quiet trickster

From which the most pertinent observation might be - where cel or handdrawn, claymation or stopmotion animation gains a feeling of individuality when it’s a little scruffy or unpolished, CG merely looks shite.

OK, that’s harsh - the two examples here were screened consecutively, and were both trying to be ponderously enigmatic about sex, which is a bad enough idea when your characters don’t look like poorly textured computer game characters. But I never understand why shoddy CG short animation never seems to escape the scrutiny aimed at larger productions.

I realise that the amount of computer power involved is prohibitive, but shouldn’t that mean the animators find a way to use the limitations of the medium? And unless it’s simply a skills showcase (for their sakes, one hopes not), can’t they find a writer? Because even if the animation is glorious, it isn’t a film unless it has something to say or reveal. A few years ago, one of the selected ‘World’ animations was a Dreamworks showcase, all slinky CG movement and texture - technically remarkable, but with no content. The audience was significantly polite, compared to the enthusiasm they showed for scrappier work. And if the animation is lousy, you better have a killer concept, story or punchline. I’ve seen very shaky student CG fly by because they still made the audience laugh.

I don’t really mean story in that overly pedantic screenwriting course manner - one of the most striking in this set, The Accident, reveals its story in hesitant re-iterations of a childhood memory - all done in a simple pen and ink style.

The films shown in this selection where all very short, which I prefer - more for your money, but unfortunately means that it’s harder to pick out highlights. The others I voted for (the McLaren Award is voted for by the audience) - John and Karen (a charming film about a relationship between a polar bear and a penguin, with a minimalist ligne-claire style that uses tiny character movements to great effect), and the Pearce Sisters (a slightly grisly comic tale involving two sisters living on a desolate island, who gut and smoke more than just the fish they catch, with a striking style, although it’s familiar from somewhere - it’s in a blocky, graphic style I see a lot in things like Computer Arts magazine.)

Not a bad start to my festival, but not an entirely auspicious one either - a fair amount of pretension, topped and tailed by more entertaining stuff. I should check the catalogue to get more information, and if I remember, I’ll look up the filmmakers, but first impressions:

Started with a very cute, high-end texture & 3D CG animation, Hum, which worked well in itself, although short films about little lonely machines that construct other little machines for company, and variations thereof, are becoming very familiar. I should check, maybe it’s one guy being very prolific. I’m not complaining, but it suggests that the criteria for selecting these shorts is dominated by the animation, not how they stand up as stories - as films in their own right.

The second, a slightly Matrix-y SF piece, Glitch, seemed to be betraying small screen origins, but was probably more hamstrung by the three lines of dialogue that could have been left out - the sound mix seemed shaky with the dialogue, oddly, and it had a simple enough story with a nice (visual) payoff.

The next, Down The Road, had the opposite problem - it could have been quite a neat two-hander as a live action short, with good enough actors and less semaphoring of the plot twists, but died a death within the confines of some distinctly lo-fi animation better suited to comedy than a thriller.

Canvas had some very strong stop-motion model-work. But unless there was something going on about commenting on how artworks will revolt against pretentious artists, just plain pretentious.

My Love, an atmospheric Russian animation, with a dreamlike sensibility, but either that or something missing from the translation resulted in a slightly uneven narrative - it always kind of felt there was a scene missing. I’m not sure if it expected you to know the source (if there was a source).

The last short, a Canadian production, while neither visually nor narratively original or stunning, was funny, in a straightforwardly daft surrealist way, with a very cartoony style. See, I’m shallow - I always like the laughs over the pretentious noodlings over the nature of the creative process.