A shape-changing bear learns to be himself in A Work in Progress. © Wes Ball.

A Work in Progress
Being a student filmmaker is a lot like being a starving independent filmmaker, with the added bonus that the student doesn’t have to pay for any music cues. Everything in the school library, and the student’s library, is up for grabs, and don’t you just love the soundtrack to Shawshank Redemption? What works in support of a feature film with a two-hour dramatic arc, however, can totally derail a short film. Henry’s Garden, an otherwise charming short with a wonderful signature image of a garden overrun by runaway car tires, turned out to be unwatchable because of its screamingly overwrought musical score.

A Work in Progress, the third-year thesis project from Florida State University film school student Wes Ball, is a morality tale about a lonely girl who makes friends by making up stories, and its bathetic story line is further caramelized by its appropriated soundtrack. In live action sequences that open and close the piece and reappear as interstitials along the way, a young girl sits under a tree at the edge of a field full of other young people tossing a ball in an orgy of wholesome fun. With no one to talk to, the girl takes out a pad and draws and speaks aloud the story of a bear without a friend. The bear tries to buddy up with, and make himself look like, a turtle (who retracts into his shell), a frog (who hops away across the pond), and a bird (who remains airborne as the bear’s improvised wings fall apart leaf-by-leaf and he plummets from the sky).

Hey, did you know that the best thing you can do is just be yourself? I read that somewhere, I think. The bear learns it, the girl learns it (when slowly, one by one, the crowd in the field becomes the crowd at her feet, hanging on every word of her story), and you learned it just now when I told you. So, best of luck with your lives, everybody — go and be well. The animation in the piece is actually very well done, and the character acting is terrific, particularly considering this is the artist’s first animated piece. But it’s like the old Disney dilemma — every project has to be singularly expressive, so they hire Gerald Scarfe to design Hercules; but nothing about it can be unpalatable or weird, so Alan Menken scores and Michael Bolton sings. The results offend no one, and engage even fewer. A Work in Progress aims for middle-middle and scores a bullseye, and as Mr. Miyagi warned, “Walk down middle, sooner or later get squished.”

A cat has to perform Tricks for a Treat. © Jeff Mednikow.

Tricks for a Treat
Tricks for a Treat is a keen comic scherzo from animator Jeff Mednikow. In this traditionally-animated piece, a cat named Shadow perches on the kitchen linoleum anticipating a tasty tidbit from his owner, but the woman refuses to relinquish the goody until kitty does its trick. It has to be special, this performance, or no num-num; so Shadow proceeds through a series of ever-more outlandish shenanigans to earn the mystery morsel. At under two minutes this is way too short for me to be any more specific, so if you can find a copy for yourself, enjoy.

The animation is sturdy and the acting robust, quite appropriate for an animator who has already worked and interned for Nickelodeon, Bill Plympton, and New York’s Noodle Soup Productions. Tricks for a Treat was created by the animator as his third-year project at New York’s School of Visual Arts, from which Mednikow is scheduled to get his degree in May 2005.

Taylor Jessen is a writer living in Burbank. His checking account number is available on demand (deposits only, please).