The Sound Machine

The Sound Machine is a short film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s short story of the same name. It was directed by Zahid Chohan in 2008 in association with Leeds Film Making Society.

As an adaptation it is so-so in purity. It captures all of the important moments, but not in the way in which they were written, though their order is the same. Also there is no Doctor that Klausner goes to see or get help from, the film is mostly just Klausner with a brief appearance by a girl killing flower petals in place of Klausner’s neighbor cutting roses from their garden. That being said, the message and essence of the story still carries over so not everything was lost. However the cinematography is beautifully shot and cut together. There is a feeling akin to but not quite the same as A Man Without a Head in the style of shooting, though obviously this one has much brighter coloring to it over all.

The point with this short film, much like with the short story is to play with perceptions of reality. Klausner wanted to hear sounds that were higher pitched than humans can normally hear, and what he got was the shock that plants scream when cut. Well, logically, since plants are living things and most living things do not like having their bits cut off, then perhaps plants cry in a range humans cannot hear. The metaphor being that there are many things with which people deal with everyday but they do not necessarily fully understand it. Humans do not really understand everything about the environment and as such we do a lot of harm to it, sometimes without noticing. This short film wants people to take more noticed of little things and how we interact not only with nature but with each other. There are things people scream in their heads but never say a peep about, as good friends people should be able to notice with other are having these non-spoken problems and help them address them. This makes the bond between people stronger and more supportive, much like taking care of nature makes the planet stronger and more able to support life.

This short film can be watched below:

Fin d’Ete

Fin d’Ete / The End of Summer is an animated short film which was created by Patrick Harboun, Ronan Le Fur, and Joaquim Montserrat in 2006 during their studies at Supinfocom, a top animation and computer graphic design school in France.

The website for this short film can be found at: http://www.findete.com/

Patrick Harboun, one of the creators of this films, states in a youtube posting that

“The storm symbolizes the woman’s inner strife at losing her child. The tree represents her deep connection to this place where her child died. Throughout the story, she slowly decides that she wants to die in order to be reunited with her lost child. At the end, she smiles peacefully, finally at rest with death. The petals at the end symbolize the peace that has returned after the storm.”

However, while as one of the creators and as a person, his ideas are perfectly correct, I also think that the films meaning should be able to stand outside of the explanation that is packaged with it.

There is a part where the women puts a teddy bear on an unmarked grave next to a tree shedding red leaves. As the grave is unmarked and the viewer has no idea who this women is other than an inhabitant of this small, tropical town, that whole scene could mean something very different depending on the context the viewer sees it in as related to their experiences in life. The grave could be anyone’s; her child, a person she know as a child whom died young, it could even be herself as a younger person. If the last situation is the case it could mean that this women is so disconnected from who she was before that she grieves their passing since, even if she did not particularly like herself in that mind frame, it was still a very important part of framing her life.

This short film also does what books do, in that when things are meant to be sad, it rains. This happens for a reason in both written and videographic literature. Water is used for baptisms and other spiritual purposes and as such as come to mean a type of purification, removal of sin, or a restoration of something lost. The rain is meant to “balance” the character in a way that more aligns them with themselves. The of course, the women walks herself into the sea to drown; very Enda Pontellier of The Awaking. When Enda comes to terms with the fact that she is in a loveless marriage and her relationship with her lover Robert will not continue well she decides that rather than to disgrace her children she goes to the place she learned to swim and drowns herself. This relates because this is similar to what the women in this film is doing, coming to terms with the harsh realities of life and making a decision to drastically alter her reality.

This short fim can be watched below:

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe is a 1980’s documentary short film about the director Werner Herzog by Les Blank. It is more specifically a short film about Herzog eating his shoe al la Chaplin The Gold Rush style, after making a deal with Errol Morris, which said that if Morris finished his film Gates of Heaven Herzog would eat his shoe. The second shoe Herzog saved to be eaten for when the film got picked up for distribution.

The short film, after Herzog’s brief comment about declaring Holy war on commercials, starts with the polka song called “Old Whiskey Shoes” being played as the camera is zoomed in on Herzog’s shoes as he gets off the plane and walks around town a bit. This helps to give the shoes a bit of a background as they are not something that is eaten everyday, the cinematographer wants the audience to know that these are not just any shoes, but that they are Herzog’s shoes and that he has in fact worn them.

It is also of note that Herzog mentions in the middle of the song that cooking is one of the only alternatives to film making, which is fitting in this situation since he has become the subject of the film rather than the director, so he would be in need of an alternative thing to be doing. Cooking, in this case, as cooking is also an art of creating something out of various actors (food products) to makes a final presentation (of a film, or of a dish).

