YouTubers Took Over Horror

🔗 10 Things We’re Paying Attention To

1. YouTube Shorts to Horror Auteur - It’s the talk of Hollywood at the moment. Curry Barker is the toast of the town, Markiplier is selling his theatrical hit digitally this Sunday, and this invasion of online talents hits a crescendo tonight as Backrooms fills theaters. For Short of the Week, I wrote about this phenomenon and put together a 10-film collection that contextualizes this recent rise, highlights precedents, and offers up 3 S/W alums I would suggest to continue the trend.

2. The Twenty-Six-Year-Old Behind “Obsession” - We shared a major media profile of Kane Parsons last week; this newsletter, it’s Curry Barker in the New Yorker. 

3. What No One Tells You About Short Films - Reigning Oscar-winners Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh, specialists from shorts distributor par excellence Salaud Morisset, and Kickstarter’s Head of Film Strategy sat down with Indiewire’s Chris O’Falt at Cannes last week, and the 48min conversation is now available to watch.

4. What Happened When Boots Riley and I Made the Same Film? - We featured Nana Duffuor’s Rainbow Girls on Short of the Week last month, and found its tale of “resistance against gentrification and systemic inequality” to be infectious. We didn’t realize that a hi-profile feature was set to release that covers the same topic in I Love Boosters. Duffuor, with humor and grace, describes in a Substack post what it’s like when a more prominent artist covers the same topic.

5. Fascinating Feature Doc on the Beginnings of Computer Animation - I haven’t gotten a chance to get through it all yet, but Animation Obsessive turned me on to this great new doc streaming for free on YouTube. The description: Inside the Works is a feature-length documentary about the NYIT Computer Graphics Lab, a facility that attempted to create the first computer animated movie. Housed in a one-hundred-year-old pink mansion in Long Island, the lab made large advances in digital paint and animation. Kickstarting Pixar, creating the alpha channel, and making art with every new tool they could muster, this is the story of the forbidden pink house in Long Island.

6. Next Round of Grantees for The Displacement Film Fund - I’m an admirer of this initiative headed by Cate Blanchett through her role as Goodwill Ambassador for the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, and in partnership with IFF Rotterdam. The program “champions and funds the work of displaced filmmakers, or filmmakers with a proven track record in creating authentic storytelling on the experiences of displaced people,” and each grantee receives €100,000 for their short.

7. Trailer for Primetime from Lance Oppenheim starring Robert Pattinson - We have an abiding love for Oppenheim, an incredibly talented filmmaker we’ve featured on numerous occasions and who we partnered with during Covid lockdowns to launch the #Sheltershorts initiative. His star keeps growing after the success of his HBO doc series Ren Faire, and now we’ve got a trailer for his scripted debut, an intriguing drama about the ill-fated TV show, To Catch a Predator.

8. Amazon Greenlights 3 AI Kid’s Shows, Then Loses a Showrunner - The latest edition of AI on the Lot, an entertainment-focused AI conference, took place at Amazon-MGM this week. The big news was the announcement of 3 GenAI shows from known talents, but the biggest buzz happened after, as one of the show creators, Jorge R. Gutierrez, has now backed out in the face of online criticism. Previously an AI critic, eyebrows were raised by many in the animation community when the Mexican creative, known for his animated feature, The Book of Life, was quoted at the conference saying that using AI was awesome due to its speed and that it was like “having sex and then they hand you the baby.” The Backlash was swift, and Gutierrez took to X.com to apologize and “promise to do better…”

9. The Most Impressive Critique of AI I’ve Read Comes From…The Pope!? - From Leo XIV, his most recent Encyclical is out, and it is actually worth reading. If that’s too much though, the NyTimes has a summary that they (presumably) did not use AI for.

10. What to Watch This Weekend: Backrooms - Considering what I wrote for the site today, can there be any other option!? I’m going to a late-nite screening of Kane Parson’s A24 feature, based on his uber-successful shorts, which are, themselves, based on a creepypasta that emerged out of 4chan. The reviews are solid, the hype is real—I’m not even a horror fan, but my curiosity is immense. If you are somehow not up to speed, the trailer is below.

One of us! One of us!

Our periodic call for new blood has, like a comet, circled back around again. If you think you would enjoy being part of the Short of the Week team, we are currently on the hunt.

It’s called an internship, but it’s more akin to a trial run. We’d, ideally, like to find folk who stick for the medium to long term. Most of the current team got its start this way, so why not you? Read further details and apply at our website.

📅 This Week on Short of the Week