Memories are often all we have of past times and past loves, but what if we lost these memories, how would not remembering the there and then, affect us in the here and now.

Written and Directed by Briand, Apricot tells the story of a young couple on a date early in their relationship, they sit in a restaurant, reminiscing of first kisses and first loves over a fresh cup of coffee. However, as the date progresses it quickly becomes apparent that this trip down memory lane has an ulterior motive for one of the potential lovers.

For a film all about memories and what triggers them, Briand and his team have paid a close eye to details and created a film which evokes a dreamlike state for its viewers (almost as if the Director is encouraging the viewer to float off into their own memories whilst watching the his film). Beautifully shot by Cinematographer Adam Arkapaw, the dreamy visuals float across the screen, just as they would float across the memory banks of the mind. Every shot is composed and lit superbly, the date scene speckled with artificial light and framed so the couple seem the only people in the buzzing restaurant. The memory sequences opt for a more personal feel, bathed in sunlight with people and objects drifting in and out of focus (almost as if they are some of the best home movies you’ve ever seen). A sprawling, unobtrusive score from Basil Hogios, combines with a soundtrack of distant thunder and rumbling winds, helping to merge the worlds of reality and memory seamlessly together.

Dialogue also plays a huge part in the feel and the flow of Apricot and Briand has obviously taken great consideration into ensuring the pitch of the dialogue marries up with the other contributing elements of his short. With lines like “He could stare at the Sun longer than anyone I ever met” and “He always covered his collarbone” uttered throughout the film, the unrealistic, almost poetic dialogue also adds to the trancelike feel of Apricot.

There are some films made to provoke anger or disgust from its audience, some films made solely for laughs and some to evoke forgotten memories, Briand’s Apricot is definitely the latter. A film for the dreamers, A film for the romantics and in my opinion a film for film lovers.

This all to say that when we see Ben, in Luke Snellin’s BAFTA nominated short Mixtape, hand over his creation to the mother of the girl next door, he’s got a whole lot riding on Lily getting it or not. Snellin appears to have tapped directly into the mainline of nervousness and anticipation bubbling around his young protagonist’s gut, – expertly portrayed here by Bill Milner, who you may be more familiar with from his starring role in Son of Rambow or this year’s equally excellent Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll. The production design is also bang on, with subtle touches such as Ben’s copy of the now sadly defunct Melody Maker magazine or the Bowie poster, combining with the soundtrack to set the period without hitting you over the head with their ‘of then’ timeliness.

Shot in a single day, Mixtape was created for the Virgin Media Shorts competition, which it ultimately won ahead of 2,000+ competitors. Snelling describes the film as, “a kind of melting pot of all my influences both musically and as a director”, with the concept springing from, “all these little tapes I made for family and friends when I was young”.

It seems that the draw of depicting children’s lives on screen (his first short Patrick was about a bullied boy who learns to fly) remains strong, as aside from his commercial directorial duties at 2am Films, Snelling’s supposedly in development for a feature based on kids with special powers, due to be shot and completed by the end of this year. Personally, I’m hoping for a good New Mutants adaptation, but regardless, if he maintains his eye for detail I’m sure it’ll be worth a watch.

Let’s be honest. The story is good, but the visual art direction (or “aesthetic orchestration” as the film puts it) is outstanding—a perfect blend of new age and nostalgia. David puts the digital aesthetic on display in a very authentic way. His compositions reflect the three quarter view of old video games (not unlike A Volta), and at times even uses raw 3D wireframes to portray a characters inner thoughts. Please Say Something makes no attempt to hide it’s construction methods.

The animation is amazing. The pacing and movement of the characters is fast. Watching David play with perspective in referencing security cameras and time-lapse photography, I’m reminded of my first time seeing Aronofsky’s experimental camerawork in Requiem For a Dream. My only quip would be the sometimes overly-exaggerated camera movements when sweeping through rooms.

But it’s the full package that make this film special—the juxtaposition of many opposing things. It’s uniqueness comes from it’s disparity. Told any other way, the story would be ho-hum. The visuals, used for any other brand of story would be entertaining but shallow. It’s a film that has to be done the way it is and must never change—not unlike Cracker Jacks.

I must admit that I am infatuated with this short. I realize that my love is likely disproportionate and temporary, but that is little consolation. Please Say Something is a new favorite of mine.

Note*  — “This was one of the 10 excellent Sundance offerings this year. Check out the other 9 selections here“

This fast-paced, rambunctious musical centers on a parking attendant who dispenses free parking and free compliments—validation of a greater kind. It’s the kind of simple play on words that makes for a fun 5-min short, but here director, Kurt Kuenne, strings out into a broader story. We follow the attendant as his gift for sincerity grows to international proportions. At a visit to the DMV, he meets his true love—a beauty behind the camera with a curse of the frowns. His life mission now is to win her over with sincerity and bring a smile to her face. He fails at first, of course. But then he fails again. And again. Eventually falling so far that he loses his faith. Eventually though, a small favor he does wins over his true love, and he’s finally given his own validation. It’s predictable, but that doesn’t matter. In fact, it’s how the film MUST be. Validation is a film that itself validates the good nature of human beings.

