Film Reviews, short student animations, 14 February, 2017

An astronaut plays matchmaker to two craters on the moon.  CalArts 2nd year student animation by Skyler Page 2010
No words, just very expressive faces and actions convey the desire of the boy crater and the girl crater to be together.  Simple line work and a subdued palette support the simple story.   It was cute, I liked it.

Gobelins (France) student films

Mortal Breakup Inferno
Directed by Paula Assadourian, Marlène Beaube, Débora Cruchon, Maxime Delalande, Thibaud Gayral and Batiste Perron 2014

A man slips away in the night and leaves his sleeping girlfriend a breakup note.  She tracks him down and lures him back by spending time with another man.

"8.9"       This was a very interesting collaboration between CalArts and Gobelin.  A man, trapped in the rubble, seems resigned to stay there until he discovers a child is also trapped.  But the kid has spent his time drawing and is ultimately able to set himself free while the man remains trapped.  Character appeal is 50/50 (the kid is kind of mashed in the face) but the background is great.  Good movement from both characters and the shifting rubble.

  Nebula
Directed by Camille Andre, Marion Bulot, Clément Doranlo, Myriam Fourati, Jonghyun Jungboix, Alexis Kerjosse and Sarah Simon

Visually, the most appealing characters and smoothest animation of the lot.  Not much of a story, but I've never been gaga for ponies and pegasi.  

Wands Wander

Directed by Nadya Mira

Beautiful painterly backgrounds!  Really great shots and camera angles.  I was really impressed by the cart moving into shot from behind the left shoulder of the camera.  My shot work leaves a lot to be desired.  It's extremely boring. 

Duo

Directed by Janis Aussel, Elsa Boyer, Marie-Pierre Demessant, Dorian Lee, Laurent Moing, Guitty Mojabi and Aron Bothman

There's something about the style, the simplicity of lines, that reminds me of Disney and Fantasia.  I don't know what it is.  The scripts for all of these shorts have been very simple, with little talking and there's nowhere to "get to" in the story.  My own scripts have been so convoluted in the past!

Edgard

Directed by Eve Ceccarelli, Maud Girard, Mathieu Gouriou, Leo Schweitzer and Raphaelle Stolz

This is the only one I watched twice because I had to catch the changes to the character.  Edgard sees his family as caricatures of their inner selves- cousin is a peacock with feather, father is hazy and sister has a happy mask from which she peeks at the others.  You can see what they really look like in mirrors and shadows on the floor.  There was a lot more talking in this one than the others, but no more of a resolved story.  Is this because they're French?  Or short animations need to be as simple as possible?