Five Short Films A Tropfest-Winning Director Watches For Inspiration

We’re partnering with the HP Future Filmmakers competition to take a look at the winners, their stories and topics that matter to aspiring filmmakers and movie fans.

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Traditionally when you think of a short film, you imagine something like The Snowman; a tragic animation about loss of innocence and childhood, and a haunting reminder of our own mortality – told through the lens of flying frozen water. Or perhaps you imagine one of the aggressively energetic Disney Pixar shorts, or that horror film you saw last year which was all stop motion dirt drawings on the wall. What you don’t picture is an ad for Country Road, or eight minutes of content paid for by Cornetto.

The classical view of short films is changing, and when we sat down to speak to Jarred Osborn, director of photography (DOP) on the 2014 Tropfest winning film Granny Smith with creative partner and Wildebeest co-founder Julian Lucas, to hear what his top five recommendations were, his answers weren’t what we expected.

“There’s only one on my list that is what you’d actually describe as a short film.” he laughs. “The rest of the stuff is short videos, but more music videos or fashion or branded content.”

Osborn’s attitude to the evolving branded content market is reflective of the changing landscape of short films; companies are increasingly pairing with creatives to make short films and match up content with brands, and the beautiful and eccentric end results are a long way from the awkward, thinly veiled product placement you might expect.

As both a director and a DOP, Osborn is most drawn to beautiful shots and aesthetics.  Here he gives us an overview of what’s out there.

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Two Birds

“Two Birds is by Icelandic director Rúnar Rúnarsson. I actually watched this video because it was on a director’s list of top short films. It’s a really confronting story about some early-teen kids. There’s this one shy guy and a girl that he likes – it starts off as a classic teenage story; they go to a party and it takes a bit of a turn. The party is a bit rough, they all get involved in some questionable activities – namely drug taking. So it gets really confronting,

It’s about ten to fifteen minutes but it felt like I’d watched a ninety minute confronting movie. It was so well constructed in that format. Sometimes I think short films are more like a snippet of a longer film whereas this was just a really kind of solid beginning, middle and end, and left you as emotionally affected as a really good feature film would. I’d never had that before.”

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Life Through Wool and Summer Wonder

“There are two films that Country Road have commissioned recently; Life Through Wool and Summer Wonder. Life Through Wool stars Isabel Lucas, and Summer Wonder has Gemma Ward in it. They’re both two and a half-minute branded short content, but I guess these resonate with me because this is in the space that I’m in at this point in my career – trying to create content that is creative and engaging but also can be aligned with a brand.

“These are two pieces that are amazingly shot and have amazing scripted narration by each of the girls, talking about home. One’s on a farm and one’s at a summer house. It feels really real for branded pieces, which is where I think things are heading in terms of short fashion film and short branded content. I guess these two are pretty inspiring to me, looking at what is possible within those boundaries.”

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‘Late Night’ – Foals

Osborn’s next selection is a music video for the song Late Night by Foals. “The video is directed by Nabil and it’s a couple of years old. The reason I like this is because it’s a music video, but the song is really just a vessel for this three pronged story about birth, death and creation.

“It’s all set in an Eastern European bar slash hotel and Foals are playing in the bar while in the hotel there are three stories going on simultaneously. A lady is giving birth in one room; in the next room two people are having sex; and in another room this guy is contemplating killing himself.

“Even though it’s morbid and dark, all of these things are being done at once, the cutting between the elation of this lady giving birth and these two people having sex and this guy who’s stringing up a rope with this chair…it’s a really beautiful juxtaposition. It’s incredibly well put together. Being a cinematographer, half the time it resonates with how well something is shot, as how good the story is.”

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Innovation

Innovation is another example of branded content which takes the form of a motivational series of sports montages in which the brand, Under Armour, is featured in the form of clothing but not otherwise mentioned.

“It’s about a year old. Again, it’s branded content, but the story is extremely engaging in its own right. It doesn’t matter that people happen to be wearing the garments of the brand – that’s kind of a side note to the vibe of the rest of the film. Again it’s just really amazingly shot, with crazy locations. That stuff probably engages me more than narrative-based short film at this point because it’s the stuff that we’re creating as well. It’s got a really well written narration that’s fluid and ambiguous, but at the same time kind of inspiring, and coupled with really crazy imagery.”

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40 Love

Osborn’s final selection is from a series of shorts, named Cupidity. “More branded content” he laughs.

“Cornetto, the ice cream brand, sponsored this series. It’s got nothing to do with ice cream. They’re eight to ten minute shorts and there’s one with Lily Allen called 40 Love, as in the tennis score. It’s based around this professional tennis player and a line umpire who has a crush on her, and it’s this kind of odd story of them, I don’t know if you’d say falling in love, but ending up having this little romance. It’s really cute, and it’s really well shot.

“It’s just one of those things where I appreciate a big company trying to support good content without pushing advertising in your face everywhere. It doesn’t even have an ice cream in it. I would say that it is one of the more clever little pieces I’ve seen in the last year or so. There’s a whole series of them, but this one’s my favourite.”

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This piece is part of a series supporting HP’s Future Filmmakers competition. You can vote for their films to help them win cash grants!  Plus play in the #HPTagiIt competition – get your creative juices flowing to come up with taglines for the finalists’ films and you could score great prizes such as a $5,000 Flight Centre voucher!  Visit youtube.com/hpaustralia to get involved and for T&Cs.

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Elizabeth is the editor of Voiceworks, and has been published in Film Ink, Metro, The Punch, and Lip Magazine. She tweets terrible puns@ElizabethFlux.