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.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Battle of the Album Covers
Director: Ugly Pictures, Rohitash Rao
2:34
When I think of the word quintessential, pertaining to our course, I think of the ultimate video to describe exactly what we were trying to find as "What is a short?" After looking through dozens of shorts on the blog I found The Battle of the Album Covers, which to me falls in the gray area of YouTube footage and a short film.
Roa made a really creative film in this by taking the covers of famous albums and pitting them in a Battle Royale, a fight to the death. Where Weezer gets their heads bit off by the flesh-hungry, deranged cover of Ozzy Osbourne. And the Beatles Abbey Road cover is actually them running away from the violence. Very creative, but a perfect example of a Internet phenom.
According to Tricalee, the Internet already had seen this film long before the intended release date. Luckily Roa intended to put the film online after it's initial screening, but someone already beat him to it. This is exactly the fate of many films, short and feature length, today. For many of these films this is problematic, for others such as this one they have a great deal of success and reap the benefit of the Internet.
I don't want to take anything away from Roa by saying his film falls in the gray area, it is a film, but in my opinion it's one step below an actual short film and a few steps above all of the junk on youtube and the Internet in general. Now you may say "Who are you to judge this person's work and all the others who put stuff on the web?" Simple, the reason why it's put on the Internet is for the public to view it then to judge it accordingly. And believe it or I am this viewing public. The same reason anyone can read this blog, comment and tear me apart.
I am veering away from my point, this video fell to the inevitable fate of many many films, the Internet. Someone can find almost any film on the Internet if they look hard enough and many films can either collapse or strive due to the Internet.
Just a correction to your blog post: when the short was premiered at the Battle of the Ad Bands show, the Internet hadn't seen it before. What DID happen was that when Rao and Ugly Pictures were going to put the short online, they discovered it was already there.
ReplyDeleteIt's difficult for me to accept your stance about Internet phenomena and this short. Because it's on the Internet, it's not exactly a short... but it's better than most of the things on YouTube? I don't think online distribution plays a key factor at all into the integrity of this being a short or not. Distribution in general does have a strong role in getting short films to the public, but just because it's online distribution doesn't mean the short lessens in integrity.
Huw do some research before you write about other people's work...but this video is bizarre besides that.
ReplyDeleteI don't really see this as a quintessential short film. Maybe I don't understand the concept of short films, but it feels like there's no story line at all in this.
ReplyDeleteI actually watched this piece multiple times and the more I watched it, the more I appreciated the creativity that went into it. It's interesting to think about how many album covers you need to know about to make this. Very creative.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite is the Ozzy Osbourne crazy wolf like thing. It kind nails him on the head.
ReplyDeleteInteresting read thanks for sharing
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