Hasta La Motion!

Montreal-based Malcolm Sutherland is a busy guy, creating self-initiated short films ranging from meditations on the beach to Mayan-inspired space travel to contributing to Star Wars Uncut. His new short, Umbra, is a wonderful wormhole of a film. The precocious character will bring a smile to your face and the unraveling story is a welcome break to a busy day. Don’t scrub ahead or you’ll break the space-time continuum… or maybe do once it’s all said and done to reconstruct it.

Malcolm was kind enough to answer some questions about Umbra and the (beneficial) emptiness of existence. Interview and Credits after the jump.

Also- If you’re a fan of Malcolm’s work, there’s more goodies on his vimeo, including the more experimental/synesthetic Light Forms and Forming Game.

The Astronomer’s Dream had a very ornate cosmic-futuro-mesoamerican design. Umbra, on the other hand, uses very simple (but charismatic) shapes. Was that a decision informed by the story?

I think the design in Umbra had to be simple to convey a sense of emptiness that was key to the film. There is an idea in Buddhism which is that everything in existence is empty – this isn’t nihilistic, it just says that at the core everything is empty of a concrete, fixed, self; and the truth behind the form is that everything is transient and interconnected. For me contact with this “emptiness” can be both wonderfully liberating and a terrifying thing! So in my mind this is basically what the character in the film is confronting. A simple yet organic design seemed necessary to get that sense of pervasive “emptiness” into the film. I think it was important to have that contrast with to the dense inner voyage of the character.

Also regarding The Astronomer’s Dream, you described it as “my first ‘real’ attempt at a narrative film”. Was there anything you learned from that film that informed the making of Umbra?

I learned a lot about pacing and editing, for sure. I think the rhythm of Umbra is more subtle, and I would like to keep refining the rhythm of my films in this direction, more like a song; Umbra feels more balanced and less laboured to me. I think Astronomer’s Dream was more of an editorial challenge because of all the visual detail. Also a lot has evolved for me in regards to showing a more rich inner world for my characters, but in any case I still feel like I have a shit load to learn! Maybe when I am 90 I can make something truly awesome.

Do you have a lot of awesome dreams involving outer space travel?

Ha ha, no! I mostly dream about exploring nature and sex. Last night I dreamed I was a woman! Ha ha, my dreams are probably more like crazy inner space travel.

How do you balance time between work and creating personal films?

In a perfect world I would never do anything unless I loved it, so, as much as possible that’s what I try to follow…. I don’t want to be rich or famous – so basically if I can pay my rent and eat; whenever I am above the poverty line, so to speak, I usually won’t work again until things get hairy ….. it always feels like a bit of a leap of faith but I like to think I will get “paid” in other ways too. You know, like extra games of frisbee and long mornings with my lady.

What are you up to now?

Well I am gonna be a dad soon, thats pretty exciting, I’m stoked – although I have no idea what I am in for. Maybe the kid can help me make films, ha ha ha! I got his (her?) whole life planned already. Otherwise I am working on some animated segments for a documentary feature and working on a couple films. One is about wrestling and the other is about this shaman guy who loses his mind and is reborn. I don’t know where any of this is going though.

Credits
Directed by Malcolm Sutherland
Music by Alison Melville and Ben Grossman
Foley by Leon Lo
Sound Design/Mix by Malcolm Sutherland

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Yum Yum are Beth Algieri and Jonny Plummer, two directors / designers with a common passion for creating new and exciting things.

24-year-old director Saman Keshavarz has had a lot of success with first times. After scoring big time (YDA, Clio, Emmy) for his apparently first commercial – a kind of trashy looking but charming Canon ad – he took SXSW’s Best Music Video Awards for his first music video. Although the video is already a bit older, we didn’t want to keep back on this one. It’s unusual narrative is reminiscent of the classic Prodigy’s Smack My Bitch Up, but takes the idea further. Enjoy!

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Impactist – Last Heist EP is a new album from the Portland duo. They created four uniquely genuine short animations for each of the tracks, that fit the musical aesthetic perfectly.

Upgraded from a quickie, we felt that everyone should see how self-initiated projects like this can extend your portfolio and flex your creative muscles without the restraint of a client or online contests rules and boundaries.

Spheremetrical (Here With You)
The Magical Number Seven
Micrhomage (Community)
Looking For You

We asked Impactist to contribute a little bit about their thought process…

Like everyone, our brains are always running.  We haven’t found the off switch.  So, in between other projects and life itself, we’re developing and making projects that we want to make.  This is just what we enjoy doing and feel compelled to do.  We don’t need a prompt like spec projects or contests for us to create.  We’re just not into those exercises.  Painters paint, photographers expose, and musicians compose.  We personally enjoy all those mediums and more and are well aware that we are extremely fortunate to live in a time where technology permits it and the actual social community condones it.  These are really special times.

Last Heist is one such collection of those ideas we’ve acted on.  A small, simple album of tunes we enjoyed making and promos that were made in response to the tracks themselves.  We think small is good.  Get in and get out, try not to waste time, and hopefully make something that is at minimum engaging for ourselves, and at best also relatable or of interest to an anonymous audience that brings their own tastes and opinions to the projects.

These are just fun projects that are initiated without any sort of pressing agenda.  The album title comes from the the idea that characters in film and television often cite their “last heist”, but it most often never actually is their last.  Much like this isn’t a last anything for us either.

We’re not tied to any one technique and we work in many spaces.  The music is a combination of real and synthetic instruments and field recordings.  The visuals include live action and still photography, film and video, paper sculpture, wooden models, practical fire and smoke effects, and other optical and graphic techniques developed specifically for the set.

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Simple is beautiful. In Lights, Paranoid US and new SF-based agency, DOJO, keeps it simple and retells the classic story of boy meets girl. With director Sophie Gateau at the helm, the piece dually functions as an advert for LG and a music video —similarly named— for electropop artist, LIGHTS.

At the heart of it, the piece is a canny take on an old story —fancying a straightforward approach to create something elaborate, yet deceptively simple. Technically, the piece is exquisitely executed —so well that, on multiple viewings— the animated images appear to be the result of practical effects. The kicker is that it wasn’t. In a most spectacular display of CG stagecraft, Gateau, with a background in CG and motion graphics, utilized her skillset to the utmost degree. To sum it up:

“Utilizing motion control to shoot the available 45 pre-production models , Sophie shot twenty passes–moving the phones along in each pass. The Paranoid Design Studio team then assembled the passes, tracked animated characters and environmental drawings, and composited them into the scenes.”

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