“Four score and seven years ago, to thine own self be true. I believe in rock n’ roll. I believe in getting high.”
- Cowman Kennedy’s infamous Gettysburg address

The Kansas City, Mo., art collective known as MK12 has been on quite a roll lately. The ingenious graphics that highlighted Will Ferrell’s routine life in Stranger Than Fiction were theirs, and Director Marc Forster utilized their animation talents again for the opening credits of his newest film, The Kite Runner. This year, Sundance spotlights their subversively fun short The History of America, which was one of 16 works chosen by New York magazine as the best online content of 2007.

A visually dynamic mix of rotoscoped live action shot against a greenscreen and the latest computer animation techniques, The History of America is not the typical sly condemnation of U.S. culture that its title might suggest, but more a hilarious celebration of distinctly American iconography. Were it not for the epic war between the cowboys (who reside in Las Vegas and work from the Cowboy Headquarters and Casino) the astronauts (who live in a space station on the moon), the U.S. may not be the great country that it is today.

This ambitious project has been about four years in the making. Before any animation processing was done, MK12 storyboarded. Then, they finished a live-action rough cut, complete with actors and set design, to see what they had. Even when the computer processing had begun, every part of the film was still hand-tweaked in some fashion. A startlingly orginal creation, it combines cutting edge slick graphic design with a worn-out third-generation print look. Read On and watch the entire film at Scene-Stealers.com

The word “cherries” may be an American Army slang term that refers to unused or untried military equipment and weaponry, but it is also the title of a digitally-shot short film from our neighbors across the pond. Funded by Film London and the U.K. Film Council, Cherries tackles a controversial statistic in Great Britain.

The country has the lowest deployment and recruitment age for soldiers in Europe and has been condemned by Amnesty International as the only European country that has routinely sent under-18s into armed conflict. And, according to the film’s press release, for the first time in its history, the Territorial Army has seen members compulsorily drafted into regular army units in combat zones.

Director Tom Harper and first-time Screenwriter Fiona Kissane set Cherries, shot in HDCAM SR, in the near future. A group of teenaged schoolboys mess around in the schoolyard, checking egos and measuring each other up. Their teacher has an unexpected announcement waiting for them inside that will change their lives forever. The story takes aim not just at the government for allowing this kind of thing to happen, but also at he youngsters, who carry on with their lives oblivious to the fact that the world they ignore may directly affect them someday. Read On at Scene-Stealers.com

We’ve seen shorts from the U.S., Canada, Iceland, and Australia so far at the Sundance Film Festival. The entries this year are truly an international affair. In that spirit, it is time to move on to an entirely different continent.

Writer/Director Xuan Jiang grew up in a Beijing that is in a constant state of influx. From an ever-growing economy to the modern barrage of global influences, China is a very different place than it once was. After doing television production work at the News Corporation China, Jiang enrolled in the Film Directing program at the California Institute of the Arts. August 15th, her thesis film, grew out of a desire to tell stories about the waves of cultural change that are rippling through her home country.

This 20-minute short is a powerful drama that was inspired by a true story. A bus travels through the Chinese mountains during East Asia’s Mid-Autumn Festival, a yearly celebration of togetherness and abundance. A young woman and her boyfriend are on their way to spend some time with his family. Set against this idyllic time of year, the bus is hijacked, and each passenger must decide how far they are willing to go to preserve their own safety versus the safety of others.

Shot on super 16mm film by Cinematographer Haifeng Duan, August 15th has a very naturalistic tone. There are no distracting or overriding stylistic touches, and Jiang is patient enough to give the story the time it deserves, building the mounting tension slowly. She takes essential moments to scan the faces of the all the passengers on the bus, surveying their different reactions in a time of crisis. As the pressure becomes worse, the faces become shrouded in shadow. August 15th asks some serious questions about moral responsibility and choices that can change lives irreparably. Read On at Scene-Stealers.com

There is something to be said for a movie that can get across a wave of emotion, however slight, in just over a minute’s time. It will take me longer to write this capsule review than it will for you to watch Hermann Karlsson’s melancholy animated short simply titled Dog. What this Icelandic import (although Karlsson currently resides in Edinburgh, Scotland) lacks in running time, it certainly makes up for in feeling.