Or so you might think. Validation is actually a film about action. It doesn’t ask us for faith in human nature but rather calls on us to create it by consciously looking for the good and dignity in everyday people.

Do I even need to point out that TJ Thyne does an amazing acting job in this role? You may know his work from the TV series Bones.

After winning recognition at a number of national festivals, Kurt posted Validation online last year. To further prove its broad appeal, it’s been screened for a number of spiritual organizations, leadership training programs, and corporate employees to boost morale.

Watch Kurt’s other shorts online: Slow

The concept of The Secret Adventures of the Projectionist, is solid, but the charm is in its execution. The particular looks of the films being homaged—Lang’s Metropolis, technicolor sword and sandal epics, and gritty, high contrast, film noir—are meticulously recreated, as are  some of the almost-forgotten special effect techniques of those periods. Max Sacker does not simply want to mime these filmic precedents for the sake of story, it is apparent that he has a deep reverence for them and the craft in which they were created.

The casting of Nikolai Kinski, son of the legendary Klaus, in the lead role, has not been enough to lift the film out of relative anonymity though; the film has played at just a smattering of film festivals and its online views are nothing to write home about. This lack of exposure could be because of the project’s origin—a submission to www.filmaka.com’s regular feature film competition, which likely disqualified the film from many festivals. Sadly festivals are still the primary promotional tool of the short film market, though the internet is rife with success stories. With luck this film may experience a similar story arc, and in the meantime the film has received exposure in Super 8 and 16mm film communities.

Either way, as internet viewers this comparative lack of success is our gain, as the filmmakers have now carpet bombed the internet with content. The film is hosted on numerous video sites accompanied by “making of” footage, as well as an alternate ending. Ironically though, running at a svelte 3:30, The Secret Adventures of the Projectionist is one of those few shorts that ends far too quickly and therefore would have been easy for elite festival programming directors to find space for.

Cost maybe another consideration as to why the film has not played at more prestigious venues. It does cost money to send shorts off to festivals, and The Secret Adventures of the Projectionist has the kind of backstory punctuated by thrift, that should by all rights make it legendary in the true indie community. With a total budget of 8000 euros, the film crew was able to shoot on 16mm by salvaging left over bits of stock and other odds and ends. The cameras were classic Soviet models found for a steal on ebay, and processing of the film was done in large part in a Lomo home tub. The whole process, from concept to final product, was pulled off in one month, in order to meet the deadline of the competition, in which the film ultimately finished as a runner-up. Many of the details surrounding production are detailed at Max Sacker’s personal web site, which makes for interesting reading if you end up as taken by the film as I am.

Short but remarkable, this short film definitely deserves your time, so go watch.

In Egmont Mayer’s animation, Red Rabbit, this is exactly the story the director chooses to tell. “The man lives alone in a small apartment. The little contact he had with other people has dropped to zero since the rabbit appeared. Every attempt to get the rabbit out of his apartment has failed and since he is not sure whether or not pets are allowed in the building, he does not let anybody enter his apartment”—(via egmontmayer.com)

Mayer’s student film is a beautifully paced, stylistic piece, where no dialogue is needed to convey the emotions of the main characters. Tensions and relationships are slowly and thoughtfully developed throughout the film and we seem to know exactly what the characters are thinking and feeling without anyone ever having to speak a word. Even though as a viewer you really feel the loneliness and isolation of the characters, there is still a certain warmth and touching poetry to this tale.

Rabbits seem to be constantly appearing in films and throughout film history have been used to symbolise many different things. There are many different theories as to what the giant rabbit in Harvey symbolizes, or what Frank the rabbit in Donnie Darko represents. I’m not quite sure what the giant rabbit in Mayer’s Red Rabbit symbolizes, but the one thing I am sure of, is that this is one of the best animations you’ll see all year.

For other Filmakademie work, check out Das Rad.

It’s a genius piece from the much lorded music promo and commercial director Chris Milk, that manages to play the sureality of the action completely straight so that not for a second did I fall out of the film to think, “Hey wait a minute???”. The scripted lines of rejection clichés could have been plucked complete from 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, yet are delivered by Aasha Davis with a sincerity that banishes the irony those phrases should conjure. The deadpan, measured reactions and matter-of-fact delivery of Jorma Taccone are the perfect conterpoint to the bizzare direction the film moves to and helps to anchor it in an askew reality I was more than happy to go with.

The heart of our rejected lover was brought to bloody, crooning life by Keith Sintay whose efforts were rewarded with a D&AD Yellow Pencil Award for Music Video Animation (2009). Milk was also awarded 2008 Music Video Director of the Year by the Music Video Production Association.

