Frank DanCoolo: Paranormal Drug Dealer Short Film Review

I honestly didn't care much for this film. I can appreciate that it is a fairly well executed powerhouse whirlwind of special effects and compositing, but I just couldn't get into the story or the characters at all. I found the lead actress far too abrasive and I'm no really a fan of the over-the-top cartoon style that was used in this film.

The special effects themselves were impressive at times and not so great at others. Virtually every shot in the film is a mashup of various composited elements. The dialogue and action jumps around like an anime or grindhouse kung-fu film. It seems to me that the filmmakers just tried to cram every cool thing they could think of into a film and I don't think it worked out.

The Third and The Seventh Short Film Review

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

I'm a big fan of both architecture and quality artistic CGI  so this film was a real treat for me. The Third and the Seventh is a breathtakingly rendered film with a haunting atmosphere; presented with an attention to aesthetics that gives the piece an amazing professional polish.

The film features an almost surreal succession of shots of incredibly realistic CGI architecture and objects. The visuals seem to be influenced  by photography and composition theories. Many of the shots seem to hang suspended like a painting or a photograph on the wall, beautiful works of art even standing alone from the rest of the film.

The animators made expert use of the relatively new technology that allows simulation of depth of field within a CGI environment. Rack focuses over very natural looking organic surfaces seemed very natural to me and not at all like the stiff and rigid artificial camera work usually found in animation of a lesser caliber.

The CGI in this film is so realistic that some apparently doubted that it was even animation at all. The filmmakers have released a "Behind the Wireframe" film to lay any doubts to rest and you can watch it below.



Compositing Breakdown (T&S) from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

Please Say Something Short Film Review

http://www.shortoftheweek.com/2010/02/21/please-say-something/

This film came across as a sad, noisy jumble of emotions, animation, and old video games. I'm not a big fan of all the "retro nostalgia" that's so popular right now, to be perfectly honest.

Please Say Something seems to be the story of a cat and mouse who live together as a couple and have a terrible relationship. They can't seem to get on the same page and fight over everything. The film is presented in a non-linear fashion and often jumps around, seeming to present either what is happening, what could have happened, or what a character wants to happen. There are seemingly random test pattern screens that pop up as the film jumps from one scene to the next.

I didn't care for this film. There was just too much abstract imagery juxtaposed with random editing and weird-just-for-the-sake-of-it embellishments. I do feel there was some central emotions at play and some strong themes throughout, but I feel the viewer is distracted from that by the overwrought execution of the film.

D-I-M, Deus in Machina Short Film Review

http://www.shortoftheweek.com/2010/03/07/d-i-m-deus-in-machina/

This film, while very impressive and sporting top notch (for the most part) production values, seemed really uneven to me. There are sequences that come off as fluid and professional, and others that were pretty rough around the edges (and the middle, too).

This is a film of a dystopian future where our lives are controlled by a sort of social credit points system. The protagonist isn't given much, if any, of a backstory. He is a young man who is generally up to no good throughout the bulk of the film. No reason is ever given for his behavior and it makes him a difficult character with which to empathize. This main character is on a mission to break into the office that controls the social credits system and, presumably, restore his social standing by manipulating the computers...or something. What follows is an overly-stylized foray into a rather inventive sci-fi world. It is a fun story, but it seems to get bogged down too much by the extensive SFX sequences.

The plot is fairly interesting and this could have made for an exceptional film if the story had been told in a more restrained and understated manner. Too much time is spent following badly rendered CGI robots around for us to ever get a sense of reality or a human connection. It may have been the intent of the filmmakers to create a sense of unreality to hint at the disconnection and loneliness that has become the modern ennui of the Digital Age. However, I feel it is more likely that they just wanted to show off all of their shiny SFX and motion tracking and compositing capabilities.

It also seems to me that if they had taken the time that was spent cramming every conceivable CGI trick imaginable into one film and focused it on creating a handful of really spectacular effects sequences, then the film would have been better as a whole. Then, we wouldn't be treated to a digitally rendered city street scene that looks like spec animations from an early Xbox game.

Nuit Blanche Short Film Review

Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.

Wow! The phrase "visually stunning" usually makes me think of a movie packed with special effects and totally lacking in substance. When it comes time to print the packaging, such films usually get "visually stunning!" as a blurb since there's typically not much else to say about the movie.

The short film Nuit Blanche is visually stunning, and I mean that in the best way possible. From the opening shot of the smoky city to the the ultra-crisp high definition slow motion shots of the two main characters, everything is gripping and engaging on both a visual and emotional level.

Two people see each other and a surreal moment of suspended life begins as they drop everything and go after one another. In super-slow motion, the lady bursts straight through a glass window in a dazzling show of visual effects. The effects are rather heavy, but they are tasteful and really do a lot to carry and convey the emotions of the two characters. Everything drifts through the air, floating gracefully, poignantly punctuating the feeling of that moment when two people fall for one another.

While light on actual story, it seems to me that the emotion of the piece was the primary focus anyway. A moment in time, slowed down and suspended, infinitely stretching as most people wish it would. The film is visually incredible and it's obvious that a lot of attention went into crafting the powerful, striking visuals that are used to convey this simple, touching scene.

Old Fangs Short Film Review

Old Fangs from adrien merigeau on Vimeo.

This short animated film seems to be the story of the son of the Big Bag Wolf attempting to reconnect with his estranged father. The main character, here a young wolf, takes a couple of friends along on a trip to a house deep in the forest where his father lives. His friends express their concerns and ask him if he even knows where he's going as they venture deeper into the dark woods. The entire film is done in a rather dark and moody sort of way that underscores the bad relationship the character has with his father.