A muted color palette of mostly gray and white, Dog feels like an overcast winter afternoon. It looks like the director used old-fashioned animation techniques only—like maybe it was drawn on film or sketched on paper. In reality, Karlsson used a mixture of 2D computer-drawn animation and painted-cell animation to bring to life the story of a late, lamented dog and a decision that will haunt a boy forever.

Mat Elliot’s sparse piano accompaniment holds out each keystroke for maximum resonance while non-diagetic sound effects such as wind blowing and stereo-panned, crackling fire enhance the visuals. Karlsson’s inspired use of imagery has parallels to the story he’s telling, but he never falls into the trap of the two being too directly and literally related. Read On and watch the entire film at Scene-Stealers.com

With the recent popularity of free, user-generated content on websites like YouTube, where video is most often viewed in short bursts, original short films have been able to find a new and eager audience. No longer confined to being seen one theater and one festival at a time, shorts can be uploaded by the filmmakers and watched by anyone in the world who has a fast enough internet connection.

This trend seems to favor comedic shorts more than anything else, and Dan Beers’ short film FCU: Fact Checkers Unit definitely falls into that category. To show at Sundance 2008 is prestigious for sure, but at this point, it seems like almost an afterthought. This short is something of an internet sensation, having appeared on Will Ferrell’s FunnyorDie.com site, and now on YouTube and virtually everywhere else with embeddable video. It doesn’t hurt, of course, to have Bill Murray in your movie.

In addition to directing, Beers also co-wrote the short with its two stars, Peter Karinen and Brian Sacca. The set-up is simple. Two guys who work as fact checkers and take their job very seriously (way more seriously than their half-awake, banana-chomping editor) are assigned to check whether or not Bill Murray has a glass of milk right before he goes to bed at night. Read On and watch the entire short at Scene-Stealers.com

“It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.”
-Mum

Next Sunday is a long time to wait to watch the short film Spider, which will be streaming for free on the Sundance 10 Shorts 10 Days page on Jan. 27. If you’re like me and you want to open all your presents early, the entire movie is embedded at the end of this post, courtesy Director Nash Edgerton and the millionaire boy geniuses who invented YouTube.

Something must be in the water Down Under because this is the second shocking black comedy from Australia in as many days. (Spencer Susser’s I Love Sarah Jane was covered yesterday.) Shot on location in Sydney, Spider was filmed on 16mm stock in 1:2.35, and later transferred to 35mm. Edgerton himself plays Jack, who is in the midst of a pretty serious fight with his girlfriend while she’s driving them both around the city.

The camera’s POV stays with Jack as he heads into a convenience store to buy some things in hopes of placating her. Watching him scan the shop quickly is like actually seeing the thought processes of a typical male (not that I would know anything about that). Since this is a short film and we don’t want to ruin the ending, we’ll just stop any mention of plot right there. Read On and see the entire film at Scene-Stealers.com

Often times, even when dealing with short films, it is sometimes difficult to remember that storytelling is not always the first priority. After all, film is like any other form of art and should not be held to any hard and fast rules—like plot, character development, and all the other things we associate with narrative filmmaking. Rather than being relegated to the art museum, experimental films get their day in the sun at Sundance (no pun intended) right alongside the more traditional modes of filmmaking.

Shawn Bannon’s Ignite is a three-minute film that surveys the raging intensity with which the fires in Griffith Park, Calif. burned last year by using stark, color time-lapse cinematography sped up to an alarming degree. Helicopters streak through the night sky, but are mere flashes. They look more like comets with blinding tails. Later, the ashes of the landscape are contrasted with cigarette ashes and only a brief flash, burning photo, of the people who were affected by it. Seven time-lapse cameras were used to capture the event, which is melded together with a soundtrack of crackling fire that’s all wind and clipped microphones.

