This trailer for a new animated short The Chase directed by Philippe Garner of french animation studio Space Patrol is pretty visually impressive, however it’s his earlier work, Stop Pain, which really caught my eye. A sad tale with a surreal twist at the end. Worth a watch.
Philippe’s Vimeo channel is here – worth subscribing to for future use we figure.
Ever wondered what happens when the door shuts on the world’s taxidermy collections? Thanks to this video from The Erratic Man, we now know:
The single is the first from Worker Records – an internal label at BETC London – the younger British brother of the Parisian adfolk behind those Evian roller babies.
And that’s not all. If you’ve got a pet (either living or deceased) who you’d like to see warbling along to ‘Back In The Day’, you can do just that at Petchoir.com.
The creative team responsible for the taxidermised troubadours are a young placement duo, Mike Whiteside and Ben Robinson, who’ve managed to find the time for a quick chat with SSZ about their experiences, ambitions, and that video.
SSZ: So guys: where are you from and what has been your journey to date?
B&M: Well, Mike’s from Bournemouth and Ben’s from Reading. We met on the excellent Creative Advertising Course at the University of Gloucestershire in Cheltenham, which is always bit of a mouthful. That’s why we’ve now moved to London. Easier to say.
SSZ: How did you find yourselves at BETC? Are you finding the placement useful?
B&M: We exhibited at D&AD’s New Blood, which was visted by Neil Dawson, our creative director. Neil saw our work and must’ve liked it, which is surprising considering the focal piece was a gross spec ad we did for Veet for Men.
Anyway, we’re very glad he did and we’re learning a lot. It’s great for us that BETC isn’t a huge agency here yet. It means we’re learning from people who, in most agencies, it’d be hard to get any time at all with.
SSZ: Where did the inspiration for this taxidermy masterpiece come from? And where did you get all the critters?
B&M: We were briefed to come up with some album covers and posters, around the concept of ‘broken joy’. We scribbled down the taxidermy idea, half-formed along with a few others, on a piece of paper. Neil saw it and sort of went, ‘yeah! Let’s do that!’
The critters were all part of the collection at London Taxidermy, which is an amazing, if slightly unnerving, place. We were spotting new dead things all day and we think you could probably say the same if you were there for a whole year. That’d be a weird year.
SSZ: You guys are on placement at BETC right? How did it feel to have such an exciting creative brief so early on?
B&M: Yeah it’s been a really great project to be involved with. This is our first placement, so we dunno, maybe they’re all like this. But we suspect we’ve been pretty spoiled here on that front.
SSZ: It seems unusual that an ad agency would not only set up a record label but devote so much time to what is effectively an internal project. What do you think BETC are looking for out of this?
B&M: BETC’s got a fantastic attitude to creativity and they want to foster a really strong creative culture here. The office in France has set the bar incredibly high and the London office are keen to do the heritage justice and just make great things, some of which will be ads.
SSZ: 30,000 views in under a week – does this make you viral superstars yet? What are your ambitions and are you now addicted to the medium of the music video?
B&M: We’re really chuffed with how it’s going down. Saying that, we saw a video this morning of a dog with human hands eating Dairylea Dunkers. It had over 400,000 views so we’ve probably got a little way to go yet.
We don’t think the best creative stuff’s necessarily advertising, so we’d love to get involved with more projects like this in the future. For now though, we’re just enjoying learning and improving.
SSZ: Any advice to other young teams or single creatives? Any golden rules?
B&M: In one word, persist!! We’ve got more detailed advice on our blog though, so have a read.
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For more on Mike & Ben’s work, visit their website – the aptly-named www.mikeandben.co.uk.
As the first of a series of regular events, ShellsuitZombie brings you a film screening from the largest short film network in the world, Future Shorts.
The creators of Secret Cinema, Future Shorts are world renowned for supporting short film and the lineup for this festival is no exception. A haul including Oscars, Baftas, Sundance and Annecy Festival awards just goes to show that the films you will see are amongst the best in the world.