It’s been pointed out in the comments over at Antville that Milk’s film bears a resemblance to Adam Lieber’s video for the Charlie Alex March cover of In The End (2007) and Suthon Petchsuwan’s Follow Your Heart CareerBuilder ad spot (2008). Even if Milk was inspired by these pieces (he wasn’t: “This Gnarls video I’ve pitched to 3 or 4 bands over the years.” via Globecat) it’d still be safe to say that he put the concept to its most effective use.

There is always an air of sadness about puppets masquerading as humans. The team addresses this phenomena to a point when the young man’s hand falls off at an inopportune moment (there’s never a good moment!). The young would-be lovers gaze out their shop window set to see a real life couple embrace in the square after the man has proposed to the girl. This ignites an intention in the puppet man’s head. The film’s opportunity to communicate a sense of pathos in how dolls view bona fide humans is missed as this film avoids such grandiose claims. Instead, the film’s charm comes through its archetypical character traits: gentle foolery, the over-earnest suitor, and the occasionally coquettish girlfriend.

I have covered many student films on my Animation Blog, but this is my first from Malaysia. The 3D work is very competently handled—the characters brightly lit with clever points of view. What is interesting is the choice of France as a location. We are well used to French movies of charm from such animation establishments as Gobelins L’Ecole de L’Image or Valenciennes’s Supinfocom. Le Mannequin has something of that look, though it owes just as much to the inimitable Pixar style. It’s a genuinely stylish piece with a light touch however, and for those who like happy endings, don’t miss the action as the credits roll.

With as many directors as arms of one of its plucky stars, Oktapodi is the rightly lorded Gobelins L’Ecole de L’Image 2007 graduation film from Julien Bocabeille, François-Xavier Chanioux, Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchand, Quentin Marmier and Emud Mokhberi.

There’s certainly a lot to love about Oktapodi. For one the vibrantly designed, wide-eyed octopi lovers and expressive restaurant cook nemesis are fantastically realised. Also, this two minute tale doesn’t waste a single second of screen time or animation resource with anything that doesn’t push the story along and fully entertain whilst doing so. Within the first 20 seconds, the motivations and stakes of the coming pursuit are well and truly set, so we can settle down to enjoying the slapstick set pieces as they rapidly unfold.

In an interview with CG Society, co-director Emud Mokhberi said that the two minute running time was a limitation set by Gobelins to enable students to complete their work at a reasonably high quality, within the alloted production time. Once they had the story in place, the team however took that limitation and used it to build an increasingly frantic pace which composer Kenny Wood’s score beautifully brings to hectic life, especially as the film is completely dialogue free.

Amongst its many awards, Oktapodi went on the win both the Audience Prize & Best in Show at SIGGRAPH, along with the Canal+Family Award (Student Film) at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in 2008 and was also nominated for an Academy Award in 2009.

Check out Oktapodi.com for a detailed making of video.

Two adjectives let you know what to expect. Cute and sweet. It doesn’t start that way though. Jason is struggling with the stereotypical alienation of a young office man new to the big city. Work is boring, the loneliness is heart-breaking, and the false expectation of family and friends who think you’re living it up to the max is soul-crushing. But, through the window and into the office across the street, Jason spots and draws the attention of the girl who might change all that.

Signs is a classic boy meets girl in which the central conceit is not too contrived. You couldn’t make a feature based off it, but it is the perfect size for a short. If you read my reviews, you understand that I am a big fan of scripts and filmmakers that understand the limitations of the form and play to its strengths. Signs takes that to heart, with a spare script in which every piece has resonance. Many of the introductory moments that inform our impression of Jason as depressed, the photocopying at the office for instance, are inverted later on in a funny way to establish his renewed verve. Routine is presented at first in order to accentuate Jason’s dread of life, the mind-numbing banality of his existence, yet the pacing of the film and its editing, morph his morning routine into narrative development. The long-drawn out takes initially become progressively quicker to signify Jason’s energy and excitement, building to a fevered pace right before the moment he is let down at the end of act 2.

Nick Russel does a really laudable job as Jason, playing the role with the kind of earnest goofiness that has earned Hugh Grant millions of dollars. The role on both ends, the sad sack and the nervous  comedy are both very easy to overplay, but he does not.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see more of him in the future.

Signs is also in keeping with my interest in corporate sponsorship. The film was part of the Schweppes Online Film Festival, an ad campaign devised by Publicis Mojo which commisioned a handful of films. I found Signs by accident, I was was thinkng of doing a writeup on Magnifique which you can view at the above link. Magnifique is a well-done, but ultimately one-note comedy about a man with an amazing member.  It was pleasing to watch in a Wedding Crashers sort of way plus  it sported some nice mod fashion and design. If you’d like to check out more of the Schweppes films I’d recommend that one, and would say to stay away from Jet Black, a moody piece about a hit man, that is all misplaced affect, with no substance.

