366 Weird Movies is a project to create a list of the 366 Best Weird Movies of all time – one movie for each day of the year and an extra for leap years. Every Saturday they feature a weird short.
Scritch-Scratch did pretty well for itself in the festivals and on youtube, but not everyone gets this strange little film. It really made me happy to see that it ended up on the Saturday Shorts list on October 16th.
We’re honored to be included on the List with shorts like MUTO and Vincent as well as A Clockwork Orange, Donny Darko and many more feature films that I respect and admire.
You can suggest a weird film to make it on the List! I’ve just suggested Jack and the Beanstalk, the Japanese version from 1974 and I plan to nominate more of my favorites.
Today, I bring you animated sequences from Spun (2002 independent film by Jonas Åkerlund)
The animation suits the grungy, druggy, and vile cult film. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Spun. Looking back to old trailers when writing this post, I hate to say it reminds me of Requiem For A Dream. I don’t like comparing the two – who can top Requiem? But Spun holds a special place in my heart as far as frenetic drug freak films are concerned and BONUS, it features some quality animation by animator Murray John.
The scene depicts an intense pornographic hallucination. It’s pretty graphic but I dig the use of animation here, where the artist literally has no boundaries.
On a Michael Cera binge again, I decided to throw Youth In Revolt to the top of my Netflix queue and finally watched it. Delighted by Cera’s character as usual, I loved the film – but I’m a classic nerd and I’m much more excited about the fantastic animation sequences which were lightly besprinkled throughout.
Peter Sluszka directed 6 animations, of which 4 were chosen for the final cut. Each section was created using different techniques. Sluszka talks about his work in this interview.
Stop motion – the opening titles seamlessly linked the live action and the animation.
Pixelation – shot with a digital still camera against green screen, thousands of the images were then printed and photographed again for the final animation.
Traditional 2D Animation – hilarious … he does shrooms and then hallucinates, obviously the perfect time to introduce another animated bit. And since he’s a virgin, of course he’s going to visualize people having sex. The couples were drawn and colored by hand then added to the live action in post production.
Flash – used to create legendary ending credits. Lizzi Akana was one of the many animators who had worked on this section and she’s pretty sick, check out her stuff. Among other things, she’s worked on Superjailand MGMT’s popular music video, Kidswith Henry Thurlow.
How can you animate a character if you don’t know what he looks like from all sides?
I don’t create a rotation chart every time, but it is a good idea! This little guy looks alright to me, but there are obvious flaws when he spins around.
Every year the Woodstock Film Festival gets better and better. Last week we attended the 2010 festival with some seriously cool highlights.
1. From the left, my fiance flew to NY from England that morning to surprise me. BONUS!
2. The Woodstock 2010 Festival trailer Joy, James and I created was a huge hit and got a great response from the audience. Click here to watch and see how it was made.
3. Saw a brilliant film called “Don’t Quit Your Daydream,” produced by John Loar and Adrian Grenier. It’s about a band, The Good Listeners (Nathan Khyber & Clark Stiles) as they road trip through America recording their third album. Go out and buy it immediately and while you are at it, check out their other albums.
4. The Animation Screening was sold out BOTH days! The psychedelic and sexy films were very well received by the hippies. In the photo from the left: Signe Baumane, Peter Ahern, James Buran, Bill Plympton, Noelle Vaccese, Joy Vaccese and Dustin Grella.
5. We saw Luke Matheny, director of a short called, “God of Love.” It’s a great film we caught at the Martha’s Vineyard festival a few weeks ago.
6. We recognized Nathan and Clark from the Good Listeners at the after party. They are really cool guys and got us on the guest list for a show they were playing at Levon Helm’s Barn.
7. Concert at Levon Helm’s. It was a rad experience, The Good Listeners opened and played a mind-blowing show and Levon Helm’s Band was incredible.
8. We had to leave to get to the Awards ceremony. Got there late to find that Peter won Honorable Mention for his animated short, Down to the Bone. He wasn’t there to accept his award because we were at the coolest concert ever. Congrats anyway, Peter!
9. Oh yeah! And Keanu Reeves won the Best Actor Award. WHOA!
To see more photos of the Woodstock Film Festival 2010, click here.
