-narrative expressions lauded for their visual inventiveness, supported by her similarly inventive song writing. Given the wide distribution of music videos as a predominantly advertising-focused format, Bjork's shorts probably have the greatest influence as examples of filmmaking innovation. There seem to be two distinct design schools in her work: a hyper-stylized "analog" form, and a sleek sterile digital form. The former, exemplified best by Michel Gondry's work, showcases a nature-rooted in-camera display of visual inventiveness (as seen in "Bachelorette" and "Army of Me"). The latter form often features Bjork herself subject to a variety of cutting-edge digital effects manipulation (such as "Hunter" where she morphs into a polar bear, and "Hidden Place" where a mystical amoebic ooze enters parts of her head).
Even within these two schools of thought that thematic dichotomy remains evident. However, she broke even another barrier recently with her video for "Wanderlust", one of the first internet-based 3D digital stereoscopic film productions. Viewing the movie in its proper 3D required acquisition of anaglyph glasses, or for the viewer to go to a designated music store where viewing stations were set-up upon release of the single. Sure to prove a landmark short once 3D has become a common and familiar format both in movie theaters and in the home, "Wanderlust" signals yet another breakthrough filmmaking experiment and perhaps the perfect amalgamation of modern technology and natural "analog" imagery.
For those interested, I'm going to post links to all the videos I referenced here, because I think they're all worth exploring to really identify this concept I've addressed.
Itchy and Scratchy (from The Simpsons Movie) Directed by David Silverman, United States, 2007, running time 2:24 20th Century Fox
This short comes at the beginning of the highly anticipated Simpsons Movie. The Simpsons television show had been around for many years before this and though there were previous talks about making a movie, they never panned out, until this. With a cult following surrounding the television show, there were a lot of expectations seeing these characters on the big screen for the first time. Ironically the first images we see are not the Simpsons themselves. Instead the movie opens with an Itchy and Scratchy short film.
For an epic movie release, the filmmakers decided to open with an epic feat: a moon landing. Dramatic music paired with dramatic visuals sucks the audience in right away. Just as Itchy and Scratchy are about to claim the moon in peace, Itchy (the mouse) uses the flag to stab Scratchy (the cat) in the chest repeatedly before hitting and breaking his astronaut helmet causing his eye to bulge and seemingly die. Itchy returns to Earth and is framed as a hero. He “did everything he could to save cat” and eventually runs for President with Hillary Clinton and wins. While in office he looks up at the moon and panics. He sees the cat, who is still alive, hold up a sign that reads “I’m telling.” After a bit of Nixon-esqe worrying, pacing, and thinking he has an idea. He moves painting to reveal the nuclear missile control board, sets it to “accidental launch”, and presses the button that sends countless nukes towards the moon. The cat panics and when he screams all of the missiles except one enter his body making him bigger than the moon itself. Then the last war head stops in front of him, and opens its front to let a small boot kick him causing a huge nuclear explosion. As the spectacle of the short sets in we hear Homer booing the short and he address the fictitious movie theater saying, “I can’t believe you paying to something you get on TV for free, everyone here is a giant sucker,” and then he looks directly into the camera, “especially you.” Then the familiar Simpsons title sequence begins.
This is a welcome treat for Simpsons fans and serves as a great opening for the film. It is very cinematic and sets up an epic frame that is immediately destroyed which lets the audience know that it will be the same old Simpsons. Also, I look at this a masterful pivot point into a movie that has so much expectations and fan fare. I think it would be impossible to start the movie with the title sequence like the television show. This separates it as a movie event, and acts as a sort of ice breaker for the audience. This serves as an interesting parallel when held up to Warner Brothers’ playing of Looney Tunes before features in the past. Although it’s not exactly the same, because Itchy and Scratchy are in the show and the short isn’t held up as its own entity, it works in a similar vein. It is a source of small non-linear laughs that engage the audience.
