Short Films - suggestions and help
- Thread starter IdleRich
- Start date
I thought he pulled it out of the bag at the end, but I lost patience with it fairly early on and it never really drew me in. I didn't care where it was going or get much out of any aspect of it. It just passed the time and I found the ending a little chilling.
Nah, I just happened to watch it myself recently. I should have reread the thread.
Have you seen this one? "The perfect human" by Jorgen Leth.
It was the starting point for lars von trier's "the five obstructions"
Which is OK, not great, not as good as the original short.
He's an interesting one is jorgen leth. Lives in Haiti, where he makes "sexy films".
He's also done a good doc about the tour de france
Perhaps entertainment can shed some more light, cos Leth is Danish
It was the starting point for lars von trier's "the five obstructions"
Which is OK, not great, not as good as the original short.
He's an interesting one is jorgen leth. Lives in Haiti, where he makes "sexy films".
He's also done a good doc about the tour de france
Perhaps entertainment can shed some more light, cos Leth is Danish
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
Herzog gets a lot of hate but this fits the bill
IdleRich
IdleRich
So another short film night goes by... I'll the films I showed here for reference
Peter the Penguin (Andrew Rutter)
The Chair (Curry Barker)
12.01 (Jonathan Heap)
The Cat With Hands (Robert Morgan)
Still Life (John Knautz)
Still (Oliver Park)
Also I've started collecting email addresses so I can notify people about future events... but I fear I've made a rod for my own back cos I said it's gonna include reviews and essays etc over time - fuck knows where they will come from. It seems I may have accidentally started a fanzine, will need help from @catalog I guess.
Also if anyone wants to pass me their address to get on the mailing list... or to submit a review, please DM me.
Peter the Penguin (Andrew Rutter)
The Chair (Curry Barker)
12.01 (Jonathan Heap)
The Cat With Hands (Robert Morgan)
Still Life (John Knautz)
Still (Oliver Park)
Also I've started collecting email addresses so I can notify people about future events... but I fear I've made a rod for my own back cos I said it's gonna include reviews and essays etc over time - fuck knows where they will come from. It seems I may have accidentally started a fanzine, will need help from @catalog I guess.
Also if anyone wants to pass me their address to get on the mailing list... or to submit a review, please DM me.
IdleRich
IdleRich
I'd recommend this one
This month, having exhausted my supply of guaranteed winners from my memory I had to bite the bullet and do some research ie watch loads of short films. And, what's that saying? Ninety-nine percent of everything is rubbish? Something like that anyway and it certainly applied here. After seeing a certain amount I began to lose a bit of perspective, or at least I worried that I had, I felt I was struggling to discriminate between bad and good, especially cos many things I watched and thought were average at best were lauded with gushing praise in the comments section. I began to worry if I'd lost my compass when it came to separating the nuggets of quality from the mounds of mediocrity that surrounded them.
So that film above, The Chair, was a relief in that it was different and it sort of confirmed that I was right not to settle for the mundane stuff. That said, the premise here - man brings home a spooky old chair that turns out to be haunted - really didn't grab me and I almost skipped it. Can a chair even be spooky?
And to be honest, as a film it is flawed, I'm not sure the storyline holds up, plus it feels as though some of the dialogue which is used to break the rule of cinema that says "show don't tell" is clunky and doesn't achieve even that as well as it might.
But... but, what the film does have is a couple of moments in which the director conjures up genuine discomfort in unexpected ways. After wading through countless jump-scares and twist-endings, the scenes in this which made the hairs stand up on my neck were particularly refreshing in that they defy easy explanation. Just as after a nightmare you struggle to explain to someone quite why those giant carrots were the most terrifying thing you'd ever seen, the best moments in The Chair are odd and creepy and it's hard to say why.