Filmed on an old decommissioned military submarine with 35mm cameras, Deeper Than Yesterday tells the story of a Russian crew who suffer a rather savage form of cabin fever. Directed by Ariel Kleiman, a graduate of the VCA at the University of Melbourne, recently said “The more uncomfortable I feel making a film the better it will be.” Jurors have compared the film to “The Lower Depths,” Maxim Gorky’s best-known play – very Russian with long period of isolation and madness.
Winner of International Short Filmmaking Award at Sundance.
A boy learns to play the piano in this rather dark but occasionally humorous mediation on the anxieties and fears of a modern civilized society. Created as a lo-fi animation, The External World is a surreal seventeen-minute collection of vignettes which borrows themes from pop culture, cinema and videogames – classic and contemporary. Some have heralded this short as “a unique reconstruction of the universe” while O’Reilly recently noted in an interview, “I like creating experimental films that have an emotional function.”
A detailed and humorous account of a failed bank robbery: A single take where roughly 100 people meticulously recreate an actual event that took place in Stockholm in June 2006. Directed by Ruben Östlund, these events were witnessed first hand along with his producer Erik Hemmendorff while on the way to the Swedish Film Insititute. The film questions the reality of how, really, robberies happen, and what they might or, should, look like. “Making ‘Incident by a Bank’ is a way to correct the false images of robberies we see almost daily in action movies made in Hollywood,” says Östlund.
Winner of the Golden Bear at Berlinale.
The Eagleman Stag is a unique 9-minute stop-motion animated film that depicts a man’s haunting obsession with the passage of time and his unorthodox relationship with a beetle. Directed by Michael Please, the production was a highly ambition final year film produced while studying at the RCA – it is based on a story he previously wrote entitled “The Life and Time of Peter Eagleman.” Orchestral music was integral to this film and composed in tandem with the animation process.
Winner of Best Short Animation at BAFTA, and Special Jury Prize at SXSW.
5. God of Love
Matheny, who wrote, directed and starred in this 19-minute inventive comedy about love-inducing darts won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short in 2011. A recent film student graduate at New York University, God of Love was produced as his thesis film project while enrolled at NYU’s MFA program. At the Oscars, he was hailed as delivering one of the best acceptance speeches of the evening and thanked his mother for her contribution to the movie.
Oscar Winner in 2011 for Best Live Action Short Film.
6. Luminaris
Inspired by the Argentinian instrumental tango piece entitled “Lluvia de Estrellas” (Star Rain), Luminaris tells the story of a man living in a world controlled by time by light. Each day inhabitants of this fictional world awake and are pulled, as if by some otherworldly force, to their jobs by sunlight. Combining pixilation and stop motion techniques; the surrealist short pairs styles reminiscent of art deco with black cinema. Zaramella explains, “Originally, I approached the project as a puppet animation story, but doing some pixilation tests in the gardens of Fontevraud, just for fun, the seed of the present short was born: the idea of sunlight as a magnetic force.”
Winner of the Audience and Fipresci Award at Annecy 2011 International Animation Festival
The best thing is, the whole thing will be introduced by one of the Future Shorts team. Plus you can go to the bar and still see the screen! Yeah boi.
see you there chums.
Watch this doc about 12 East London ‘shirt-done-up-all-the-way-to-the-top’s who have formed a kick-ass collective called This is it. There will be dozens of these things happening around the east end, what with all the squats and hipsters, but these guys are different in that they’re really creative. A video they made to celebrate their new working space went a likkle bit viral and led to a show in Jaguar shoes and the above edgy Vice mini doc about their work.
Now where can I get my hands on that hammer costume?
See here for the full video:
Bad Things That Could Happen from This Is It on Vimeo.