Hope you enjoy Signs, I’m going to go back to trying my best to find obscure films. We’ve been a little slow here at SotW of late, so look forward to a bunch of Short of the Moments soon to make up for it!

A director and illustrator by trade, CISMA spent four years as a senior motion designer at Brazilian studio Lobo, which has through the years become unquestionably known as an unofficial finishing school for some of the finest creatives we have in the wild today, such as Guilherme Marcondes and Marcelo Garcia.

Made for around $6,000 and shot on the Arri SrIII super 16 using Zeiss 1.3 prime lenses, Handmade may be CISMA’s first move into the live action space, but exhibits his mastery of colour to dictate tone throughout, alongside animation effects which take us into the mind of our lovelorn lead. I also totally love the dual concepts of the hugging sweaters which literally wrap our protagonists in a loving embrace, balanced against a drink of sadness and rejection brewed from choice words taken from a Dear John letter.

As a side note, if you fell in love with the paper clip looking font Relava that makes up Handmade’s title, CISMA has made it available to buy via his site http://www.cisma.com.br for your writing pleasure.

It has been extremely popular, but I sat on posting it because something about the film didn’t sit with me right. It’s for sure a superior film, I just think I loved everything about it except the parts that I assume everyone loves. ^_^

Good thing I waited I suppose, because MarBelle scored an interview with, and a real cool vfx vid from Mr. Edgerton for his own site, which adds a little bit of illumination to a key sequence—forcefully overcoming any reservations on my part to recommend.

Check it out at:  Director’s Notes

Thomas is our main character, a magician…of sorts. He is 25, lives at home, and maybe because of that he has the bratty petulance of a Napolean Dynamite. He also has illusions of grandeur that remind one of another famous comedic role, Will Arnett’s magician character G.O.B. in Arrested Development. Sadly his skills in magic seem to hew closely to G.O.B’s as well, but, the appearance of a pretty new neighbor provides the impetus to perhaps pull Thomas out of his rut

Due to the self-imposed parameters of this site, I rarely watch films over 12 minutes long, so it feels somewhat strange for me to call Instead of Abracadabra snappy, but it is a truly apt description. Scenes zip along with fierce economy, meaning that you are getting a feature’s worth of scenes and development compacted into that running time, which I find great. One of my great laments concerning modern comedy is the prevalence of exaggerated setups leading only to a mediocre laugh. The quality of the script for this film and the briskness of it’s timing, eliminated that concern for me.

The script frankly is just well-crafted. The scenes and their order make logical sense, nothing is rushed, and all the familiar structural components of the Hollywood style are nailed. Furthermore, elements and jokes established early in the film are satisfactorily tied into the conclusion. The buffoonery of Thomas is the main comedic engine, but strong writing and performances from the supporting characters impart plenty of quick hit laughs during expository moments. What i especially liked was, despite recognizing the formula, I still could be surprised. I’ll return to the comparison’s made above. The film establishes Thomas early on as an object of ridicule, similar to G.O.B. with his misguided flamboyance and rather pathetic skills, and throughout the film you wonder if that is the extent of his character and the purpose of the film—to be the actor of a farce—or whether he is more like Napolean; someone to laugh at surely, but also to empathize with, and whom is ultimately capable of transcendence. Eklund treats this question ambiguously throughout the film, which generates legitimate suspense in the climactic scene.

These strong components, paired with plus marks in acting and cinematography, easily overcome reservations regarding the film’s length. Since we are not originating these film choices like we do on our normal weekly basis, I feel no pressure to provide a positive review, (in fact I secretly am hoping for a bad film to pop up so that I can slam it, since I never get to do that) but (un)fortunately Instead of Abracadabra is superior entertainment. Grab it now, in case Sundance continues its habit of the last couple of years and make the film unavailable after today.

A Sundance 10/10 film: currently offline

That is the setup for ¡Perfecto!, a cute and quirky micro-budget film, submitted to YouTube and Sundance’s recently concluded Project:Direct competition—a viewer-submitted online comp that actually has some pedigree as far as its sponsors go, and a pretty neat prize for a payout, (VIP treatment at Sundance!), ensuring a strong field for once.

The film opens with the female lead, Vaden, primping herself in a wedding gown. Her Mom teases her by saying “Nice dress for a part-time waitress”, a throw away line that takes on new meaning later in the film. Hernan, the groom, addresses his soon to be in-laws in the living room, drawing nothing but blank stares from these country folk, for he is adressing them entirely in Spanish. An eldery man remarks in a straight deadpan that the police are outside the house.

So they are an odd couple. But how did this union come to be?

The film goes through a flashback to their meeting and romance, and this is the film’s strongest part. Vaden’s cheerful stream-of-conscious babbling is a perfect complement to the film itself which keeps humming along in a state of wonderful bemusement, propelled by brisk editing and a cheerful sountrack.

