This is a series of videos I’ve been meaning to post about but it eventually slipped my mind with all the stuff going on right now. These videos are the first three documentaries featuring a backpacker’s journey through India. There are over 20 parts of these and MANY other documentaries that come afterwards.

They are produced by a highschool buddy, Emil Kaminski, who randomly ran into some of my Webtertainment.tv vids on YouTube back five years ago (at least that’s how I remember it)… so, a decade later I discover he’s been teaching in the east and traveling abroad for many years… and STILL going strong. The best part is that now he’s putting these beauties out and they are a much watch for fans of both video podcasting, traveling abroad, or indie documentary productions. These are amazing quality and deserve funding ASAP! I’m doing my part to support Emil’s efforts and wish him much luck!

You can follow his stuff on YouTube under “monkeetime” and make sure you have HOURS to put aside to keep up with his prolific creations!

I heard about this a few days ago and thout it was great but not enough to blog… even though it WAS a pug and it WAS it saying Batman. Now, someone taking the time to synch it to the old Batman intro = gold… and a surmounting desire that this could be my pug one day.

Mogwai (my 7-month old pug) was dead asleep on my lap when I started playing this video and he startled awake and was entirely transfixed on my large-screen tv for the video’s full run before falling back asleep. He was learning, I tell myself.

Aaron Schoenke, through his Bat in the Sun Productions, has floored me with 30 minutes of amazing. It baffles me how a fan can put together such a robust short film like this on a “small budget”. I say small in relation to the exuberant Hollywood $$$ figures. The plot in this film is very straight forward which keeps the production clean and easy to follow. The costumes, setting and actors do a great job as well–and come on… SCARFACE is in it? I friggin love Scarface, he’s easily one of my favorite rogues.

Considering the production team pretty much consisted of Aaron Schoenke and his brother, I’m simply going to be floored for years to come just as I was with the first Batman fan film I saw called Dead End. If you have 30 minutes free and wanna to come face to face with ultimate fan dedication, watch this! You won’t be disappointed!

What a glorious piece of work this video is. It follows the journey of a solitary creature as he deals with loneliness and inner turmoil. This independently produced animation is done entirely in Flash CS3 by animation artist, Adam Philips. Digging up info on him I came to discover he left Disney in 2004 to create his own ideas with this Brackenwood series and has become one of the highest ranked artists on Newgrounds. That alone becomes a great inspiration to me.

I particularly enjoyed reading his thoughts on the direction for Bitey and his opinions on “controversial” uses of narration (which I find quite enjoyable):

Sure he’s a spiteful little turd, but he’s not evil to the core. I now want the world to know who he really is and why.. to prove that there’s more to the character and his world than anyone imagined. For that purpose, I believed narration to be a suitable expository technique, despite how unfashionable it may be in the eyes of today’s screenwriters and snobbish film students. I know (just as some others wish) I could have made this movie entirely without narration, but I’ve said a number of times since LotD’s release that I have a soft spot for the spoken storytelling tradition which is something that I grew up with.

This totally needs to be made into a feature film. I love hearing stories like these and am always in support of ideas that go against traditional (and tiresome) commercial executions and delivery of entertainment. Kudos to Philips and much luck!

Holy crap, this is a work of madness… and by “madness”, I mean PURE genius–LOGORAMA is a 2010 Oscar-nominated, 16-minute anumation where French directors François Alaux, Ludovic Houplain and Herve de Crecy created this world of over 2,500 brand logos in the course of six years.

Summary from News in Film website:

Ronald McDonald is a machine gun-toting fugitive running from the police played by foul-mouthed Michelin men. The E! logo topples amongst the other brand skyscrapers. Big Boy gets into mischief. The Jolly Green Giant tries to hold back a stampede of animal logos.

BAAAHAHAHHAAAAaaaa… haa.. oh… haha. I love dinosaurs. This made me laugh by myself. And that’s fun. Ya.

From YouTube:

Completed in January 2010, The Moon Bird is a dark fairytale about an orphan girl who must outwit a terrible sorceress with the help of a magical lunar bird. The film is a short animation fifteen minutes long funded through the UK Film Council, Screen WM and CHANNEL 4.

From the Brother’s McLeod Site:

We’ve never done this before but we thought we’d take you through the process, the ups and downs, the long nights and early mornings. We’ve got to deliver the film by August so it’s going to be a busy few months.

The film is titled ‘The Moon Bird’. The story came about after Greg challenged Myles to write a Brothers Grimm tale. We’re going through script tweaks at the moment and Greg is working on style sheets, character and layout design.

Here’s an animation by Andy Hueng done in 2005. This is interesting, creepy and thought provoking. Here’s the short blurb from YouTube:

A machine with a doll face mimics images on television screen in search of a satisfactory visage. Doll Face presents a visual account of desires misplaced and identities fractured by our technological extension into the future.

I found this some time around Halloween–not sure exactly why I never posted this already. Just came back up while checking starred items in Google Reader. I had to share it. I know I will never look at bubble-wrap the same way again. Now I can’t help making that horrible horrible whining pitiful weeping when all things in my life at the moment seem defeated. This video is done by Arthur Metcalf and has hit up some festivals: It depicts that last moments of horror for a society of sentient bubble-wrap bubbles. Creepy.

Oh my holy what the crap! For those afraid of clowns… I hope this doesn’t make you afraid of pencils.

Director: Christian Simmons
Official Selection of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival
Produced by Dandy Dwarves production company