The humor is classic. Think of it as Tom and Jerry on steroids. It is basically the escalation from one physical gag to another. It starts with an unprovoked physical attack and ends in blowing up the moon with nuclear weapons. Of course, being the Simpsons, there are pop-culture references that make us laugh. When Itchy runs for office he runs with Hillary Clinton, which is a quick, simple, and contemporary bit of humor. They then hold is in suspense before the ultimate gag, the explosion. Also, during the landing, the juxtaposition of the calmness and epic nature associated with going to the moon and the unprovoked and over the top physical violence provides a great source of laughs. Overall, this short is entertaining in and of itself, but it also serves the greater good of the feature in which it resides.
Battle of the Album Covers wasn't intended to be an online success. It was a commissioned piece of work for the annual charity event in New York City called "Battle of the Ad Bands." Ugly Pictures co-founder Rohitash Rao had created a two and a half minute film the year before, where it featured people fighting in an alleyway with different instruments. For the 2006 show, Rohitash Rao wanted to go a different route. He worked with designer/artist ManvsMagnet (Matt Smithson) to create a film not with figurines, but with the album covers themselves.
The two minute film has a simple plot: the album covers fight against each other, and there's multiple fights to boot. Dead Kennedy's logo versus Van Halen's logo. AC/DC's cannon shooting down Def Leppard's building. Rick James shooting down Billy Joel. Ozzy Osbourne's Bark at the Moon biting the heads off of people. It's hilarious and wacky, styled in the way of Monty Python's images ala Holy Grail fame... meeting Celebrity Deathmatch.
“The reaction was so amazing — nobody could hear the sound because people were cheering so loud,” says Ugly Pictures’s co-founder Rohitash Rao in a interview with Boston newspaper The Phoenix. “Minutes after the screening was over, people demanded a copy. The next day, we tried to put it on YouTube and somebody had already put it on there.”
Ugly Pictures, ManvsMagnet and Rohitash Rao had no issues with their film being shown online before they did. Because of this, in 2006, the video became an online hit. Thousands of plays occurred and it was a top watched video on YouTube and the internet. It's still a viral favorite with many people, particularly in the teen and college age groups.
It's not very surprising that the video was already online before the creators themselves put it up. In this day and age, when a film is shown to the public and a high interest grows because of it, the video will be online within a couple of hours. But in the case of "Battle of the Album Covers," this happened before the creator's consent. It happened without the creators knowing this was already up.
In the film industry right now, there is a hot debate still brewing about the issue of copyright laws and the internet. People torrent films in the theaters right now, in order to avoid spending money. Industry folk blame illegal downloading to the lack of ticket sales and revenue occurring in the business right now. It's understandable how that applies to features, as millions of dollars are spent on some high-production quality movies. But does that philosophy apply to shorts?
Filmmakers have the right to put them on YouTube themselves. YouTube even has their own Screening Room for those who wish to watch high quality films made by reputable directors. But are filmmakers losing money because of online marketing? They are getting their name out, yes, as well as their film, but they are not receiving any kind of pension in return for their hardwork. Online fame leads to exposure, but no instant gratitude in cold hard cash.
So are these short film makers gaining any money to begin with? Does the nature of the short film industry bank on artistic license more than money making? Do the issues of copyright law and control apply to the short film industry? Is it because the shorts are so small in time, there is no need to be riled up about the lack of consent of showing a short?
As a filmmaker, I feel like those who make shorts should not only receive recognition for their hard work, but some sort of compensation in return for the hard work they do. In regards to "Battle of the Album Covers," I can see why Ugly Pictures had no issues with this short -- they were commissioned from the start to make this. I wonder what other directors would say about this issue, and if artistic consent does apply to shorts as it does to features.
Also, if you are wondering what the running order of album covers were in this short, here's the list.
