Music & Cinematography

📅 This Week on Short of the Week

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Flutz was a random discovery for our team while trawling Vimeo, something once common, but now rare. However, we were instantly captivated by the sports-movie premise of this piece which, as you may be able to tell from the bird and star heads of the skating rivals, is just a biiit off-kilter. Brooklyn illustrator Ryan McCown is a talent to keep an eye on.

The opposite of a filmmaker discovery would be Sam Davis, who has been involved in four S/W featured shorts previously, as well as the Oscar-winning documentary Period. End of Sentence. Partnering with Trust, the intriguing new sister company of Filmsupply that we first encountered with Anderson Wright’s The Diver, this film is a drama inspired by real-life, which Céline calls “relatable” and a “heartwarming watch”.

The multi-disciplinary artist Nieto has just set a Short of the Week record for the longest time between appearances on the site. We featured a (very pixelated) recording of a live animation performance the Columbian artist gave back in 2007, mere months after starting S/W. Now, 16 years later, he’s back with an Autour de Minuit jam that adopts a Japanese Emaki manga style (hand-drawn side-scrolling animation) to tell the story of a boy with a dental superpower, whose face is coveted by the entire animal kingdom. Rob calls it “truly unlike anything we’ve seen before.”

Finally, Rob wrapped the week with the latest in “The Importance Of…” series, an on-going interview strand where he talks to prominent non-director S/W alums to learn more about the various disciplines that make up filmmaking. This time he hits on cinematography with Charlotte Hornsby who shot back-to-back Sundance Jury Award winners for Anu Valia and Mariama Diallo. Charlotte delivers sage advice on aspects of her craft that up-and-coming cinematographers, but also writers and directors who want to work with talented cinematographers, would be wise to learn from.

🪐 Shortverse Collections

Deep Focus: Our Favorite Cinematographers

Inspired by our interview with Charlotte, this week’s freshly curated collection is a round of eye-popping shorts from some of our favorite cinematographers. There is a theme in here, see if you can spot it!

🔦 Shortverse Spotlight: Film Festival Gent presents “2×25”

We want to turn you onto a supremely cool project—Film Fest Gent celebrates its 50th anniversary with 25 new short films that debut today and we’ve got them all on Shortverse.

Each film pairs a new composition from a prominent film composer like Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings) or Mihály Vig (Sátántangó, Werckmeister Harmonies) with either an established (Paul Schrader, Jia Zhangke) or up-and-coming director (S/W alum Diana Cam Van Nguyen). Rather than shape the music to the film, here the music inspires the form, narrative, and texture.

From program director, Wim De Witte, “Directors often tell us that they draw inspiration from film music when writing. With this project, we wanted to give the world of composer and director a creative twist by having filmmakers work on original compositions, rather than the other way around.”

Film Fest Gent is also behind the World Soundtrack Awards, so the project is deeply symbiotic with what the organization is all about. Discover the 25 projects in a collection at the link below and please leave reviews to help guide your fellow viewers on which collaborations are worth their time.

🎟 Coming soon that we’re excited about…