They arrive at the house and the young wolf has a very frightening and strained visit with the Big Bad Wolf. The father figure is represented as being huge and terrifying with grotesque features and a grumbling, hulking presence. He smokes constantly and the chair and floor beneath him creak under his weight. The young wolf leaves after a while and that's really about all that happens.

The film was heavy on tone and light on story and details. It felt like a mood piece, like an exercise in conveying as much atmosphere and emotion with a minimum of dialogue and exposition. If this was their goal, then the filmmakers have succeeded. This is a very dark and emotional story told in an interesting way.

Bottle Short Film Review

Bottle from Kirsten Lepore on Vimeo.

I'm a fan of stop animation and this film used the technique to great effect. A Sand Person and a Snow Person, living in two very different places, communicate by sending things from their environment in a bottle to drift across the sea to the other. They pass items back and forth, augmenting themselves with these items as they go. In the end, they attempt to reach one another so that they can be together and are both destroyed in the process.

This film was well made and the filmmaker did a great job of bringing a convincing life to their constructed characters. As with the short film Plastic Bag, they managed to craft a movie in which inanimate objects are anthropomorphized to the extent that the viewer is able to effectively read and understand what the characters are feeling and doing in each scene. On this level, I feel the filmmakers have succeeded. While watching, I felt like I understood what Sand Person and Snow Person were experiencing and feeling and I developed and attachment to them, hoping they would be together by the end. Unlike Plastic Bag, this film pulls it off without the use of dialogue, relying entirely on the character animations.

What I didn't like about this film was the overall sentiment that love is destructive and that everyone is doomed to be destroyed. I may be reading too much into it, but it seemed as if the filmmaker was attempting to convey that:

A: Two people who begin a relationship change one another, seen here as the objects being placed on the characters and becoming a part of them, humanizing them further.

and

B: That two people who begin a relationship will lose themselves completely in that relationship, effectively destroying themselves.

To me, the film seemed to be steeped a bit to heavily in the melancholy themes of "loves equals death" and "everything ultimately sucks" that seem to permeate the indie films scene these days. It looks great and the animations are well executed, however, I find the film lacking when taken as a whole.

Between Bears Short Film Review

Between Bears from Eran Hilleli on Vimeo.

OK so it's symbolic of man's attempt to rise up beyond his primitive nature and the inherent cyclical futility of his efforts? No, wait, I think it's about global warming. The bear at the beginning was hot so he shaved off his fur like Pedro in Napoleon Dynamite and the bear at the end is riding on the very last chunk of floating ice after the icecaps have melted. No?

Whatever the intended narrative of this film (assuming there even is one), it's sure to be secondary to graceful and strikingly original visual style and of this animated short. The oddly angular shapes and figures seem to drift around in a mostly bare and melancholy world where not much context is given. I especially enjoyed the simple parallax effect of the layers of trees panning as the butterflies drifted through the forest. It was haunting and very atmospheric.

The most human-like characters spend most of the running time of the movie trudging on and on across an ever changing landscape in chase of butterflies born from the shaved fur of the first bear. One is seen with a beard after the journey ends, suggesting that they wandered for a very long time. In the end, I was left with the same sort of somber feeling of having just seen something very serious and profound.

This was a beautiful and artfully executed short film and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Everything from the simple shapes of the onscreen elements to the subdued color pallet gives you a sense that this piece was very carefully crafted and the result is aesthetically pleasing and oddly touching at the same time. I'll be looking up more from this filmmaker.

Pivot Short Film Review

Pivot from Pivot on Vimeo.

I enjoyed this films so much that I watched it twice, back to back. This is a refreshingly stylish and original work of animation that has an intense, edge-of-your-seat tension and borderline surreal imagery to match. The angles are drastic and exaggerated and the camera seems to flow fluidly through the world and around the characters. This is the sort of innovative and visually interesting animation that I like to see!

The main character, a photographer, stumbles upon a murder and accidentally shoots photos of the crime as it happens. The murderer gives chase and a brisk action sequence takes them around town and ultimately to a showdown. They struggle and everything pivots; the hunted becomes the hunter and the photographer ends up chasing the murderer to an end that suggest that things have pivoted all the way around and have landed back where they started. This reversal is evident even in the choice of angles as the two characters first run left to right, one chasing the other. Then, after the tables have turned, they both run again, the other now chasing the first, from right to left. The two main characters are also reflected in one another's eyes both before and after the pivot in the plot.

All in all I found this to be a thoroughly engaging and exceedingly cool and well-made short film.

Plastic Bag Short Film Review

This was my second time seeing this film so I focused more on the visuals than the plot and gained a deeper appreciation of the totality of the piece. Aside from an evocative and emotional delivery of the environmental message (which I'm sure has been discussed to death already elsewhere); I'm intrigued by the way the director imbues the bag, basically a non-articulated puppet, with a real sort of breathing, moving life.

The bag drifts along gleefully (and sometimes sad and aimlessly) and the camera work follows. Movements become lighter and more fluid and the bag floats along, its handles sometimes flapping like wings. I find myself wondering how much of the bag's movement was staged specifically to reflect the script and how many lines were written after the fact to reflect a lucky gust of wind captured on camera that gave the bag a life of its own. I wonder if the bag was ad-libbing, as it were?

Aside from the voice of Werner Herzog, the director had to rely almost entirely on shot composition, lighting, and camera movement to convey the bag's thoughts, actions, and moods. There's something to be said for a filmmaker that gets a better performance out of an inanimate object than some directors can get out of a multi-million dollar major Hollywood star.