I/O You Some Shorts

🔗 10 Things We’re Paying Attention To

1. Kung Fury 2 Sizzle Reel Leaks Online - 2015’s Kung Fury short was a phenomenon and landed as our #1 short of that year. A feature-length sequel quickly went into production but has been in limbo due to ongoing legal disputes. Can this leak help resuscitate momentum and get the film finished?

2. Cartoon Network’s Last Gasp - A fantastic deep dive of reporting by Bloomberg examines the fading fortunes of Cartoon Network, once a jewel in the crown of Warner Bros., but now neglected after waves of corporate mergers and strategy changes.

3. Cannes Semaine de la Critique Shorts Streaming Free - Festival Scope is hosting select shorts from the Cannes sidebar event for one week. The shorts are ticketed but free as long as you sign up for a free Festival Scope account.

4. Early Shorts by Joachim Trier - The buzz out of Cannes has been muted, but reviews have been rapturous for Sentimental Value, the latest from Joachim Trier (The Worst Person in the World). Discover three student short films the Norwegian filmmaker made while at the National Film and Television School.

5. Support New Animated Proof of Concept From Oscar Winner - From Matthew A. Cherry (Hair Love) comes Time Signature, an “Animated musical about a teen prodigy who uses a magical piano to rewrite her mom's past through time loops & revive her love of music.” The project is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter.

6. Latest “Shot on iPhone” Short is from Kore-eda Hirokazu - I love these showcase shorts from Apple that hand a phone and a sizable budget to well-known auteurs and let them work their magic. Japanese director Kore-eda is the latest. Currently on screens with his debut television project, Netflix’s Asura, his 2004 film Nobody Knows was a very important film to me as a young, burgeoning cinephile, so I’m eager to check this out.

7. Short-Film Streaming Platform Lets Fans Greenlight Pilots to Series - Shibuya is an interesting new venture-backed platform that seeks to “disrupt the traditional studio system and put power back into the hands of creators and fans.” Variety covered the launch, and its creator, Emily “pplpleasr” Yang, took to Reddit to pitch the project.

8. Latest Short From ‘Short of the Year’ Winner Hits Netflix - Kyle Thrash, known for The Sentence of Michael Thompson and most recently his Ben Proudfoot team-up, The Turnaround, sees his latest Whatsapp-produced short, The Seat, debut on Netflix this month.

9. Alberto Mielgo on his Marathon Cinematic Reveal Short - We covered the premiere of the short last month, but now the Oscar-winner has sat down with Cartoon Brew to talk about the enigmatic project.

10. What to Watch This Weekend - Ordinarily, we use this spot to highlight a feature or TV project from an S/W alum that is premiering in theaters or on TV. But this week I’m going to mix it up and instead suggest you watch Spice Frontier: Espace From Veltegar. In 2020 we featured a 9-minute proof-of-concept for the Spice Frontier world and always knew that the team had ambitions of expanding it to a series. Five years later, they are back with a full 30min pilot. Check it out!

🤖 AI Corner

Google’s flurry of announcements out of their I/O event necessitates another edition of our AI news roundup.

• Google Launches Flow - Flow is Google’s new AI Filmmaking Tool, which combines its video, image, and natural language models into a single environment. Read the blog announcement.

• FlowTV Showcases Creative Inspiration - Part of this new tool is a very slick video interface called FlowTV that showcases Google-curated AI projects. The short film section currently has three launch films, including Freelancers from AI Creative Influencer Dave Clark, whose startup, Promise, recently received strategic funding from Google.

• Can These Short Films Convince People That AI is a Force For Good? - The LATimes has more details on the previously announced AI on Screen initiative, which sees Google partner with Range Media on a series of shorts. The first to be announced is a project directed by the actor Michael Keaton, based on a script by his son.

• Darren Aronofsky Partners with Google on ‘Primordial Soup’ - Indiewire reports on this new venture that pairs researchers with three filmmakers to produce short films. Aronofsky is a champion of new formats—he spoke at Runway’s first AI Film Festival and produced the launch film for The Sphere in Las Vegas. The announcement came with a trailer for the first film from the new entity, which is from Eliza McNitt, an artist well-known for her VR shorts.

• The Debut of Veo3 - Amidst all the content announcements and the intro of Flow, it was Google’s latest model, Veo3, that most excited. While only available to subscribers at the highest $250/mo tier and restricted by low generation limits, several have come away impressed with the tool, especially its seamless introduction of dialogue to the generation process. Ari Kuschir, founder of the production company m ss ng p eces and burgeoning AI influencer, showed off what he was able to create in a couple of hours with the tool.

• Moonvalley Lands $53M - Moving away from Google, Techcrunch reports that Moonvalley, creator of the “Marey” video gen model that is trained only on licensed content and which is partnered with Byn Mooser’s Asteria Studio, has received substantial new investment.

• Star Wars AI Short Film Turns Heads - Fans of the massive storytelling universe were of mixed emotions after a presentation at TED showed off an ILM-produced Star Wars using generative AI.

• DailyMotion Acquires AI Creation Tool, Mojo - Lastly, Europe is getting in on the act. DailyMotion, the user-generated video platform owned by Canal+ has purchased Archery, the parent company of the AI-assisted video creation and editing app, Mojo.

❤️ All About Love Death + Robots

Netflix’s Love Death + Robots, over the course of four seasons, has had an undeniable cultural impact. Anyone who loves short films knows that animation is not a genre and it’s not just for kids. But the series, from Blur Studio founder Tim Miller and David Fincher, drove that point home in unprecedented ways—via its unrestrained sex and violence, sure—but also its smart and sometimes funny stand-alone sci-fi stories.

Top-notch animation and VFX is everywhere—in our commercials, video games, and blockbuster films, but hadn’t been given the opportunity to take center stage creatively until this series. For these reasons, and for being the biggest short film anthology series on the world’s biggest streamer, we look forward to each new drop and last week dedicated plenty of coverage to season 4, with a piece reviewing the new season, a Shortverse collection of previous shorts from many of the projects directors, and a massive ranking of all 45 short films in the series to date.

📅 This Week on Short of the Week