It is this sequence as well that we see the strongest technical components of the film. The scene in the restaurant is simply executed well. The set is well lit and interesting looking. The use of a lens adpater is present throughout the film, but has its most striking effect in this scene, and the editing during the shot reverse shot is spot on. During the courtship, the fact that the camera is handheld is noticeable, but mitigated by the brevity of the clips and the camera movement. Plus the use of foreground objects as wipes is a neat trick that fit the mood and brisk nature of scene to perfection.

A quick congratulations needs to given to Erin Fede as well, who wrote the screenplay and starred as Vaden. Her performance is immensely likable, and in short films, where there is little character development, the importance of instant likability cannot be overstated. The buoyent optimism of the character both in the script and on screen really allowed for the mood of the film to be achieved.

The film concludes with a twist of course, why else were the cops there? But by that time I was already sold on ¡Perfecto! Good mood, good acting, good execution leads to a good film. Congratulations on winning Project:Direct! Congratulations to Youtube for this, the second Project:Direct competition also. ¡Perfecto! at this point has received over 130,000 views, more than a film can hope to get at any festival except for maybe Tropfest. Still, this number fails to prove that narrative productions can as of yet compete for eyeballs on the level of popular viral vids which are YouTube’s bread and butter, but YouTube definitely sees the value in promoting this, so hopefully we can get there. If you have a fast connection I definitely encourage you to check the film out in YouTube’s new HD, by clicking the link right below the picture.

Another film this week which stretches the definition of SoTW. We prefer short films—preferably ones with narratives— but have been known in the past to showcase music videos and art films. Today though my otakudom is peeking through again and we’ve brought you a commercial from Japan.

Of course as you may have guessed, this is no ordinary commercial. Produced for a competition by the Kao company for its Asience line of shampoo, the beautiful, though unfortunately titled, Asience: Hairy Tale, sprung forth from the hallowed halls of Production I.G., the most reputable anime production company in the world, and features stunning work from some of the biggest names in the industry.

Directed by Kazuto Nakazawa, famous states-side for directing the animated segment of Kill Bill Part 1, Asience: Hairy Tale, is steeped in tradition. Blending traditional Japanese tapestry styles with traditional cel-animation techniques, Nakazawa creates a haunting and otherworldly setting for a 60 second story of love and tragedy.

Fitting the traditional tapestry style, the story follows a Heian-era princess and her samurai suitor. Captivated by the woman’s beauty, the samurai climbs her hair Rapunzel-style to tryst with the princess. Her angry father discovers the truth though and the next time the samurai attempts to scale the castle, she cuts her hair, sending the samurai down, and ultimately herself, in a hail of bloody maple leaves. Her epithet, written in blood, translates as “Hair is the heart of a woman,” an old Japanese adage. Quite a lot of development for 60 seconds!

This level of development is possible due to the remarkable nature of the compositions. Lushly executed as they are, more important is that there is a conciseness of concept to the images, each pregnant with meaning. The image of the princess reflected in the samurai’s eye for example. An extreme closeup of the eye is a standard shot in anime semiotics, but the reflection instantly establishes the connection and attraction between the two. Likewise the iconic image of cherry blossoms under the moonlight instantly conveys romance. Further shots, like the scowling, oni-like mask of the Father, say so much with so little. The importance of these relatively static images means that Asience could easily have been a comic, and yet the animation techniques deserve notice as well. The Production IG website provides a nice set of behind-the scenes interviews and production stills which detail the techniques involved. Most remarkable is the absence of computer assistance for the in-betweens. Animation that is meant to emulate painterly techniques is not new, but usually relies on CG to fill the complex brush-lines between keyframes, such as during shots of the samurai and the angry father. The Asience production team instead embarked on a painstaking process of tracing the original lines of the keyframes in order to each a similar effect in the inbetweens.

As art, I’m quite taken by Asience: Hairy Tale, but far as the short’s effectiveness as a commercial—that could be questioned. A bloody and tragic historical tale, is not usually most people’s idea of how to best market shampoo after all. Still, product awareness is a key element to advertising as well, and this commercial sure turned heads. It won awards at the London ad fest, and played just recently at Annecy, one of the worlds premiere animation festivals. Enjoy!!

The plot itself is somewhat weak, yet still engrossing I find. A brown street rat, living in the midst of gritty urban decay, stumbles into a pristine research lab. The lab’s white rats are all at the mercy of the central research computer responsible for managing the lab. It is actually very similar in look to the ship’s computer in Wall-E coincidentally enough. As an invader, the brown rat must grapple with the sinister central computer in order to get close to his object of affection, and they team up to try and win their freedom.