So for me, those moments when the film achieved this were enough to justify its inclusion above many other glossier, tighter and better plotted films. Moments of (dark) magic that the other things couldn't touch, and which in fact are rarely touched at all... I've been trying all the way through not to make the obvious comparison but if the line "I told you I was in your house" means anything to you and maybe causes a tiny shiver, then check out The Chair.
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This month, having exhausted my supply of guaranteed winners from my memory I had to bite the bullet and do some research ie watch loads of short films. And, what's that saying? Ninety-nine percent of everything is rubbish? Something like that anyway and it certainly applied here. After seeing a certain amount I began to lose a bit of perspective, or at least I worried that I had, I felt I was struggling to discriminate between bad and good, especially cos many things I watched and thought were average at best were lauded with gushing praise in the comments section. I began to worry if I'd lost my compass when it came to separating the nuggets of quality from the mounds of mediocrity that surrounded them.
So that film above, The Chair, was a relief in that it was different and it sort of confirmed that I was right not to settle for the mundane stuff. That said, the premise here - man brings home a spooky old chair that turns out to be haunted - really didn't grab me and I almost skipped it. Can a chair even be spooky?
And to be honest, as a film it is flawed, I'm not sure the storyline holds up, plus it feels as though some of the dialogue which is used to break the rule of cinema that says "show don't tell" is clunky and doesn't achieve even that as well as it might.
But... but, what the film does have is a couple of moments in which the director conjures up genuine discomfort in unexpected ways. After wading through countless jump-scares and twist-endings, the scenes in this which made the hairs stand up on my neck were particularly refreshing in that they defy easy explanation. Just as after a nightmare you struggle to explain to someone quite why those giant carrots were the most terrifying thing you'd ever seen, the best moments in The Chair are odd and creepy and it's hard to say why.
So for me, those moments when the film achieved this were enough to justify its inclusion above many other glossier, tighter and better plotted films. Moments of (dark) magic that the other things couldn't touch, and which in fact are rarely touched at all... I've been trying all the way through not to make the obvious comparison but if the line "I told you I was in your house" means anything to you and maybe causes a tiny shiver, then check out The Chair.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Do us a favour guys, watch this 2 min video. It's gonna be a kind of trailer for the night, I guess the final page will contain all the info for the next night. Taras and I (mainly Taras) have just hammered together a load of clips from the films we've shown so far to be a trailer for the night.... right now it's that stage where we've totally lost objectivity
and can no longer tell if it's good or bad so need to get an unbiased perspective.
He'll edit out the watermark that is visible in some scenes, but would be very grateful to hear any thoughts (good or bad) on what you see
MILD SPOILERS IN THAT IT SHOWS FINAL OR CRUCIAL SCENES FROM SOME FILMS - ALBEIT OBSCURE STUFF FROM THE SIXTIES
If there's anything you think looks wrong or stupid then feel free to say, and vice versa. And I guess the idea is to get across that we are showing lots of strange and left-field shorts - but I suppose it can't help but represent the type of films we show in that it's made out of them. Whatever, let us know.
Thanks very much
and can no longer tell if it's good or bad so need to get an unbiased perspective.
He'll edit out the watermark that is visible in some scenes, but would be very grateful to hear any thoughts (good or bad) on what you see
MILD SPOILERS IN THAT IT SHOWS FINAL OR CRUCIAL SCENES FROM SOME FILMS - ALBEIT OBSCURE STUFF FROM THE SIXTIES
If there's anything you think looks wrong or stupid then feel free to say, and vice versa. And I guess the idea is to get across that we are showing lots of strange and left-field shorts - but I suppose it can't help but represent the type of films we show in that it's made out of them. Whatever, let us know.
Thanks very much
IdleRich
IdleRich
What cameo?
There are guns... but remember it's made entirely from the films we've shown so footage is limited.
What's wrong with the cutting, is it out of time? Is there a specific bit or all of it or what? The idea it's longer clips at the start, from the intros of the films - mainly La Cabina and Bloodthirsty Fairy cos they both involve men setting a trap by leaving something - and then later on the clips get shorter to build intensity and we show the ends of those films, when she chops his dick off with the razor...
