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Animation Show: Volume 3 (The)
R1 - America - Paramount Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (29th May 2008). |
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The Show
 The third installation of the Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt produced “The Animation Show: Volume 3” (2007) continues the series of shorts compiled into a feature length presentation. All of the directors and animators are independent from major studios or student projects, and while sometimes this hurts the short as it seems more like a technical demonstration as a final project for a course or senior animation thesis, but this also helps to add a good deal of variation to the project. With directors ranging from Don Hertzfeldt, famous for academy award nominated animated short film “Rejected” (2000), to Joanna Quinn, famous for Charmin toilet paper commercials, the styles are various and keep the film moving from short to short incredibly effectively. As a whole, the shorts in general are demonstrations of style over substance, where a clever or fascinating animation style supersedes any kind of narrative structure, but for the most part the style is clever enough to get by without any kind of narrative at all. Max Hattler’s “Collision,” the fifth short on the disc, is a perfect example where style is all that’s needed as the viewer is taken through a big kaleidoscope on film. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Mike Grimshaw’s "One D", which is clever enough in presenting a one dimensional animation, but the points for being clever don’t make a great animation. All together, the show has some good shorts and some incredibly mediocre shorts, but only a couple of them are actually genius. First, Hertzfeldt’s “Everything will Be OK” is a bizarre look at an everyman character, Bill, who apparently must deal with a vague fatal disease and debates the meaning of his life. Hertzfeldt’s signature style of stick figures and creative use of the medium in breaking the screen into thought bubble like pieces, with strange narration and incredible ambient noise, the DVD is almost worth buying, not renting, just for this 17 minute short. The second is Guilherme Marcondes’ “Tyger,” which features a big tiger puppet moving through a giant model of Paris who turns the city into a jungle. This short’s blend of puppetry, miniatures, and traditional animation really grabbed my imagination just because of how cool the puppet and the animation style looked. Overall, each short on its own is worth watching once. Some are incredibly average in animation style and humor, but since the animation show is about an 1 hour and 45 minutes of short films, it moves on to the next piece soon enough that the experience is incredibly satisfying. A must see if you want to see some great animation style, a few genius short films, or just have a short attention span. There are 16 short films presented on this disc and they include: - “Rabbit” (2005) by Run Wrake (8:14) - “City Paradise” (2004) by Gaëlle Denis (5:57) - “Everything Will Be OK” (2006) by Don Hertzfeldt (17:00) - “Collision” (2005) by Max Hattler (2:30) - “Astronauts” (2005) by Matthew Walker (8:21) - “Carlitopolis” (2006) by Nieto (3:30) - “No Room For Gerold” (2006) by Daniel Nocke (4:52) - “Guide Dog” (2006) by Bill Plympton (5:46) - “One D” (2005) by Mike Grimshaw (4:38) - “Tyger” (2006) by Guilherme Marcondes (4:50) - “Versus” (2006) by Francois Caffiaux, Noël Romain and Thomas Salas (5:37) - “Learn Self Defense” (2005) by Chris Harding (5:05) - “Abigail” (2006) by Tony Comely (6:16) - “Shuteye Hotel” (2007) by Bill Plympton (7:00) - “Dreams and Desires” (2006) by Joanna Quinn (9:55) - “Game Over” (2007) by Pes (1:35)
Video
My biggest complaint is that all the shorts are presented in a full screen 1.33:1 aspect ratio, shorts that are presented in widescreen are non-anamorphic. This doesn’t take anything away, but it just leaves something to be desired. Otherwise the video is really crisp, the cinematographic styles vary between directors, but the composition and clever framing in Hertzfeldt’s short really stands out. The transfer seems very clean, but again the letterboxing on the handful of shorts that are widescreen is a little frustrating considering “The Animation Show” makes a theatrical run.
Audio
The only track here is a Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo (all films are not in English, but all are in stereo). I keep going back to Hertzfeldt’s short, but here the audio makes incredible use of ambient noises with the narration, sometimes jarring or creepy, but overall an incredibly effective use of sound. Unfortunately, the disc isn’t quite as effective, there’s no setup option from the menu to change your sound settings, or add any kind of subtitles. There are subtitles on the handful of films in languages other than English, but those are forced and the idea that you can’t turn on subtitles on the English language material for the hearing impaired is a little irresponsible.
Extras
Paramount has released this DVD along with an introduction three interviews, and some text interviews, an animatic, a featurette along with some bonus trailers. Below is a closer look at these supplements. First up is a “Beavis and Butt-head Introduction” that runs for 1 minute, the hapless duo welcome you in their unique way to this collection of shorts. The first interview is with Gaëlle Denis, director of “City Paradise” the 3rd short, runs for 6 minutes and 21 seconds, almost a minute longer than the short itself. This makes the interview format make some sense, as the shorts may not give the director enough time to talk. Denis talks about the inception of the film, and talks about the style, it’s worth listening to at least to try and figure out what went on in the short. The second interview is with Max Hattler, director of “Collision” the 5th short, runs for 4 minutes and 2 seconds. He talks about his inspiration for the kaleidoscope styled short and the music, but he’s really soft spoken and you need to turn up your speakers a bit to hear him. The third interview is with Joanna Quinn, director of “Dreams and Desires” the 16th short, runs for 8 minutes and 17 seconds. Quinn talks about career’s growth from college to the world of animation through the film festival circuit and commissioned work, and the character that features in “Dreams and Desires.” Another nice introspective look. There is some DVD-ROM Content in the form of text pdf interviews that are with the rest of the directors, and run anywhere between 2 and 8 pages, most discuss the style, the story inspiration and the technique of the shorts. It was nice to hear a little from all the actors, but I think that these could have been made more accessible from a DVD player rather than having to go into the actual DVD files through a computer. There’s an animatic for “Abigail” that runs for 6 minutes and 19 seconds. This features the film from rough pre-visualized storyboard sketches, to the motion captures, to the rough animation over the motion capture, to the final project. This is a really interesting behind the scenes look at the animation process for “Abigail,” a short which did a lot more motion capture and composite work than I originally thought. “An Introduction to MTV’s The Maxx” featurette runs for 8 minutes and 4 seconds. This clip covers an MTV cartoon that aired during the mid 90’s, based off of the comic book of the same name. Rounding out the extras are bonus trailers for other MTV shows that include: - “The Animation Show Volumes 1 and 2” runs for 1 minute and 8 seconds. - “Rob and Big: Complete Seasons 1 & 2” runs for 40 seconds. - “Human Giant: Season 1” runs for 2 minutes and 6 seconds. - “Aeon Flux: The Complete Animated Collection” which runs for 1 minute and 11 seconds. - “Beavis and Butthead: The Mike Judge Collection” that runs for 1 minute and 39 seconds. I wish at least they could have had Hertzfeld and Judge sit down and give a commentary on the whole show, but unfortunately there’s no commentary track anywhere on this DVD.
Overall
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