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It’s well accepted that the bystander effect could leave you high and dry needing help, surrounded by a sea of able people, all unwilling to step forward — but does that mean on the flip side there’s such a thing as ‘sole witness over-exuberance’? If so, the opening moments of Jordan Chesney’s compelling short Jet — in which a man who’s lost all hope finds himself cast as the only lifeline for a snatched girl — may well be the text-book case. Find out how far he’s willing to go to not let her down after the jump: More »
Earlier this year whilst discussing Lomography’s announcement for LomoChrome Purple – which was inspired by the discontinued Aerochrome infrared stock — we touched on the work of photographer Richard Mosse and his striking use of the original Kodak stock in his images from the war ravaged Eastern Congo. Mosse’s work in the region has continued, culminating in The Enclave, a 39 minute, Arriflex-shot 16mm infrared shot documentary / multi-media installation. Follow the jump to watch an interview with Mosse about the project where he discusses the subjective judgements about the nature of truth in photography his ‘pink’ images have prompted. More »
All too often the films that make the biggest splashes are those that race from one showy kinetic scene to the next, barely allowing a pause for breath before the final credits roll. So every once in a while its refreshing to find a film that takes a gentle stroll as its tempo, as Frederic Kokott’s short animation Mirage does as it portrays a city in picture and sound. Ease into it after the jump: More »
What if someone grabbed a copy of your favourite road movie and edited out the character development so all that remained were those scenic out-of-the-window cutaways — and then floored it so the world zipped by? That would be a very close approximation to the experience you get watching the Teehan+Lax Labs project short Google Street View Hyperlapse, which was recently featured on Vimeo Video School. Call shotgun and buckle your seatbelt for the stop motion ride of your life after the jump. More »
Back in July, UK horror anthology project Blood Cuts reminded us that bedtime stories sometimes contain much more terror than comfort with fifth entry in the series, gothic fairytale Suckablood. More frights, blood and gore have followed since, bringing us now to the eighth chilling instalment, Don’t Move. We get our fright on and talk to Series Producer Ben Franklin about the challenges of upping the Blood Cuts ante with each release after the jump. Join us, if you dare… More »
When not busy transitioning people from boxed software to their subscription option, Adobe occasionally takes time out to partner with talented users to bring projects created with their tools to fruition. In that spirit, the company reached out to Barcelona’s collaborative direction, live action, and animation project Dvein, to create an impressive liquid motion art piece called Magma for the launch of the Creative Cloud. Take a look after the jump: More »
I’ve always thought that being a Guinness World Record holder has to be a stressful gig. Firstly, there’s all that time you have to spend prepping for whatever record-breaking feat it is you’ve set your heart on being the best in the world at, but let’s face it, that’s the easy part. Surely the time spent looking over your shoulder for those destined to snatch your glory from under you is much harder. It could be months, it could be years, but in the case of Sumo Science — who held the record for the ‘smallest stop-motion animation character in a film’ with Dot — it was around 974 days before the smart arses over at IBM definitively crushed their record by releasing A Boy and His Atom; a stop motion short created with 5,000 carbon monoxide molecules. Step into the atomic world after the jump: More »
It’s all well and good setting out to create a ‘proof-of-plugin’ short / commercial when you have flashy effects or color grade looks to show off, but if the product is more concerned with efficient workflow, then introducing an impressive invasion scene or futuristic weapon probably isn’t going to cut it. So how did Red Giant choose to showcase their offload, prep, and delivery solution BulletProof through the medium of film? Why, by creating Spy vs Guy, a live action Road Runner vs Wile E. Coyotesque film, steeped in cold war era skullduggery of course. Check out the hunt below. More »
Take a poem written by Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, combine it with transfixing stratastencil animation, throw in a strong piano score from Conrado Kempers and Pedro Carneiro, and have Brazilian design and motion graphics studio 18bis blend it all together. If you’re lucky you’ll end up with The Me Bird; a transfixing, textured dance film, realized through a mix of digital and crafted techniques. Fall into it after the jump: More »
If you like your music videos light of tone and populated by dancing girls gyrating through candy coloured tones, then you’ll probably want to skip Ross Anderson’s extreme make over promo for SBTRKT’s Trials of the Past. In fact, even if you do prefer films of a darker tone, I’d say this one’s not for the faint of heart or something you want to pop on in the office and certainly not in the company of anyone you wouldn’t take into an R-rated movie. If you’re feeling brave, have a watch after the jump: More »
If you were taken by the film noir aesthetics and overall cinematic atmosphere of Playdead’s award winning computer game Limbo, then the cautionary tale Between Beasts from Swedish filmmaker Jesper Eriksson will feel like a welcome return to that monochrome world of danger and beauty. Get acquainted and watch the film after the jump: More »