Wait up though, Taras is admitting that some of the editing is a bit sloppy and he hoped noone would notice, he's gonna try and tighten it up now.
There are guns... but remember it's made entirely from the films we've shown so footage is limited.
What's wrong with the cutting, is it out of time? Is there a specific bit or all of it or what? The idea it's longer clips at the start, from the intros of the films - mainly La Cabina and Bloodthirsty Fairy cos they both involve men setting a trap by leaving something - and then later on the clips get shorter to build intensity and we show the ends of those films, when she chops his dick off with the razor...
Wait up though, Taras is admitting that some of the editing is a bit sloppy and he hoped noone would notice, he's gonna try and tighten it up now.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Ah we're not, but that would have been really funny, wish I'd thought of it.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
IdleRich
IdleRich
Basically, the idea was to include all the films that we've shown so far. It struck me that two of the films - La Cabina and The Bloodthirsty Faery - both have a similar idea in that a group of anonymous men deliver an item which becomes a trap. In La Cabina it's the phone box that the guy gets trapped in, in the fairy one, it's a metal drum containing the beautiful naked fairy who seduces the guy and then cuts off his dick. So I suggested we use those two as the basis, the start of the trailer is cutting between the start of the two deliveries with long cuts, and then towards the end you see the climax of both films. We put those together a few weeks ago and then the idea was to just chuck in cool clips from the other ones in between. So I went to Taras' place today to work on that, but he's gone ahead and done it already - I knew he'd chucked some stuff in roughly but I'm perfectly happy with it and decided there was no changes that really needed to be made. Some of what he's done is pretty clever too I think although you probably need to have seen all the films to get what he's done - same with the narrative too. I guess it's not really a trailer as such but a film that will be sent to people on the mailing list and hopefully they will have seen the films so maybe they will spot that sort of stuff.
One example is how at 0.42 you see the fairy get out of the drum and then walk to the door and then get her throat slit from behind - except that those are totally separate films, it just tricks you into thinking it's one sequence. Also, I like at 1.47 you see the guy being hanged from the bridge in an Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge and then it cuts to the cuddly toy hanging in The Mascot.
Funny thing is that Taras has a new flatmate who works in marketing and he looks like he's about fourteen or something, we got him in to ask what he thought and he was saying we gotta change it for tiktok/insta and although it's a good video in itself, if you want to make a promo vid it should be an absolute maximum of thirty seconds, ideally less. And I guess he knows what he's talking about, cos like I say this doesn't really work as promo in that it's really for people who have seen the films - so I guess we will make a 20 second long edit, just entirely out of THE most dramatic scenes, let's see how that goes...
One example is how at 0.42 you see the fairy get out of the drum and then walk to the door and then get her throat slit from behind - except that those are totally separate films, it just tricks you into thinking it's one sequence. Also, I like at 1.47 you see the guy being hanged from the bridge in an Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge and then it cuts to the cuddly toy hanging in The Mascot.
Funny thing is that Taras has a new flatmate who works in marketing and he looks like he's about fourteen or something, we got him in to ask what he thought and he was saying we gotta change it for tiktok/insta and although it's a good video in itself, if you want to make a promo vid it should be an absolute maximum of thirty seconds, ideally less. And I guess he knows what he's talking about, cos like I say this doesn't really work as promo in that it's really for people who have seen the films - so I guess we will make a 20 second long edit, just entirely out of THE most dramatic scenes, let's see how that goes...
IdleRich
IdleRich
I get it now, you thought that blond guy with the baseball bat was me... I mean, you've never met me and I guess he's the same kind of thing in a way.
