YouTube Play - The Winning Entries Part 1 | AWN

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YouTube Play - The Winning Entries Part 1

By Sharon Katz | Friday, November 5, 2010 at 6:58 am

Posted In | Blog Categories: YouTube, Op-Ed, Mass Media | Site Categories: Art, Awards, Films, Short Films

The YouTube Play jury is made up of experimental artists.

There are no Academy rank filmmakers.With that in mind, let's take a look at the first five of the twenty-five winning entries.

Note that there's at least some form of animation in all of the films. Which tells me that animation's star is rising in the art world.

Still from the short film Auspice.

AUSPICE, 2010 by Bryce Kretschmann (b. 1974, California; lives in Newark, New Jersey)

This is a mashup of full frontal video of various American news anchors talking to the the camera (which is really us), reporting whatever it is they want us to believe. As the faces morph into each other, the images reveal strangest expressions and gestures. Set to a Gregorian monk like recording of male a cappella vocals.

A still from Bear Untitled – D.O. Edit

BEAR UNTITLED – D.O. EDIT, 2010 by Christen Bach (b. 1978, Kolding, Denmark; lives in Berlin)

Mario-like animation of a bear who no longer loves a hunter. The visuals are classic early gaming style with heavily aliased imagery. The real strength of this piece is the tension created by the opposing expectations set up by the audio and visuals (think Phil Malloy.)

A still from Bathtub IV

BATHTUB IV, 2009 by Keith Loutit (b. 1973, Melbourne; lives in Coogee, Australia)

This is really neat speeded up live action footage of a coastal region and the everyday things that go on there - ships in the sea, beaches full of people, helipcopters lifting off. What makes it special is the toy like feeling created by the very short focal length of the video (the foreground is in tight focus while the mid and backgrounds are blurred). This makes us wonder - are these human beings or a bunch of playthings moving around in a bathtub.

A still from the short film Birds On The Wires

BIRDS ON THE WIRES, 2009 by Jarbas Agnelli (b. 1963, São Paulo)

This is such an elegant little piece. The backstory is the director, who is also a composer, looked out his window one day and saw a group of birds sitting on some electricity wires. They looked like musical notes on a staff, so he marked the arrangement down and developed it into a lovely textured piece of music. The video is simply pans and close-ups of the birds as themselves and as musical notes.