Friday, September 13, 2013

The fantastic short film NOAH

"Check out this short film. It's 17 minutes long!"

Nine times out of ten, that statement would fill me with dread.  I've championed short films on this blog before - most notably some of the more impressive ones from Campus MovieFest - and I've always emphasized that shorter is frequently better.  An old film professor of mine was fond of saying, "Student films come in three lengths: long, too long, and entirely too long."

This is especially true when viewing videos online, where the sweet spot seems to be between three and a half and five minutes.  If someone sends me a 17-minute film I'm supposed to watch on my laptop, it had better be really good.

The short NOAH, from directors Walter Woodman and Patrick Cederberg is that good.  Hell, it's fantastic.  Ingeniously told entirely from the perspective of a computer screen, we get a window into the title characters relationship with his girlfriend through Skype, Facebook, Google and online chats.

When I watch a long video on YouTube, sometimes I'll pause to send an email.  I might even be typing an email in another window, or having a online chat convo while the movie still plays.  With this, I'm pretty sure I didn't touch my mouse or my keyboard for more than 17 minutes  This is the kind of idea you watch and wish you'd thought of.


I have a feeling Woodman and Cederberg are going to get a lot of notice from this. The film had its world premiere this week as part of the Toronto International Film Festival.

7 comments:

  1. Brilliant short. I love the way that it reverses the way people schizophrenically consume media on the internet. This time, I'm glued to the screen and it's the protagonist displaying the instant gratification that free access to entertainment has created.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Absolutely brilliant; I've used social media/chat forums as a tool to quickly inform a reader abt the characters' past and current lives/relationships in some of my writings; akin to taking a long slow shot of a picture filled wall; scanning through a scap book and what not

    Loved the possibility of 'redemption' for Noah, although I would probably also enjoy a story on trying to find the girl (a more substantial/optimistic take on CatFish)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cool concept.
    (Sounds like the pilot for a tv series.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. TV keeps trying to make the internet a "thing".

    ReplyDelete
  5. It holds up well for 17 minutes. They manage to introduce characters and keep it interesting. But where's the resolution? It's not a complete story in my opinion.

    ReplyDelete