Out and About

🇫🇷 Annecy Updates

• The festival kicked off by presenting legendary animator Joanna Quinn with an Honorary Cristal. Quinn took the opportunity to promote the Gazan animator, Haneen Koraz, who spearheads animation workshops for kids, while Theodore Ushev, after a special premiere of his new short, took to the stage to declare, “Fuck Putin, fuck Trump, and fuck Netanyahu, fuck the fascists”.

• Animation Obsessive is on the ground and shared early impressions, including highlights from Michel Gondry’s talk.

• Curious about the shorts? Lots of previews were released ahead of the fest, spotlighting films in the program, including from Variety, Cartoon Brew, & Animation Magazine. We previously put the competition shorts in a collection.

• One of the most anticipated shorts is The Girl Who Cried Pearls, the latest from Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, responsible for the stop-motion classic, Madame Tutli Putli. Jennifer Wolfe interviews the duo and profiles the film for Animation Mag.

• The corporate invasion of American media companies at the fest is well-established and the cause of some consternation for purists, so there are a ton of announcements from Netflix, Pixar, Warner Bros that are interesting, but not our purview. One particular announcement caught our fancy, though. The Elephant is a special Adult Swim project that teams up legendary creators Pen Ward, Rebecca Sugar, Patrick McHale, and others in a collaborative, almost exquisite corpse-style special.

• The official festival awards arrive tomorrow, but special partner prizes, including the Vimeo Staff Pick Award, were just announced. Congrats to the winners!

🔗 10 Things We’re Paying Attention To

1. 100% AI Ad Runs During NBA Finals - A lot of hype and consternation about this online, as AI-influencer PJ Accetturo dives into the process behind his AI commercial, made in 48 hours with Veo3. It’s not the 1st AI commercial on the airwaves, but probably the most prominent effort yet. I find it impressive, but also don’t like it, and it clarifies for me some of the misgivings around AI. There are no David Fincher’s in AI as it exists now, and these efforts feel like a step change reduction in visual storytelling to concept and writing. Accetturo brags about how simple his shot list and prompting are, and he gets what’s acceptable to the script, but care and intentionality are lacking. Does this matter for advertising?

2. Disney Sues Midjourney for Copyright Infringement - Huge news here, as the entertainment giant files a 110-page complaint against the GenAI company. Midjourney is one of the biggest players in image generation and is days away from unveiling its entry into AI video to the public. But, it is also not backed by a trillion-dollar corporation, and is now existentially threatened by this suit.

3. The Ankler Dives into the Rise of Microdramas - This is something I’ve been tracking for a few months now, and The Ankler digs into the billion-dollar phenomenon of these soapy vertical shorts of 60-90 seconds apiece that serialize and monetize via apps. The main story is paywalled, but reporters Elaine Low and Natalie Jarvey discuss some of the takeaways of their reporting in this free 30min podcast. To me, this is, unfortunately, a content model tailor-made for AI.

4. Michael Sugar on Brand-Supported Filmmaking - The Oscar-winning producer and manager has been on a multi-year campaign to have companies turn over portions of their vast ad spend to fund Hollywood-level entertainment projects (disclaimer: Sugar23 is an investor in S/W). We’ve covered their past initiatives, including the formation of a new brand-focused studio, but this interview with McKinsey is the deepest articulation of his reasoning yet. If you think brands will have a big role in the future of filmmaking, this is worth a read.

5. Experience a Haptic Feedback Trailer on iPhone - That’s Apple CEO, Tim Cook, promoting a cool new feature in support of the company’s latest blockbuster movie. Haptics has been part of video games for years, and rumble seats are in theaters, but Apple has now brought it to the phone. Is it a gimmick, or will it stay? And will creators be able to access and design for the feature in the future?

6. YT Horror Sensation, The Backrooms, Gets Greenlight - Last week we mentioned cinephiles being dismissive of the Philippous’ latest feature due to their backgrounds as YT creators, and now news is out that A24 has given the go-ahead to a feature directed by 19-year-old Kane Parsons based on his hit YouTube videos. We covered one of them on S/W in 2022.

7.  Don Hertzfeldt to Curate Animated Shorts Theatrical Program - The program is through Ink Films, the newly launched distribution arm of not-for-profit The Beverly Theater, and plans to hit North American theaters in the Fall of 2025. In Animation Magazine, Hertzfeldt is quoted— “Animated short films are a vital part of our cinematic ecosystem, and I’ll always leap at every opportunity to bring the work of amazing artists to the biggest screens we can find.”

8. US House Votes to Cut Funding to Public Broadcasting - NPR has the story of the vote, which narrowly approved cuts of over $1B over the next two years. The cuts still need to go through the Senate, but could be fast-tracked after that. You can register your support for public broadcasting at https://protectmypublicmedia.org/

9. Tom C J Brown Launches Kickstarter - Brown, an S/W alum with his animations Teeth and Christopher at Sea, is embarking on his live-action debut, a short titled The Last Man. Inspired by a host of films, including the iconic 1980 fantasy short Black Angel, the filmmaker asks us to imagine “Call Me by Your Name meets The Northman”. Check it out and contribute!

10. What to Watch This Weekend - Our highlight of alum project releases returns this week with a pair—Barron’s Cove, is a new indie feature from Evan Ari Kelman. Indiewire profiled the project this week, and the film hit theaters and VOD thanks to Well Go USA. Check it out. Also, Michael Pearce (Keeping Up With the Joneses), just debuted his Sydney Sweeney and Julianne Moore thriller, Echo Valley, on AppleTV+.

📅 This Week on Short of the Week