One week remains in Electric Cinema’s competition Electric Shorts, and honestly, all of the seven finalists deserve to win. We selected two for our site as merely a sample of the competition, but the two selected show no favoritism on our part. They were all well written and directed, and plenty weird. The process of selection was, more or less, a game of eeny, meeny, miny, moe.
A brave 14 year old, Jerry Levitan, was able to sneak into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and talk him into a Q&A session. Thirty-eight years later, Jerry worked with Josh Raskin, James Braithwaite, and Alex Kurina to make an animated video to accompany the recording.
“I Met the Walrus” was nominated for the 2008 Animated Short Academy Award, and won the 2009 Emmy for New Approaches.
Jamin Winans, director of the Certified Weird film Ink, was commissioned by Pentax to shoot a short film using only the K-7 HD DSLR camera. They couldn’t have picked a better person for the job. Winans thrives on making quality cinema with a minuscule budget. Most everyone agrees, though, that Winans and his team would benefit from better funding for their future projects; they definitely deserve it.
“Everything we know, is everything it is not. And we become foreigners to our own familiarity.”
Chelsea Whitbread’s “Alienation” is heavily influenced by the style and techniques of surrealist Man Ray. Instead of watching, you will spend the next two minutes being watched, and it’s not a pleasant experience.
Looking at BLU’s work, one might wonder how many hundreds of spray cans he goes through in a single day. Fortunately, BLU was introduced to house paint early on in his career, so, with a can of paint and a roller, he has been able to cover a larger areas with less time and cost.
BLU started painting graffiti and creating computer animated shorts in 2001. Six years later, he combined the two, and started making animated shorts shot on walls and buildings. With such talent and artistic vision, it’s easy to see how his work draws millions of viewers.
David Collins may not have a lot of material posted on video-sharing websites like YouTube and Vimeo, but the few shorts and trailers he does have out have certainly attracted our attention. Collins has the creativity to be a part of something big. For now, however, it appears that Dave will have to continue maxing out his credit cards for each humble release.
I believe a “thank you” is in order for all the companies that are making advertisements less monotonous for their viewers. David Lynch was, once again, commissioned to make a short to promote a product, and this sponsor, Dior, seems just as unlikely as the last (42 Below Vodka).
To avoid disappointment, be informed that Lynch held back a little on his eldritch style. It has an otherworldly feel to it, but it’s weirdness pales in comparison to some of his more famous work.
We can easily infer that the Academy Award winner for Best Animated Short Film is not going to be our most outlandish Saturday Short. Still, “Harvie Krumpet” was certainly peculiar enough, and, without doubt, professional enough to have captured our attention. At over twenty-minutes long, it better fits the label short-film than any other Saturday Short we’ve posted. It nearly has the plot and character development of a full-length film, and compromises almost solely on time. Narrated by Geoffrey Rush.
CONTENT WARNING: This short contains brief animated nudity and a scene of mild sexual content.
Hedonistic, claustrophobic, original, and downright weird; “Derealiser La Faille” is a nightmare toying with our senses and psyche. Trust me, this one will remain in your subconscious for the remainder of your day.
In this fourth installment of The Adventures of Mr. Coo, Mr. Coo turns into a carrot, explodes as a castle, makes amends with a car, etc. Although this is the fourth episode, it won’t make much more sense than the first three. This series is focused more on awe-inspiring animation than plot.
(If video doesn’t play in your browser click on the player again to open a new tab).