The most interesting aspect of the film is the decision to not anthropomorphize the rats, which creates a completely different feel for the film than might otherwise been attained. The rats look, move and gesticulate as rats do. The lack of words, or truly human emotions though, make selling the central love story of the film a bit problematic. To see rats behave genuinely like rats, only to occasionally exchange longing gazes, is a bit incongruent. The animation really helps to punctuate these emotions felt throughout the film though. Several close-ups and artfully posed shots, combined with truly superb lighting effects boldly exteriorize the interior drama.

The film is a product of a studio named Charlex Films based out of New York. According to their website, Charlex has a distinguished history in the advertising biz, and One Rat Short is the fruit of their experiments in longer-form CG, with the hope of leveraging this experiment into longer narrative work. The advertising background makes sense while watching the film, because the concept is so simple. 2 minutes could probably have been shed off the final runtime, but in a showcase piece, a certain level of extravagance is only to be expected.

And as a showpiece for what the studio can do, the film is truly excellent. As previous studios have shown, a killer short film can be a great calling card for getting both the experience and backing to tackle a more major project. Blue Sky Studio’s is the obvious parallel here. They won attention and fame as well as an Oscar in 1998 for their short film Bunny. Four years later Ice Age was a hit in theaters.

One Rat Short did not win an Oscar, but it is featured on Magnolia Pictures DVD of the 2006 Oscar Short Film Nominees as a bonus film. Consider supporting short film by buying the DVD.

Not only is free time a vague myth, but my blood pressure is breaking gauges and giving me the look of an over-ripe tomato. This isn’t the time to search across the Net for something new for Short of the Week. No, what I need is some comfort food, a film I know well, and that watching once again will give me a few minutes of relaxation. I need a movie that will make me laugh and won’t take up a lot of time. Oh, and I need ’60s-sounding surf music. I’m not sure why I need the last one, but let’s just go with the flow.

I first saw Teenage Bikini Vampire as a festival submission four years ago and I couldn’t help but giggle. It’s just one of those films. I’ve since seen it ten or twelve times, including on the semi-big-screens of otherwise dour film festivals where it always brings the audience to life.

Sadie is an average teenage girl, with the normal teen issues of growing up and finding herself, except she’s a vampire. Being sunlight-challenged is not doing anything good for her social life. She just wants to dance, go to the beach, and maybe spend some time with the cute surfer dude, but a suntan is not in the cards. Her younger siblings can play with severed limbs happily, but what’s a high school girl to do? It’s up to her loving, murdering parents to find an answer.

The film is structured around one conceptual joke (a good joke, but still just one), and that’s all it would be without the deft hand of writer/director Devi Snively who adds in a dream sequence from a different era and a tune that you’ll be singing next time you find yourself in a convertible on a sunny day. She turns what could have been an internet joke-video into something quite enduring, almost sweet, in an Addams Family kind of way.

The budget is low, and it shows, but it doesn’t harm the joke, which actually plays better with a stagey atmosphere. It’s easy to think of Teenage Bikini Vampire as a skit in the repertoire of a travelling comedy troop, and I could imagine a lengthened version being put on by garage theaters all over the country.

Teenage Bikini Vampire may be the finest low-budget vampire beach movie of all time. As soon as I find another, I’ll let you know. Until then, this one will do nicely.

28-year old Marta Mackova is from the Czech Republic though she graduated from the Edinburgh College of Art in 2006. Café was her graduation capstone. Marta has an eye for the etiquette that governs such manoeuvres between the sexes and the skill to suggest a yearning with the merest shift in the shoulder line—though subtle is not a word to describe the reaction of the little man to the large woman.

There is a well-tuned sense of timing in her work—the comedy of the situation unravels at its own pace. She has worked with some skilled people in Prague, obviously learning her craft well prior to her arrival in the fine city of Edinburgh, my grandfather’s birthplace. Café is coupled with a collection of movies by other young Scottish animators that are well worth a look. Marta has her new website up and running and Café is featured there as well.

Which is all I suppose a round about way of saying that when I stumbled across En Tus Brazos—the tale of a once great, now crippled Tango dancer, his wife and their break from the world of now into the glories of imagination and the past—even though I didn’t at the time know it came out of Supinfocom, I wasn’t surprised to later find out that co-directors François-Xavier Goby, Matthieu Landour and Edouard Jouret’s created En Tus Brazos as their graduation piece.

There are so many elements of En Tus Brazos that alone would make it worthy of a mention. From the use of light and reflections, to the framing of the action and subtle camera moves, whether it’s the gentle pushes and pulls in the couple’s apartment or the achingly beautiful final shot that reveals so much about the couple’s relationship and how the accident has transformed their roles, but perhaps in doing so strengthened their dedication to one another.

En Tus Brazos has the perfect balance of sparsity and detail in that it delivers what all films should, but few manage—to build as rich a world as possible by providing the most amount of story, setting and mood with the bare minimum of exposition.

