Paperman

Great Disney Short.

Script 101 - Less dialogues more action!! A great story can be told without words.

 

Games We Play (Juegos que jugamos)

(Text in english below)

"El hombre que no tiene imaginación, no tiene alas."

- Muhammad Ali 

Cuando era pequeño, recuerdo los largos días de viaje con mi abuelo. Solía pasar por nosotros de sorpresa el último día de escuela para llevarnos a la playa o cualquier otro lugar distante y maravilloso. Recuerdo que entonces el asiento de atrás del coche era gigante, lo suficiente para que cupiéramos mi hermana, mi hermano y yo. Se convertía en un campo de batalla. Un salón de juegos. Una nave espacial. Un centro de comando. Un ring. Un restaurante. Y cuanta cosa se nos ocurriera. Y eso solo en el trayecto en el que salíamos de la ciudad.

Luego de las primeras horas de viaje y habiendo agotado las posibilidades dentro del pequeño gran espacio del asiento de atrás, recuerdo pasar las siguientes horas del viaje imaginando cosas y juegos.

Ahora ya más grande, me gusta mucho manejar en carretera. Sobretodo de noche. Y recuerdo haberme encontrado más de una vez jugando "Pong" con las lineas de la carretera, donde un pequeño pixel imaginario rebota durante kilómetros y kilómetros empujado por la defensa del coche y entre las líneas blancas.

O ir caminando sin pisar las lineas. O haciendo equilibrio. O brincando para alcanzar cosas. Si. Aún lo hago. 

Me atrevo a decir que todos en algún momento hemos jugado algún juego imaginario. Esos juegos que jugamos de una forma u otra y nos recuerdan, al menos de niños, el increíble poder de la mente humana (o que tan locos estamos). Hoy con este vídeo, veo que no soy el único y me llena de recuerdos y buenos momentos.

"The man who has no imagination has no wings."

- Muhammad Ali 

I remember when I was young, the long travel days with my grandpa. He used to go for us to the last day of school by surprise to take us to the beach or any other distant and marvelous place. I remember then that the back seat of the car was gigantic. Enough for my sister, my brother and I. It was a battle field. A playroom. A spaceship. A command center. A ring. A restaurant. And any other occurrence. And that was just while we got out of the city.

Then, the first hours of travel and being depleted any more possibilities of our confined space on the back seat, I remember spending the last hours of the road imagining things and games.

Now, much more adult, I love to drive on highway. More during nights. I remember, more than once, finding myself playing “Pong” with the lines of the road. Where a little pixel bumped over kilometers and kilometers with the bumper of the car and in between the white lines.

Or walk without stepping on the lines. Or making balance. Or jumping to reach high things. Yes. I still do. 

I could say that anyone at least once have played an imaginary game. Those games we play and remember us one way or another, at least as childs, the incredible power of the human mind (or how crazy we are). Today with this video, I see that I’m not the only one and I smile with memories and good moments. 

Something different... Dogs and Zombies!

Incredible acting, action, romance and suspense, zombie-style!! With a twist... DOGS!

This project was raised and funded via KICKSTARTER.COM. Originaly the directors Andres and Diego Meza Valdes (The Meza Brothers) pledged for a $3,000 USD kickstarter project, and ended with a $5,849 USD project. 

I think its well executed, with all the twist and turns of the genre and completely focused on a "band of dogs" that try to survive the apocalypse. 

The Meza Brothers comment on their kickstarter page: "People want to se Homeward Bound meets a Zombie apocalypse, they just don't know it yet." Homeward Bound (1993) is a Disney classic where three pets are left behind when their family goes on vacation. They start an amazing journey through America to find their owners. 

The directors synopsis:

A zombie apocalypse unites a ragtag pack of dogs in the ruined streets of Miami. Immune to the epidemic, they must stick together to survive in the midst of ferocious undead and human survivors in this unauthorized sequel to "Homeward Bound." Sit. Stay. Play dead...

Here is the original linlk to the kickstarter project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/playdead/play-dead-the-cutest-zombie-apocalypse-movie-ever-0

Will the man's best friend have better luck?

Play Dead (2012) FULL MOVIE from Andres and Diego Meza-Valdes on Vimeo.

Sigur Rós - Fjögur píanó

"i really can’t remember why we started this record, i no longer know what 

we were trying to do back then. i do know session after session went pear-

shaped, we lost focus and almost gave up...did give up for a while. but then 

something happened and form started to emerge, and now i can honestly say 

that it’s the only sigur rós record i have listened to for pleasure in my own 

house after we’ve finished it." - georg

Fjögur píanó by Alma Har'el

Taken from the "valtari mystery film experiment" 
More details: www.sigur-ros.co.uk/valtari/videos/

Valtari is available to purchase now: www.sigur-ros.co.uk/valtari/buy/

Alma Har'el - winner of Best Documentary Tribeca Film Festival - www.bombaybeachfilm.com 

METACHAOS

"Visually Aggressive, Mind Twisting, 
Full Packed travel to hell!"

METACHAOS from Alessandro Bavari on Vimeo.