At about the middle of the film, Herzog mentions that he did not originally plan to eat his shoe in front of the audience for Gates of Heaven, but he wanted to set a good example of encouragement for other film makers who might want to start producing material. In this way Herzog sort of solidifies the idea that anything really is possible if people put their mind to it – and that no matter what, from eating a shoe or running into cactus plants like he mentions later on (he also says “it is not self-destructive to through yourself into a cactus”), people are really extraordinary and the strength and willpower and determination to follow-through with ideas and actions can take a person far and help them reach their goals in life.

Film Can Be Found Below:

The Oval Portrait

The Oval Portrait is a 1934 black and white silent short film based on the Edger Allan Poe story of the same name. It was directed by Richard L. Bare who would later go on to create the Twilight Zone television series. That Twilight Zone feel is reflected her through his choice of a piece that contains a story-within-a-story. Also a note, this film goes from being rather dark in its color tone to parts where the shots are nearly whited out, so if possible watch it one a computer or television with a high contrast setting.

This short film starts with a man getting stuck over in an abandoned French house for a night, wherein he discovers the oval portraits and the story of the man so passionate about painting it that he let the model, who was also his wife, die in the process.

As an adaptation of a short story, I find it works well and does its best to stay true to the source material while still adding the directors own artistic license to the story. As far as the acting bits go, I do rather like the choreography with the horses in the field even though their were no mentions of horses in the short story. The characters of the painter and his wife are future fleshed out in this film than they are in the short story and the audience actually gets to see them interact and fall in love, where as in the story it was very to the point without much character development at all.

Paddle to the Sea

Paddle to the Sea is a 1966 short film based of the children’s book of the same name, it was produced by the National Film Board of Canada and directed by Bill Mason. It was nominated for an Oscar in 1968 for best live action short film, however it did not win.

This film is a commentary about nature, and the dangers to it that humans can cause. Paddle because he is traveling through nature, and is additionally shaped like a Native American, becomes nature’s point of view. The times Paddle is in the most danger are when the children try to play with him (the 1^st being the child that fishes him out of the water, the 2^nd with the dog and the stick [“it is odd to think that in this peaceful place Paddle was in danger”), when he is traveling through the shipyard locks and is between the wall and large boat (where the people on board try to catch him with a bucket), and when he is near the forest fire, and the part in Detroit with the sewage dump (“for a little creature like Paddle the world of men was dangerous, dangerous and dirty”) where he nearly gets caught in a net. On the whole the animals ignore Paddle, there is a frog that hops into his boat to hid from the fish below, and a snake crawls over him, but he is never endangered by the animals. Likewise, he is frozen during the winter where he is “kept safe” during the harsher months of the year.

The only human that does not accidentally threaten him during his journey is the lighthouse keeper, because the lighthouse keeper in out in nature by himself and thus shares a camaraderie with Paddle. The lighthouse keeper takes Paddle, who has been aged and worn by his experiences as peoples and nature both are, and repaints him. Paddle is then released to the lines “Who knows how far you’ll go, who knows how far you’ve come”

So this short film is also about life as a journey. Not only for humans but also for the world they inhabit and the object that they create, everything has a lifespan. Paddle’s journey reflects the journey of water, and the cycles of the seasons, the journey and flow of which are very fundamental to the construction of life because if they were to change much, it would change everything else is a domino effect. All things have a use value, and when they fulfill their uses is when and where their journey is.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is a 1962 short film based on a story by Ambrose Bierce and directed by Robert Enrico. This short film was featured on syndicated television when it was re-edited as an episode of The Twilight Zone. This film also won best short subject in the 1962 Cannes Film Festival, and then went on to win the 1963 Academy Award for best live action short film.

As an aside, there is a lot of snare drumming going on, which adds the weight of the military feel to the execution and helps set up the time frame of the film as within the Civil War.

This short film is mostly notable because of how it manipulates time and perspective. The majority of the film takes place within Peyton Farquhar’s (the main character) head. However, due to the quick successions of close ups on his face as the soldiers are preparing to hang him, the audience is not made aware of a transition of perspective from that of reality to that of Peyton’s mind. As the film unfolds the audience goes along with Peyton’s escape, believing it to be real, to only have this perspective torn away from them at the end just as he is running towards his wife, and is then hung in real life.

This also reflects the human psyche as when people are being prepared to die, often it is assumed that they think of those that mattered the most to them, or they think of ways to escape, or things they have regretted. In this case it would seem Peyton wishes to escape, because he loved his wife and regretted not having spent more time with her in life, a division present in the film from the image of Peyton just as he is actually reaching is wife, is a representation of an emotional or connective divide between them. It is only that when he is put on death’s table that he realizes that he wished he had been closer to her, symbolically reflected in the very long distance and amount of time it takes for him to cross the house’s lawn to get to her.

Additionally, Peyton’s struggle to return to his normal life is the struggle of his mind to preserve his life, as it runs him through this scenario for escape in an attempt to motivate the body the escape so the mind may live.