The first short film i decided to review from the ‘future shorts’ channel on youtube was called Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared.
The film is already well known on the internet, and part of a longer series of the same name that parodies children’s tv shows like sesame street. what starts off as an innocent lesson-style song about creativity with a group of puppet characters slowly devolves into a weird, gory mess that leaves first time watchers wondering what the heck just happened.
i really like this film. the puppets are very well designed and pupeteered effectively to show their personalities and emotions. The film’s song is catchy but not annoying, there is an enormous amount of hidden details in each shot that i still notice new things even though i’ve watched it many times. over all, it is a really effective blend of music, puppeteering, cinematography (in the way that each shot is arranged), vfx (with changing clouds, and the 3D rendered shot that shows the characters being filmed in a 4th wall breaking experience), voice acting and ultimately horror.
there is a lot of different messages to be interpreted from this film, and i really like that.
The second short film i reviewed was synesthesia, which is a live action film.
Synesthesia is a very interesting film. with a concept of sounds associated with tastes, smells, words and colours, each shot is really well composed and shows a boy who puts his headphone cable into different foods that are arranged on a table in front of him. each food makes a different sound, and changes the over all music of the film (the music in this film is fire). while this happens, in a different room is another boy that smells records, and assigns a colour to them. in the room with him are a set of speakers, which different objects appear from as the boy in the room with the food changes which food he puts the jack lead into. these objects include ping pong balls, cats, grass, eggs, birds, sparks and a variety of other seemingly random objects. the film is interesting to think about, and fun to watch. It highlights the perspective of someone who experiences synesthesia and i think that someone with the condition could relate to this film and thats a good thing. it has sort of a wes anderson vibe to it, which works well too.
The third short film i reviewed was Big Bang Dog.
the film’s animation is extremely good and very fluid, taking you on a journey with a dog from an abyss, to a bowl of soup, to a restaurant, train station, city and through oher creatively interpreted environments. the music in this film is also very solid, and the score changes depending on the environment (when he i falling through the air, or underwater). the colours used are very vibrant and saturated, and they combine well with the solid white characters. over all, it is exciting to look at and filled with detail and emotion, making it good to rewatch and pick up on new details.