Directed by Jan Svankmajer TRT: 6:00 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5wHMgTPF-s Source: YouTube
Winner of the Australian-Asia Literary Award, Svankmayer's Alice is a haunting, surrealist tale of a little girl who loses herself in a fantastic daydream. The short is obviously a creative spin-off of the Alice in Wonderland tale except Svankmajer sets out to have fun with it by playing with stop-motion animation.
The Czech filmmaker has an international reputation for his stop-motion animation shorts, which include among others Jabberwocky, The Male Game, and Down to the Cellar. A common thread through all of these films which is signature for Svankmayer is using stop-motion to create a visceral, unnerving feel for any type of cinematic enviornment.
In Alice viewers may find it shocking at first to see a stuffed rabbit come to life and break free from its model cage. As this is happening, we directly connect with the little girl, Alice, who is frightened and yet interested to see what the rabbit will do next. The story itself of course requires you to suspend disbelief and allow yourelf to become absorbed in the world and imagination of this girl.
One of Svankmajer's most succcessful techniques at achieving this is through the sound design. In a certain sense, the sound design is ironic in nature because it doesn't rely on music or artificial sound. Instead it attempts to be faithful to what's happening on the screen by maintaining a diegetic sound design. The film starts off with Alice throwing rocks into a cup of coffee with the sound of the splash being the only noise in the room. This places us inside the basement with Alice and means we will be hearing and seeing exactly what she is through a subjective lens. We emotionally connect with this girl like we would with Ofelia from Pan's Labyrinth for instance.
The layering of the sound is also consistent with the intended surrealistic goal of the film. Each action of either the rabbit or the character is represented by a sound. The sound drives the narrative in this sense. For example, as the rabbit begins putting on clothes we hear the sound of his mechanical arms clanking and even the subtle friction sound of the clothes rubbing up against its fur.
In Svankmajer's The Male Game we are immersed into a world which the most important thing in the world happens to be what also is on television: a soccer match. With Alice, Svankmayer intends to achieve a similar atmosphere of an enclosed environment by cutting us off from the rest of the world. Whether or not you like Alice, there's no denying the power of its relentless concept of imagination through the imagination of one girl.
Fight to the Finish (2007) Directors: Steve Erdman, Zac Kind, and Daniel Wolfberg Czech Republic, 9 minutes
My Wednesday class is Fiction Writing. When I read a short story by one of my classmates that does more "telling" than "showing," I feel like I want to shoot myself by the end of the second page. To put it simply, explicit and ham-handed exposition is boring and trite; subtext is beautiful.
Fight to the Finish is all about the subtext. Virtually all of Jan's lines are part of his attempt to remember and celebrate his glory years. He was a boxer, a husband, and an independent human being. He never says any of that explicitly. It comes out naturally in the mise-en-scene, in Jan's mannerisms and eccentricities, and in his monologue. Try it yourself: Start ticking off a few things you know about Jan before he states it, if at all.
He is a former boxer. He currently lives in an assisted-living facility (or something like an asylum). He is no longer independent. He is a local. He has lost someone precious and is having trouble letting go. He has a pretty darn good memory of that someone. He has no friends.
Just as in short stories, the amount of "telling" in a movie can be an effective bellwether of how enjoyable the movie is. With some exceptions, as verbal exposition decreases, the movie's quality increases. Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino are two notables who arguably live outside this rule. I would contend that Tarantino is as good as anyone at showing exposition through on-screen action. His dialogue is highly stylized, less about exposition and more about character development. Kevin Smith is closer to the true exception, but his exposition comes out in naturally-delivered dialogue.
The exposition in Fight to the Finish comes out as he walks in large, empty spaces, a clear indication that he is lonely in the world (and logically consistent with his advanced age and residence in an assisted-living facility). It comes out as he reminisces about the good times he had with his late significant other. I'll also point out that the story never stops cold. That would be an inevitable symptom of a failure in natural exposition. The audience begins to zone out as the filmmaker tries to explain something direct to our ears. Film is a visual medium. The audience wants to see the story unfold naturally and contemplate it in context. That can't happen when you've stopped the story cold.