Animation, much more so than the other disciplines of filmmaking allows creators to actually place the viewer square in the middle of their imaginations and deliver a story as it was originally conceived with the minimum of compromises. That being the case, I’d happily sign a five-year lease to take up residence with Goby, Landour and Jouret’s creations, if only for the opportunity to join the tango too.

Post apocalyptical world – check
An underdog to root for – check
A bully to get his comeuppance – check
Kick-arsed girl to pine over – check
and, of course, Zombies!

The thing about ILSJ—co-written by Susser and David Michod—is that if you were to strip away the high production values and outlandish world setting, there’d still be at its core a touching age-old story of teen awkwardness in relating to the object of your desire that places our hero Jimbo in the shoes of Kevin Arnold or Dawn Wiener before him, it’s just that their obstacles were slightly less brain hungry. Susser’s direction and the central performances from Brad Ashby and Mia Wasikowska completely sell the story and illustrate that when it comes to world-changing events outside of our normal experience, we’ll adapt with worrying ease. But that doesn’t mean our personalities will change; a bully’s still a bully, brother and sister still fight and the kids aren’t gonna do the washing up if no one’s around to make them.

Of course, even with all that, it’s a hard sell if things just don’t look right. However, not only are the visual effects flawless—helmed by Mike Seymour of fxphd who also filled the role of Executive Producer—but I have to admit, Richard Mueck’s nerve-jangling zombi turn had me tauter than the rope holding him back as the kids taunt and mock him; this is, after all, a zombie flick and those critters have a pesky way of managing to sink their teeth into all but the overly cautious.

Much has been made of the technical achievements of ILSJ, with it hailed as “a showcase of the most modern digital production techniques” by Digital Producer Magazine. Director of photography Adam Arkapaw shot the film in Sydney, Australia on a Thomson Grass Valley Viper FilmStream digital camera with Codex Digital recording technology enabling shots to be checked on set in full HD for focus and special effects.

ILSJ has rightly kicked up a storm of festival praise at both Sundance and the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival where it was awarded the Prix Canal.

Birthed from the real-life situations and obsessions of Lev himself, Tales captures Lev’s strange series of encounters including A Typical Conversation With My Mom, Procrastination, and I’m Not Going to Think About Her. As an introduction to his madness, I offer How To Break Up. In it, Lev explains in the most matter-of-fact way, the 64 easy steps to ending a failing relationship.

Call it talent—call it a curse—Lev has an uncanny ability to capture all the miniscule unpleasant moments of modern life that most of us care to ignore. His visual technique is simple. Short clips of each scene in a crude cartoon style—more of an animated comic book where the only animation is the shadow of his hand finishing off the final details of a sketch. It’s the perfect match and a testament to his powerfully raw storytelling style.

Run a simple Google search on Lev and you’ll find that he’s no newbie to the world of digital distribution. In fact, he owes much of his success to the cult following he’s built through the social networking magic of web 2.0—MySpace, YouTube, WordPress. His running blog is free as are many of his films, but for the full collection of self-published comics + DVDs check out his website, IngredientX.com.

A malformation of his backbone forces our hero to walk with his head held low, permanently fixed toward the ground. How is he supposed to search for happiness, his loving one, when all his eyes catch are his own feet? And who’s gonna love him, someone who looks so different from other people?

Storywise, what makes the difference between the work of Jérémy Clapin and other similar stories (I’m thinking of An Eye For Annai and Hedgehug) is the encounter with the “similar and complimentary.” Rather than being the resolution of the story, it’s the starting point of a process that brings the man and the woman (and hopefully us with them) to learn a valuable lesson.

From a visual point of view, the 3D graphics are employed to give the main characters a more distinctive aspect, with a final result that looks like traditional animation, in a similar fashion to The Pearce Sisters (my last pick, which also shares a near total absence of dialogue). What we see and what we don’t is spoken loudly through the characters’ actions.

Setting the mood for the entire film (with help from the beautiful score by Nicolas Martin) is the first sequence of the movie—a splendid example of Clapin’s style. We’re presented with many couples in love, with none or few distinctive characters, composited like a sort of diorama. They pass in front of our view like a merry-go-round, and when the last couple breaks from their kiss, our hero appears, as from behind the curtain of our oblivious daily existence. Everything makes him stand out from the crowd: his backbone, his loneliness, and his tri-dimensionality (compared to the flatness of the other characters). The sequence fades to black and into the main titles. Only twenty seconds ago we hit the play button, and we’re already helplessly captured by the charm of the tale.

On a personal note, I completely agree with the sense of the story, or at least what I perceive it to be, but I’ll leave you to discover it for yourself. Or… just enjoy the show. That is, after all, why they call it a show.

The Autobiography of Tom Stern, Chapter Six: The New Science wastes no time easing into the story but instead plunges head first into the world of Him and his likes illustrated with rapid fire stills. If you had more time to decompress on the journey from here to the world of Tom Stern you might feel that there was a danger of the dialogue being too hip, “And then, which is now, I want to leave you,” or the caped fight scene overly quirky, but the thing is, it somehow isn’t which is a mighty hard trick to pull off.

