JoJo in the stars

There is so much to love about this short movie. The audio is superbly orchestrated and the music & sound effects back up the visuals to create drama and intrigue.

The combination of 3D animation along with the black & white visuals creates a great canvas that is both darkly dramatic and allows the subtle gestures of the 'cast' to shine through.

The story gently unfolds and with only a few lines of dialogue and a few pages of elegant scrolling text.  Then again it's a familiar story. Male develops fascination with a local female performer, finds out they are captive of their start status and he breaks her out. Together they both feel complete but a successful star always has a lot of people who don't want them running off, during flight they are separated. She returns to her captive life while he is left badly beaten and left for dead. Then years later he is picked up by the show as the freak and they are reunited once more.

The thing I most love is the subtlety of everything in the film. Simple 3D models come to life with a 'raised eyebrow' or a smooth panning shot. Along with the combination of the 'cast' being robots and the look of an early 20th century movie the movie creates a unique environment.

The main pair are the simple worker robots and the rest of the robots are freakish, dark and shady characters from the show. The whole piece is very well timed with a good balance of light and dark, suspense and drama, intrigue and surprise.

A nice gentle break from the over attention grabbing media that is all to prevalent these days and a reminder of how powerful being subtle can be.

Replay

A short animated movie set in a post-apocalyptic world. It starts in the poisonous outside air with a woman returning to an airlock. The eerie soundtrack of howling wind and heavy heavy breathing is underpinned by the urgent beeping of the oxygen tank. Then again this is not surprising as the film is about the tape player that the woman found on that trip outside. In fact one of the appealing features of this video is it's great use of both lighting and sound.

Once inside the woman shows the tape player to her child who is instantly fascinated by it. The woman refuses to let him touch it and goes on to explain she is scavenging to make money and this is valuable. The young boy pesters the mother to let him come on one of her trips outside but she tells him it's too dangerous and sends him dejected to bed.

The next morning she wakes to find both the tape player and boy have gone, in a rebellious move he has taken the tape player outside where he can listen to it without his mother hearing. Captivated by the outside world and the audio on the tape the child wanders around while the mother frantically rushes around trying to find him.

The whole was through the video you get the sense it's all building up to a beautifully tragic ending.

The video does well in the short time to give you a glimpse into the the world and the characters personalities and an emotional roller coaster of a ride.