Fight to the Finish never fails that test. It is quiet reflection on film. It forces the audience to understand the subtext.
“Candy and Brandy” documents a couple’s breakup.However, the man and woman turn into children when they have their argument.The very adult nature of the fight is juxtaposed with these innocent looking children.The result is somewhat interesting.
When I watched this short for the first time, I felt the concept was somewhat tired.It is an interesting idea to put children in adult roles.I think it points out the somewhat ridiculous nature of seriousness that we so easily fall into in out adult lives.It reminded me of a short I saw a few years ago where children played the roles of a couple getting married.That however was a comedy.
This role reversal I feel may only work in the short format.The irony may not work in a feature film.While these children are actually very convincing actors, I as a viewer cannot suspend my disbelief.I am constantly analyzing what is happening on the screen to figure out the intent of the piece.The short does not take me into a world, or suspend my disbelief for a period of time; rather I have to work with the piece to draw meaning.
The first half of the short has no dialogue.We are shown a man and a woman, separately, getting ready for a date.The man is getting dressed and the woman, already ready, is reading a magazine.It isn’t until the two then children come together that we get any dialogue.This adds a somewhat universal aspect to the piece.The Spanish is introduced when the couple begins to argue.At this point, even without the subtitles or any knowledge of the language, you could understand what was going on.
I think the way the Spanish language is dealt with in this short says a bit about the intended audience.The English subtitles are in the film itself; they were not added afterwards.Also, the title, “Candy and Brandy,” only rhymes in English.When I looked up the film, there is an alternate title, “Sugus y Brandy.” However, the title that appears in the film itself is “Candy and Brandy.” Besides the fact that it rhymes, I have to wonder if this film is meant for an English-speaking audience primarily.If that is the case, what does that say about foreign language films being created specifically for viewing outside of the nation?
Prarambha (2007) Directed by Santosh Sivan Written by Rajesh Devraj 13 minutes, 50 seconds Language: Hindi Part of the AIDS Jaago (AIDS Awake) Series
Initially, I was set to find what I think is the impossible: a Bollywood short film. Instead, I came across these series of short films that acclaimed Indian directors worked together on. Mira Nair, Farhan Ahtar, Vishal Bhardwaj, and Santosh Sivan all made short films in order to make people aware of AIDS and HIV.
The film is straightforward and simple in its approach. Famous Indian dancer and choreographer Prabhu Deva leads as a truck driver who harbors an unknown stow-away in his cargo: a young child named Kittu who is in search of his mother. When they arrive in Mysore, they discover she is in the hospital in her final stages of AIDS. Kittu then reveals he cannot go back to school, because he has contracted HIV like his mother and father, and the school doesn't want him to return. The driver sets forth in making the school take Kittu back, and in the end, Kittu returns and is no longer shunned.
The common thread I heard with people who do not like foreign films is this: I don't like reading while I am watching. I personally don't understand why it's so difficult to read what is being said while watching something, but I can see how people who don't like text on their screen all the time are annoyed by subtitles.
So it benefits that this short film has a simple story to tell. With a short film and a straightforward plot, the need to make people ware of AIDS is done affective and comes across the screen well. This is because with a simple plotline like this, there really isn't much need to focus on the dialogue. The sentences are short, not dramatic, and not long. It's easier to follow along.
What also benefits is that the film is short. I think those who are not a fan of foreign feature lengths will like foreign short films better, because there isn't a lot of time in the film. It's short, to the point, and gets a plot told in a short amount of time, between a minute to fifteen minutes.
The only thing I find sad about the short film is that I feel like the plot is cliche and overdone. A boy going for his mother and finds out that she has AIDS -- and then we discover he himself is HIV positive -- hits the melodramatic cheese factor really high. It's still a cute short film, and it's effective demonstrating AIDS awareness is essential. However it's still predictable in its plotline.