David O’reilly, the Irish-born prodigal animator Jesus*, has just released the full version of his award-winning short film ‘The External World‘ onto the interweb for our viewing pleasure (it’s just above, yeah there.) Please I beg of you, if you do nothing else this weekend, whack this on full screen, put some pants on, pour some ice cold milk on your crunchy nut cornflakes**, sit back and enjoy. It’s truly a work of genius(/madness? there’s a fine line).
*other prophets are available
**or your hung-over snack of choice.
Howdy, so we’ve been keeping a slight radio silence over the last week or two, but don’t think we’ve been resting on our laurels, oh no. In fact we went … up north. I know. Like, further than Watford even. In a mad few days with D&AD we visited Newcastle and Leeds, holding portfolio crits, workshops and the odd lecture (like above yeah?).
We met some cracking students from unis spanning the breadth and length of the North (and bits of Scotland), even learning what an interactive media course gets up to (there’s some mind-boggling work coming out of Northumbria this year) and witnessing a guy spit his gum on another person’s iPad (mid Angry Birds), pick it up, pop it back in his gob and wander off down the train. Waste not want not.
We’ll follow this post with a couple of the students we met whose work shone, but rest assured the state of design education in the North is very much alive and kicking (and it’s WELL CHEAP!).
Wowzers. Lovely stuff from those talented bastards at The Mill. They have loads more work that’s not even in this reel too including this promo for series 5 of Skins and the BBC radio idents (Zane Lowe and a big button) – with literally hundreds of lovely case studies on it their website is well worth a look.
Look at this! A sweet new video for London folksters Keston Cobblers Club‘s latest track Giraffe Junkie’ has just hit and it’s making grown men weep across the land.
There was once a giraffe who wanted to be a horse. He wanted a swishy tail and clackity feet and for his mane to wangle in the wind when he galloped over the hills. So, one sunny day he flew his rocket to the Planet Horse, to sip tea with his equine friends…but the horses were not so horsepitable. in fact, they despised the giraffe, with his silly long neck and wonky spots.
That’s a lot of cutting and snapping – bravo!
During a recent project creating ‘Bourne Identity style’ fantasy interfaces, this video was a true inspiration.Every transition, wipe, pixellate/sharpen, swipe, zoom, loading digit and fake OS imaginable is present. The film stars just don’t know how good they’ve got it.
Check out Mark’s site here.
Thousands of logos animated into an award winning short film with stunning visuals and snappy screenplay. Directed by talented Frenchmen H5, François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy and Ludovic Houplain. Watch out for Big Boy’s wandering hands…
Eric Tesroete is a 3d Artist by trade – you wouldn’t have guessed it eh. He created this head for a Halloween party out of 370 triangular planes of card before taking these beautifully lit photos of him in it. If he could make a service out of this I’d totally pay to spend some time in big-head mode (despite the fact that after a recent dusting off of our studio N64 it turns out I’m the WORST GOLDENEYE PLAYER EVER).
Airfix for Narcissists. Love it.
So this dude lobs a load of ants in his scanner then scans them for 5 years. What’s the betting he’s single. Still, at least he has his ants (not one of which you can see in this video).
It reminds me of an early version of Sim City set to a soundtrack of obscure Middle Eastern Trance. Actually, that’s sort of what it is. Enjoy.
Can it be true that I hold in my mortal hand an issue of purest AMMO?* With issue three, the cutest little inspiration mag in the planet brings us words and pics from Peskimo, Jam Factory and a favourite of ours Jessica Hische (cue glow of envy due to epic typo-crush) as well as loads of others. You can fit this baby in your back pocket but it’s jam-packed with artists that will make you quiver (ie. Pat Perry – never heard of him before but my is he good…) and is well worth picking up from the AMMO store.
*You’ll be pleased to know that our propensity to shoehorn content into barely-relevant quotes is as yet unabated.
New work from the Blu, now using more and more of the environment in his work. And bloody loads of paint, obv.
Our latest issue is out now. Click here to get it!
We have a new facebook ‘page’ (finally) – you can visit it here… w00t!
To see some of what we got up to click here…
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