Those are actually clips from a film called Still Life which is pretty dark. This guy drives into a town and he knocks someone over, gets out of his car and realizes it's a dummy. In fact the whole town seems to be populated by creepy dummies that only move when you're not looking at them. He let's himself into a house and breaks up all the sinister dummies with his bat... and then you hear police sirens and the police turn up and it sort of fades into reality, and you realize he's just coming down from speed psychosis after a meth binge - and he's brutally beaten an entire family to death.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Yeah that's what I think. I'm sure that this fucking pencilhead knows how to get it more views on Tiktokogram or whatever, but I'm not trying to go viral round the world, I'm trying to get the right thirty odd people from Lisbon to come to the room and watch what I choose. We've edited together clips of every film we've shown so far to make this vid and so it will work just as much as a reminder to people who have previously come along as it will as an advert for people who have never been. I'm not really interested in making it shorter to bring in people with shorter attention spans - what's the point of tricking people into coming if they won't be able to sit still for a whole film anyway*? His advice is no doubt right as far as it goes but it starts from the mistaken premise that our aim is to get it clicked on by as many people as possible. We've done the night four times, the room has about 25 seats max and on three of the four times we've had people who have to stand so it's not a huge priority to get more people, I just want to keep it in the mind of those who do come.
I've just got loads of ideas for the future and I want to get more people involved in every way that I can. It turns out that the bar has just changed hands - the owner actually told the new guys that they have to keep this night going, which is nice of him, but if I don't sort of feel that the new owners support it in the way that Mattias did then I will want to look for a new place. And I mentioned this to a few attendees and it turns out that they have gone to other bars and asked the staff about availability, which is something I found really touching I guess, but also it told me that we are managing to get lots of people invested, feeling that it is their night. Which has really been my aim from the start.
I'm very excited about doing this newsletter thing and getting people to contribute some writing. I've messaged loads of people and asked them to send something - and to my surprise a lot of them have said yes. I'm gonna be interested to see what comes in cos it's all kinds of people from loads of different countries and backgrounds. I've told them the criteria for getting stuff into the newsletter is
1. It must be a bit of writing that is vaguely about films
2. I've got to like it
Do you fancy writing something @catalog? I've already twisted @DannyL's arm and a few other friends in England such as that guy Iosu who made the weird tentacle film. It would be fantastic to have some dissensian contributions.
*though that said, it would actually be fun to make a twenty second edit and I think we are gonna do one, not cos Mr Market said so but cos it will be cool.
I've just got loads of ideas for the future and I want to get more people involved in every way that I can. It turns out that the bar has just changed hands - the owner actually told the new guys that they have to keep this night going, which is nice of him, but if I don't sort of feel that the new owners support it in the way that Mattias did then I will want to look for a new place. And I mentioned this to a few attendees and it turns out that they have gone to other bars and asked the staff about availability, which is something I found really touching I guess, but also it told me that we are managing to get lots of people invested, feeling that it is their night. Which has really been my aim from the start.
I'm very excited about doing this newsletter thing and getting people to contribute some writing. I've messaged loads of people and asked them to send something - and to my surprise a lot of them have said yes. I'm gonna be interested to see what comes in cos it's all kinds of people from loads of different countries and backgrounds. I've told them the criteria for getting stuff into the newsletter is
1. It must be a bit of writing that is vaguely about films
2. I've got to like it
Do you fancy writing something @catalog? I've already twisted @DannyL's arm and a few other friends in England such as that guy Iosu who made the weird tentacle film. It would be fantastic to have some dissensian contributions.
*though that said, it would actually be fun to make a twenty second edit and I think we are gonna do one, not cos Mr Market said so but cos it will be cool.
Fucking pencilhead!
Yes I can write something about massage the history, I note you have never shown that though. Did you not like it? Or just tell me what to write.
I'll dm you my email. And I'll also send you a link to the short films I've directed, but I doubt you'll wanna show them.
Yes I can write something about massage the history, I note you have never shown that though. Did you not like it? Or just tell me what to write.
I'll dm you my email. And I'll also send you a link to the short films I've directed, but I doubt you'll wanna show them.