From branded pieces to proof-of-concept’s, we’ve discussed the role of short film in the larger mediums of Entertainment and Cinema until we’re blue in the face here at Short of the Week. And although we felt we’d covered all the angles with the many think-pieces we’ve released on our site, Netflix just took us totally by surprise by releasing Meridian – a short film designed to evaluate anything from the performance of video codecs to the way Netflix streams look like on 4K TVs.

The 11-minute film, directed by Curtis Clark, is a film noir styled mystery set in LA in 1947 that follows a detective trying to get to the bottom of a case which revolves around the disappearance of three men. It’s a stylish piece that looks fantastic, but doesn’t make a great deal of sense, but I guess plot wasn’t a top consideration for the Netflix peeps with the company’s director for content partner operations Chris Fetner describing it as “a weird story wrapped up in a bunch of engineering requirements”.

We’ve talked in the past about how the short film can help push the boundaries of storytelling, visual FX and interactivity but this was certainly a route we didn’t see the format going down. Although it feels as if this entry into the arena is a one-off from Netflix, it’s an interesting experiment that could benefit many with the company releasing the film under a Creative Commons license.

If you have a Netflix account, you can view Meridian here or download the original .mxf file here