Short Film: Poem

"Poem" by Matthias Zentner

Although this has been used as a commercial for Showtime in Ukrain, it's still a beautiful piece of art worthy of the title "short film."  In all likelihood, without the money behind the advertiser, it would never have been produced, which would have been a terrible loss.

In this piece, the reading experience is represented as a visual metaphor as a woman passes through four stages of her life. I particularly like the part where the books escape from the bird cage, but everything about this is quite beautiful.

Video: The Joy of Books

After organizing their own bookshelf earlier this year, Sean Ohlenkamp and wife Lisa re-doubled their efforts for Type Books in Toronto. After several sleepless nights of animating with a crew of over 20 people, the Joy of Books was born. Music composed especially for the short by Grayson Matthews. See many more books here.

Poetry: "Dreams" by Fitzgerald Scot

ShapeShifter from Charlex on Vimeo

This stunning piece of animation was created by the Director of Charlex, Alex Weil, and a few of the company's designers as a break from the company's typical advertising work. Weil asked the designers to come up with a project of their own to enable their creativity and unburdened themselves of the the daily rigors of their usual projects. Their one madate was that something great had to come from this freedom, and I think we can all agree that the team suceeded.

The original concept came from Co-Director and Designer Diana Park. Her inspiration came from the idea of a machine that creates nature, rather than the other way around.  The concept grew from simple shape-shifting to a look inside the spirit and soul of a car.  To bind it all together, poet Fitzgerald Scot was asked to provide the words.  His poem Dreams (narrated by Gabriel Byrne) accompanies the animation along with music composed by Peter Lauridsen. The final effect is that of being in a beautiful but disquieting dream.