Perhaps it’s the clean unfussed look of The New Science coupled with Sean Foley’s (as Tom Stern) direct to camera delivery that sells this off-kilter world just as convincingly as Hal Hartly having Martin Donovan break into dance mid-scene.

Director Tom Stern was awarded Best of 2007 in Microcinema International’s Independent Exposure touring series for the New Science and has made the jump to features with his indie debut This is a Business. The New Science is but a single chapter from an ongoing autobiography of Tom Stern, according to the man himself. Me only wishes that He would hurry up to make more for We to watch.

What these companies want and increasingly try to tap, are those key connected demographics at the root of this web 2.0 era. They and fans both want interactivity. Companies want it to build deeper ties to brand and build product loyalty while testing out new content models that draw traffic to their sites. Fans on the other hand want community and connection to the media and stars they love.

One of the best ideas that’s to arise from this ideology is the promotional contest. “Come fans, create promotional content for us! We want to let you participate in the making of this media stuff you like so much!” Fans love the recognition and companies love the free labor. Genius.

All sarcasm aside, it’s a neat idea and even neater when cool things come out of it, such as this week’s video, the winner of indie rock band The Decemberists “Reanimate the Decemberists Green Screen Challenge” a teamup of MTVU and The band’s Atlantic Records recording company.

You may remember hearing about this one awhile back. The band disseminated footage online of them playing their song O Valenica! In front of a green screen, and asked fans to create a music video by animating the background. The winner would air on MTVU. A certain Stephen Colbert took offense though, since it was remarkably similar in concept to a green screen contest he did a month earlier. He blasted The Decemberists on air, they in turn challenged him to a guitar battle, next thing you knew it was Guitarmageddon.

That whole brouhaha unfortunately got more attention than the contest and its worthy winner, a young music video creator by the name of Kurt Nishimura. Utilizing live action, animation and motion graphics, O Valencia! is an original and affecting music video that transcends what would appear to be the limitations of the contest itself. Rather than simply animating the green screen footage, the video uses live-action scenes to adapt and subvert the tragic narrative of forbidden love provided by the song. Creating a love affair between a girl and a television set introduces an element of the absurd, but it is not played for laughs, and result is an odd sweetness and dare we say “chemistry” between the two leads.

As for the green screen footage itself, Nishimura, with a last minute assist from his friend Adam Long of Paper House Films, spices it up with flashy-looking motion graphics so that it may play on the television, ingeniously, using the band and the first-person narration of the song to provide our TV lover his “voice”.

Attending the Art Institute of Portland, Nishimura heard about the contest from a school newsletter with only two weeks to go before the deadline, and the quick turnaround can be seen in certain elements of the video. Set design is bland and lacking, and the graphic match of the window in the video and in the song, is a bit cringe inducing. Some of the sequences also suffer from a lack of shots, which in turn handicaps the editing process, making it less dynamic than we expect from a music video. Yet this is to be expected on a quick shoot, and the most important elements—confident direction and excellent cinematography— are fully on display. Indeed, Nishimura is a true talent as his latest music video Silence by the artist Olivia Broadfield attests.

O Valencia! played on MTVU while another video directed by the band’s longtime collaborator Aaron Stewart was made as an official video. Nishimura was aware that this official video was being made even as the contest was going on, but ultimately it’s a shame that the band nor record company had faith in their own promotion, because Nishimura’s entry, while on a different scale, is every bit as memorable. While companies want to use the web, many don’t actually believe in it. Many people feel that the democratization of content producing via the web is wishful thinking because there just isn’t the content and talent out there. Sometimes I think the same thing when I’m watching repetitive film after film online, but this video and Nishimura himself are the perfect rebuttal to that brand of thinking.

While at first glance it would seem that A Portrait of Envy is vastly different from Rose’s last film, Archer House, her characters strike a remarkable similarity in the way they are outsiders almost transparently on the edge. Rose has the rare ability to remain still within her characters, and is able to use her entire physical being in both subtle and quite direct ways to communicate nonverbally. Riley Rose, currently working on her BFA at University of Southern California, is a talent to watch for over the next few years.

While A Portrait of Envy is largely centered upon Rose’s character, Kris Kjornes offers a solid supporting performance as Jerry while Jennifer Popagain does nicely in a brief appearance as Jerry’s girlfriend.

Garcia’s script is quite basic, yet is wonderfully enhanced by a complementary production design along with Tahlee Booher’s cinematography and a musical score that companions the film’s disturbing feeling without overpowering or manipulating it.

An illustrator and graphic designer by trade, Garcia is currently in production on his second short film, a horror film, due in Summer 2008. A Portrait of Envy can be viewed online and is available for purchase on DVD by visiting the director’s website.