Some great shorts…

In keeping with the last post I thought I’d share a few keepers of films I ran across while doing some research.

 

First up is a fun little flick called “The Seance”  by Arun Vaidyanathan, which is a nice little work.  Two people – very compacted dialog, good delivery and very simple but effective camera and lighting work. 

Its not a film that relies on trickery or abusive visuals – it’s got a very simple story and that’s what it tells.

All in all it’s worth the 6 minutes of your life required to watch it.  The only downside is that quite frankly they had such nice characters and such a good story they never finish it. 

It’s really hard to pace a film down to 5 minutes and keep the quality even.  This is a nice even film – which sadly is just cut 30 seconds short of the blow off for the tale.  Over all this is a great little film and I can see why it was an award winner.  Which… compared to my next choice makes this oscar winning material.  Our next entry was a Sony Award winner.  Why – I have no clue.

Burning Life… is first of all – not a film.  It’s not really a documentary and it’s not really a narrative and it’s not really anything more than a guy and his girlfriend burning a small pile of his crap – sorry his life – in his backyard as some kind of protest. 

He then starts to strip and there is a gratuitous use of bad filters and bad video effects for color channels and he breaks most if not all the cardinal rules of even amatuer camera work and … it’s really amazing this won an award of any kind and it just goes to show you that if you toss enough “I’m clueless” around people can, and will assume you’re some kind of artist.  Hate to say it but … it is largely true.

Which… leaves us to … the gem of the post.  A short film that is done soooo well you almost can see this getting the Oscar it’s been nominated for.  Our Time Is Up… is funny – it’s actually way past funny.  And at the same time there’s so much more going on with this film. 

This film … sheesh – great – just… shut up and go watch it.  All I can say is … this is what people who do short films need to set as a bar to shoot for – and let’s face it… how does that make you feel?