This commercial from Germany is exquisitely shot and carries an incredibly powerful message about domestic abuse towards women. It’s clever in both the craft that has gone into the actual production itself as well as in the way it keeps you guessing until the end what the precise message is. I felt the Snow Patrol esque music was a little over the top though and they could have created more of an atmosphere by using a more subtle track.
This is quite simply one of the most delightful shorts I have seen this year. Beautiful cinematography combined with the timeless car-journey classic game of word association is played out with intricate attention to detail. The film comes from Everynone, a production company based in New York.
A couple of moments in the film stood out for me. The shot of the piano dropping from a large building for instance. I’d love to know how they created this shot. My gut feeling is that they used miniatures. If they did it’s fantastically clever, incredibly executed and a stand-out moment in a film filled with stand-out moments.
I also really enjoyed the moments that reference love. The ‘falling’ moment as the two adolescents cuddle was subtle and I only recognised it in the second viewing. The ‘break’ moment as the couple ended their relationship was brilliant captured too. The skill required as Directors to be able to paint a scene like that in a few short seconds is indeed admirable.
A final note must go to the audio. The soundtrack, created by Unseen perfectly fits the tone of the film. Furthermore the way they integrated sound into the piece, from the wind rustling through the trees through to the sounds of a lady in a retro film exclaiming she’s “fallen down and can’t…” is impressive. The ease at which they combined so many different elements and yet at no point as a viewer do you feel anything but relaxed, when it would be so easy to leave your viewer feeling jarred.
I rarely find poetry appealing. At its best it can be enlightening and enthralling. Unfortunately, more often than not it’s unrhythmic and lacking insight, an impenetrable jumble of overly long words designed to swell the ego of the author. Which is why it’s so refreshing to stumble upon a poem that is so utterly fantastic.
The below film has taken YouTube by storm. It’s already generated over 400k views and has been featured on a wide range of large profile blogs. The film itself is simple enough, a young woman wandering from place to place alone. I can see why so many find it so endearing yet I myself wasn’t particularly enthralled by it. The amateurish graphics felt repetitive and not particularly well crafted and I felt the cinematography could have been better.
In contrast I was spellbound by the poem. Being alone is an increasingly common part of modern life and yet it’s something that for me never feels quite right. This poem offers a compelling argument for seeing the beauty in solitude. It’s well worth 4 minutes of your time.
