I meant to have this done within a week of the con being over. That didn’t quite happen.
Often with these videos I run into editor’s block. There’s always one point where I just can’t figure out the right clip to match the song, and it stalls me. Then I stop and decide to come back to it later. And despite how much I really want to get it done, “later” sometimes means months later.
But it’s here now, so…
You can also watch it on YouTube if you’re on an Android phone or iPhone, but only because you can’t watch Vimeo on those. Seriously, only click that link out of necessity. If I catch anyone watching this on YouTube because they actually prefer it over Vimeo, I will smack them in the face with the Internet. No joke. I will literally pick up the Internet and hit someone with it.
If you’ve been anywhere near the Internet lately, you’ve probably heard that there’s been a lot of violent reactions to the likely-fraudulent Iranian elections (If you rely on television or newspapers to hear about current events, then you have an excuse for not knowing). While the streets of Tehran are filled with protesters and trigger-happy police, the pressure is on other world leaders to make a choice: acknowledge Ahmedinejad as President and condone his totalitarian tactics, or walk away from negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear program.
This tense situation leaves a burning question in the mind of everyone in the world: what would this situation be like if the disputed Iranian President were a tarantula?
This femto-length film is my attempt to answer that question:
I don’t have much to say about this, as I feel it speaks for itself. I should mention, though, that once I figured out the best workflow, this film took an average of under one hour of work per second of finished animation. It’s 268 seconds, and I completed all the art, animation, and sound editing in less than a week. Granted, about 36 hours of that work happened consecutively; I totally would have done stuff like eat and go to sleep if it wasn’t due at 6 PM yesterday (it was a project for my Editing class). Nonetheless, a 3600:1 ratio of work vs. finished footage is, I’m willing to bet, significantly lower than mainstream hyper-expensive Hollywood productions, and would probably be feasible for a high quality film if only I was working with someone who was good at drawing. I’m not implying that I created a Pixar-quality film, but it’s technically on par with Dragon Ball Z, if not artistically.
I decided that I wanted to experiment with making a movie with a complete three-act structure lasting somewhere around 15 seconds. In extremely technical terms, I definitely achieved that goal, but most people will just see this as random. That’s fine with me.
Anyway, here’s a 15 second movie depicting Nintendo employees as people with D-Pads for heads:
If you’d like to see it in HD without full-screening it or if you’re reading this on a “mobile device,” check it out on YouTube.
I call this a “femto-length” film because it’s astronomically shorter than a “short film,” and the “femto-” prefix is smaller than both “nano-” and “pico-”. So yeah, that’s REALLY small. Not quite as small as “yocto-“, but this movie isn’t quite thatpointlessly short.
Maybe it’ll catch on. Maybe not. But if it doesn’t, I’ll cry.
