Animated Shorts

The 5th Annual DC Shorts Film Festival was held this past week. There were 102 films being shown with several different categories for people to vote their favorites. I didn't attend any of the regular showcases (a group of 8-10 films), but they had a few free lunchtime showcases and I went to the Animation one on Wednesday. I got there early (45 minutes early) to find that the theatre wasn't even open yet! When they did open 20 minutes later, I was the only one in line. I was afraid that maybe I was in the wrong place. I wasn't.  People trickled in and when the films started there were only about two dozen people spread around the theater.

I thought I was going to be seeing a bunch of cartoons but couldn't have been more wrong. I'd never thought about the different types of animation that there are. Sure, there are the cartoons that we all watched on Saturday mornings as kids or the early Disney movies which were very detailed movie-length cartoons. But, there are other types of animation. I guess I knew they existed, but hadn't really thought about it much before. There's stop-motion which includes a whole variety of objects and techniques: cutout animation (Monty Python's Flying Circus), or claymation (Gumby), puppet animation (The Nightmare Before Christmas), etc. We all know about computer animation (Toy Story or Shrek). Plus there are so many ways to combine different techniques as well.

Anyway, the showcase included 10 different animated shorts. The shortest was just one minute long. The longest was 9 minutes. Some funny, some artsy, some thought-provoking. I was very impressed with the depth of these very short films and the variety of the techniques used to make them. Given the opportunity I will definitely attend another Short Film Festival and take in some of the other genres. It was fun.