Expanding Godard’s classic assertion to include; “A man, a girl, a monster costume, gun toting villagers, a tragic end,” Supinfocom alumni Fx Goby, Matthieu Landour and Clement Bolla unite forces for their ‘reverse B-movie’ about a night watchman whose prank turns tragic when he gets stuck in a monster costume. Ready to suspend your disbelief? Hit the jump to watch the film and learn about the filmmakers’ inspirations, process, and regrets: More »
A few days ago we pondered what the effect of mobile video sharing app Vine enabling website embedding may have on filmmakers, but with mobile app Echograph seeing itself recently acquired by the filmmakers’ video site of choice Vimeo, perhaps we should be looking at the cinemagraph landscape as one of the new creative arenas filmmakers will choose to explore. Ian and Cooper’s Back to Me music video for Joel Compass may well be the bellwether which kicks off that creative flood: More »
Tasked with the creation of a music video for the Joey Ramone track New York City, director Greg Jardin decided to get literal in his interpretation of the song and hit the NY streets with his crew, some famous faces and its residents for a pixilated, lip-synced tour of some of the most recognizable spots in the world-famous city. See how good your landmark and cameo spotting skills are after the jump. More »
If you’re heavily into music you’ll undoubtably be aware that certain geographical areas tend to become associated with particular music scenes. For myself here in the UK, I could quickly point to Manchester as the birth place of the aptly named ‘Madchester’ scene comprising bands such as The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, and The Charlatans, and the beautifully idealistic Factory Records, closely followed by rave culture which sprang up around the legendary Hacienda nightclub. Recently Nokia Music in partnership with the Sundance Channel raided Somesuch & Co’s director roster (Emily Kai Bock – Spit Gold Under An Empire, Tyrone Lebon – Atlanta Dream$ & SFV ACID, Bob Harlow – Lords of Detroit & Abteen Bagheri – Electric Noise & That B.E.A.T) for New American Noise; a six-part series of documentaries exposing the underground music scene in six US cities. More »
If you’re a regular reader you’ll be aware that work featured on Short of the Week sometimes makes its way to our pages. In fact, if you spend anytime at all watching shorts online, it’s highly likely that SotW co-founder & Vimeo staff curator Jason Sondhi was (in)directly responsible for some of that work making its way to you. As filmmakers looking to find an audience for your work, I’m sure there are several questions you’d love to put to Jason, both in his curatorial role and as a producer who launched The Thomas Beale Cipher to 170K online views (now over 500K). Well, during a recent stop in Québec at the REGARD festival, Jason sat down for a 25 minute chat about his work at SotW and Vimeo: More »
Have you ever found yourself in a foreign country, jet lagged but wide awake. You turn the TV on, flick through the channels, and happen upon a film that, while strangely compelling, you just can’t make head nor tail of? Perhaps it’s your exhausted brain or something’s getting lost in translation, but either way, you’re not sure you’re getting the whole story, yet feel too invested to bail out. That’s how you may well feel watching Beyond Mountains, More Mountains, an Italian road movie initiated by the hunt for a lost boot from directorial team CANADA, created for fashion label 55DSL. More »
It’s one thing knowing that directors and actors can combine their talents (along with a whole army of folks working away behind the scenes) to have us suspend our disbelief and buy into their presentation of a character experiencing a particular situation. Succumbing to a well-directed scene isn’t that great of a leap from being sucked into a well delivered story told round a camp fire, after all. For those of us who aren’t animators by trade, especially the stop motion variety, there’s something of a black box mystery when it comes to the art of turning inanimate objects into living, breathing characters we can route for. That’s why it’s always a fascinating treat to get a peak inside the inner workings of a top animation studio such as Laika, who are responsible for compelling animated stories such as Henry Selick’s Coriline or more recently, Sam Fell and Chris Butler’s dark adventure, ParaNorman – for which Grow Film created a series of behind the scenes videos. More »
Fairly or not, when it comes to TV series watching I’m apt to come to a decision fairly quickly as to whether or not a show’s going to be a worthwhile investment of my time over the coming weeks. Whilst concepts, show runners and featured actors all play a part in that decision, often when coming to a show cold a lot hinges on those all-important moments of introduction which happen during the title sequence. With that criteria in mind, see if you, like me, have high hopes for Michael Hirst’s (The Tudors, Elizabeth) new show Vikings for the History channel which premiered a few days ago: More »
I’m as guilty as anyone of falling under the spell of the technically complex or epic-in-scale music video, perhaps sometimes at the expense of those that take a more straightforward approach in their filmmaking techniques. That being said, every once in a while a video comes along with such a beautifully un-fussy yet effective concept that you can’t help but applaud the clarity of its construction. The Cauboyz video for Husbands’ track Dream definitely fits that bill: More »
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