BSA206 S2W2 : Don Hertzfeldt

We looked at Don Hertzfeldt this week, his shorts Rejected (2000) and The World of Tomorrow (2015), which we watched in class were both nominated for academy awards.

Rejected (2000)

In the past I have seen some of his work, specifically It's Such a Beautiful Day, which is about schizophrenia and based on some real life experience in Hertzfeldt's life. Going into these films today that is the kind of thing I expected and considering I remember that being quite boring I wasn't really looking forward to it. I re-watched it and it's much better than I remember, although I do much prefer the start to where it eventually ends up going.

I did become very tired by the films we watched, but in a good way. His World Of Tomorrow shorts have a dreamlike quality that I loved.

One of the biggest things I took away from the films we watched in class, especially The World of Tomorrow, is that the simplicity doesn't at all detract from the effectiveness of the narrative and it didn't at hinder the film in communicating its ideas.

I like the idea of making

At the same time the humour is  abi g par tr \of

This is hard to explain.

What I mean is that there is a lot of potential for real storytelling if you take a more simplistic approach (?)

A lot of science ficiton films don't have interestifn

"because this stuff is, in a way, such a broad parody of science fiction to begin with"

Rejected (2000)

This film seems to me, and from what I gathered everyone else in the class, to be extremely similar to the meme culture that we have now. It is innovative for its day (in 2000 I don't think anyone had really pinpointed this as an effective brand of humour yet) but now it almost comes across as derivative. It's been copied and used as inspiration so much since its release that now it seems safe and predictable. All the jokes weren't as shocking or spontaneous as they would have been back in the day because we've grown so accustomed to this style and format. The web series ASDF being a good example of this style being produced even cheaper, on a lather scale and for good financial returns.

For this reason I think my reaction to the film was more mild than it would have been back in the day - and this is coming from someone who usually doesn't subscribe to the logic that films can drop in the perceived quality over time. I still appreciated it for what it was, found it entertaining and believe it feels genuine, but a lot of the jokes seemed predictable and not as developed as they potentially could have been.

Something that really surprised me in the commentary for Rejected is that the animation was done before sound was added, this meaning the dialogue as well. Very unusual for an animation and I can only imagine how weird it must have been to lip sync to. It is something I noticed a couple of times throughout the film but I took it more as some odd stylistic decision.

I think the academy awards saw its innovation though and I believe it does hold a place in the history books, specially considering the culture that would follow.

The World of Tomorrow 

I really really liked World of Tomorrow, it's definitely the better of the two for me. Speaking from a sci-fi perspective I think it did a great job emulating the weirdness of the genre and its art (seen on like old pulpy scif fi novels and such) but I also loved that it could be a sci-fi thing so effortlessly and still explore some interesting high concept ideas that would require a large budget if done for film. It has the same sense of narrative freedom that one gets when reading a science fiction novel, it reminded me of Orson Scott Card  (because those are my only real experience with science fiction writing) in that the ideas themselves became more the driving force of the story.

"It can be seen as a story about perception" is what Hertzfeldt said about It's Such a Beautiful Day and I think