(Text taken  from the VIMEO original page)

SINOPSYS

Metachaos, from Greek Meta (beyond) and Chaos (the abyss where the eternally-formless state of the universe hides), indicates a primordial shape of ameba, which lacks in precise morphology, and it is characterized by mutation and mitosis.

In fact the bodies represented in METACHAOS, even though they are characterized by an apparently anthropomorphous appearance, in reality they are without identity and conscience. They exist confined in a spaceless and timeless state, an hostile and decadent hyperuranium where a fortress, in perpetual movement, dominates the landscape in defense of a supercelestial, harmonic but fragile parallel dimension. In its destructive instinct of violating the dimensional limbo, the mutant horde penetrates the intimacy of the fortress, laying siege like a virus. Similar to the balance of a philological continuum in human species, bringing the status of things back to the primordial broth.

STATEMENT

METACHAOS is a multidisciplinary audio-visual project, articulated in a short film, a set of photography (alessandrobavari.com/english/Metachaos-photographies/gallery_Metachaos-photographic_series.htm) and mix-technique paintings. The purpose of the project is to represent the most tragic aspects of the human nature and of its motion, such as war, madness, social change and hate. An accretion of feelings that are metaphorically represented by specific visual forms, which are abstract conceptually, but concrete and tangible formally. The application of acid and monochromatic tints, besides the strong contrasts, makes everything intentionally more oppressive and tragic.

In order to obtain a more immersive and plausible version, the shot was taken adopting the camera live technique. The extreme and frenetic motion of the shoulder camera, similar to the subjective one, becomes a main constant, so that, along with the persisting cuts used to edit the video, create a bigger sense of instability and danger. In fact, thanks to the dissemination of Technology, it is possible to notice that the unconscious-esthetic potential of the shots available on Youtube, characterized by a pseudo-documentary and amateur approach, often offer an unexpected emotional involvement, which trigger an exhibitionistic-voyeuristic interchange between the author and the consumer.

The irrational gesture and action of the bodies, as if a collective form of madness controlled them, are inspired by artists like Bosch and Bruegel who, between the ‘400 and ‘500, produced an iconography where irrational images show sickly madness and pain.

The project has been realized using different techniques: live shots taken in discharged industrial sites, CGI animations, tracking and motion captures, besides various other analogical ones.

American Jeff Ensign, aka Evolution Noise Slave composed the original sound track, which has been progressively updated during the video production. The musical score was inspired by 6 separate pieces Jeff had previously created that were then combined into a hybrid. The composition was also based in part from a sonic interpretation of the ideas presented in Antonin Artaud’s the Theater and Cruelty overlaid on Bavari’s images.

JURY STATEMENT FROM PRIX ARS ELECTRONICA 2011.

Alessandro Bavari’s “Metachaos” is an impressive display of the amazing graphics that can be produced with leading-edge hardware and software. The 8-minute clip begins with a sequence of clear, geometric forms that suggest a serene world. But it doesn’t take long until it’s apparent that this was just the calm before the storm. Shadowy creatures and shockingly grotesque figures intrude into this domain rendered in black & white and sepia tones and rip it to pieces. Using the interplay of light and shadow, intentionally shaky camera movements and quick cuts, Bavari takes us on a tour de force through an unsettling imaginary cosmos that grips viewers and doesn’t let them loose. In addition to its extraordinary visuals, “Metachaos” features an impressive composed soundscape of incredibly concentrated intensity—noise elements paired with driving beats, panic-stricken screams, the rattling of bones and gale-force winds.

While some of as did not necessarily share the apocalyptic view of this film, we found that it left the most indelible impression. Narrowly passing through the first round, it grew on us, so that on repeated viewing it miraculously made its way to the top.

What starts as a cinematic, kinetik, yet clean field of geometry and bodies, gradually evolves, or devolves, into the artist’s vision of a nightmarish black-and-white world created by a continual collision of the human and the architectural form. It finally culminates in a screaming dance among the ruins. In a impressive virtuoso tour de force, Alessandro Bavari creates a constant mêlée of grime, projectile muck and dust among collapsing spaces at the stage for metamorphosing human bodies with branching limbs that seem constantly to break the architectural environment apart. Zombies with missing limb sand decaying skin and faces sometimes stand around listlessly and other times appear to engage in orgasmic sex. The human forms become insect-like and multiply in hordes across the building forms. Dust particles and snakes of turbolent, ferrous liquid finally explode into an apocalyptic ocean of flotsam and sludge.

Bavari’s few collaborators helped shape what the credit call “camera tremula” (shaky, documentary-style camera) and sound design. We commend his dedication to a singular artistic vision that is grounded in his practice as a photographer. This is a representation of a caustic end of the world, a world of a audible pain and hopeless destruction rendered with a disturbing reference to 80s-style computer-generated animation as well as 60s “actionism”.

Out of sight

This animation was made by three students graduated from the National Taiwan University of Arts as part of their final project. As in many animations, no words are needed. This animation combines perfectly the innocence of a child with the power of her imagination. A beautiful visual narrative and a very good audio design. 

Being sight one of the most important senses and one of the most valued to me (as a filmmaker), it really brought tears to my eyes. Enjoy!

Reverso

Uno de los mejores cortometrajes que me he encontrado en la red. Gran animación, música e historia.

Reverso from ArtFx on Vimeo.