Shorts
Road
Director: Dillon Dewaters
Asphalt and nature collide, roads and road-kill race past, as a cross-country voyage is captured in a series of rapid-fire images.
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Director: Dillon Dewaters
Asphalt and nature collide, roads and road-kill race past, as a cross-country voyage is captured in a series of rapid-fire images.
I enjoyed the abstract quality of this film as well as it’s ambient soundtrack, which becomes sort of an electronic song in its climax. The bird flying sequence was particularly mesmerizing. And flashes of the travelers (presumably) themselves in front of a floral curtain is revealing yet mysterious.
what i love most about DeWaters creation is its ambiguity and sense of the ephemeral nature of travel, time and mortality. He has managed to combine the fleeting details of a more mundane part of life while imbuing it with intrigue and a sense of darkness with the wonderful sounds natural and other. My favorite scene is the plastic bag blowing in the wind, the sound is rather intense and jarring.
Notes for the Director:
1.Open the curtains.
2.Show the backward flying vultures eating the road kill.
3.Take the lens cap off.
This video reminds me of life flashing before my eyes. People and places that were visited before the final curtain. The images make me think of a means to an end, a journey through what is always unexpected. The light at the end of the the tunnel.
I am thoroughly amazed that this empty and overwrought waste of time, resources and intellectual energy has received any votes at all, let alone gotten such a solid lead.
This isn’t art, it’s noise. And not the good kind of noise like Merzbow or Metal Machine Music or Man Ray’s weirder, more formless stuff–this is just phony experimentalism and self-congratulatory nonsense made with no purpose except to be arcane, impenetrable, and “cool.”
The piece is not only deeply unsympathetic but also fundamentally inhuman.
It’s a work that uses cheap tricks, smoke and mirrors, to disguise its lack of substance. It hides behind the cold artifice of pretentious obfuscation to make up for the fact that it has nothing meaningful to say. This is not art, it’s noise.
I felt like I was watching an extended horror movie “shocking image” sequence, sans plot. Even if the sounds didn’t make me want to cringe and kick the VCR back to life, the images were cliche and I felt lacked a sense of technical skill, and certainly lacked composition and continuity. I strongly believe that art should represent the full range of human experience, and this piece fits neatly into “pain.”
Confusing, awkward, and depressing. I am sorry for your experience.
I do not want to be confused, or depressed. Why can’t this competition be about happier and more entertaining subjects? Why do you seem to think that narrative is useless and entertainment is to be scorned? Message is great, and requires actually holding the attention and interest of the viewer. Do not abuse the viewer, engage the viewer.
I wish I could vote against all 3 movies in this competition.
I’m surprised this film made the last three commentors so angry. I didn’t find it depressing, and certainly didn’t get the feeling that the filmmaker was trying to make something grand or huge. It’s a diaristic travelogue, a personal journey. To me, this film reminded me of the dreams I have when I’m traveling - the way I remember things in fits and starts is similar to the jerkiness of the edits and the way the camera tries to grab focus and is thwarted. For me - and, granted, I, too, have taken an extended road trip across the US in the dead of winter, this film evokes the feeling of groundlessness, the momentary passing of images (they fly by so fast!), and captures the momentum of the road.
I have to say, I also find it odd that @Andy would use words like “pretentions obfuscation” would accuse someone else of being self-congratulatory.
I liked it, Dillon, and found it moving in the context of my own experience - which is what I hope for and expect from short films (being a former programmer myself). I think you should keep making work.
The audio of all three shorts was poor. So, I didn’t vote. My network connection is DSL, and I have a macintosh.
Boring. Not worth spending all the time necessary to watch it.
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