“You cut my tongue, now only my heart speaks.”
- Tania Willard

Nikamowin is a fascinating 12-minute short from Director/Editor Kevin Lee Burton that asks the musical question, “What happens when you start speaking Cree?” D’arcy O’Connor is responsible for the intricate score/sound design, which is made up entirely of spoken words in the Cree language. While O’Connor’s linguistic soundscape unfolds with rhythmic cadence, Burton channels a little bit of Koyaanisqatsi, using both city and natural landscapes to illustrate the impressive sound collage. He also employs quite a bit of split screen, only he visually highlights the layers of Nikamowin’s complicated music by going horizontal—and using up to five images consecutively. The short was produced with cooperation from the Canada Council for the Arts. Read On at Scene-Stealers.com

Today is the first day of Sundance’s 10 Shorts 10 Days, and the first short film to stream for free for a day is Director Spencer Susser’s darkly funny charmer, I Love Sarah Jane. Tomorrow there will be another short will be streaming for free, so head there now to check it out.

The zombie movie has thrived in recent years, with re-imaginings from 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead, and is still being successfully tweaked—as this Australian import shows. Shot digitally using the Thomson HD Viper Camera, I Love Sarah Jane is set in a parent-free neighborhood where the adults are either dead or undead. Without anyone to tell the kids to clean up the house, it just isn’t going to happen.

I joke, but what makes Susser’s film so effective is the matter-of-fact way that the kids deal with their bleak situation. It’s nothing special to anyone to be carrying a bow with a quiver of arrows on your back like 13-year old Jimbo does. That’s just survival. Dark clouds loom—literally—overhead as he rides his bike around a trash-strewn, smoldering street. Amidst this awful backdrop blooms a chance for love—at least in Jimbo’s head. As a bored Sarah Jane watches a newscaster on TV describe the proper way to handle undead body disposal (incineration, of course), Jimbo sits down to make his move. Read On at Scene-Stealers.com

Related news from The Briefing Room

“You can’t untell a tale…you can’t outslow a snail.”
- Bobby Bird, Chonto

This year, 45 of the 83 short films in the 2008 Sundance Film Festival are available at for viewing and/or download at iTunes, Netflix, and Xbox.com.

Carson Mell follows last year’s Sundance-featured short film Bobby Bird: The Devil in Denim with another adventure of the aging former rock star. The 2008 animation short program features Chonto, a relatively somber yet bizarrely amusing film, shot on Sony HD CAM, about Bobby’s search for a true friend. An obnoxious roadie named Rufus forces the rocker, in a flashback to his younger days, to consider something other than human companionship. A dog is too common, and a big shot like Bobby needs a “big-shot dog,” so he goes to a South American zoo to adopt a monkey.

Mell’s animation style is an interesting mix of photo-real backgrounds and stark, crisply drawn cartoon images that have very little mobility. Deep colors enrich the surrounding photos, but the characters themselves are flat images with barely any shading. Camera movement is mostly limited to slowly zooming in or out, and it makes for a very deliberate tone. Ironically, it is this approach, juxtaposed against Bobby’s homespun seen-it-all rocker mentality and his Southern drawl, that makes Chonto so charming. Read On at Scene-Stealers.com

With so much attention focused on feature-length films at the Sundance Film Festival, it is easy for the short films to get lost in the shuffle. This year, however, Sundance is pushing the short film programs pretty heavily. Starting tomorrow, the “10 Shorts 10 Days” feature appears at sundance.org/festival/shorts, where one short from the festival will appear for free for an entire day, with nine more to follow consecutively. In addition, 45 of the 83 short films in the festival are available at for viewing and/or download at iTunes, Netflix, and Xbox. The entries this year span a wide array of subject matter and themes, from straight-ahead comedy to action/thrillers and gripping drama. Entries have come from all over the world as well—from as far away as China, Iceland, and Denmark.

If you have a Netflix account, the entire animated film program is now streaming there for free. If not, just wait until Wednesday Jan. 23 to watch Director Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung’s multi-layered experimental short Because Washington Is Hollywood for Ugly People when it appears on the “10 Shorts 10 Days” site. This rapid-fire cutout animation piece, shot with a Sony HD CAM, is a biting satire of world politics and the public’s endless fascination with facile celebrity news. The effect of Tin-Kin Hung’s quickly moving and surrealistically adorned, flat images produces a film that’s very modern in its subject matter, but not too dissimilar from Terry Gilliam’s early work on Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Read On at Scene-Stealers.com