3 Comments

This video has been swamped with amazing feedback over on the OFFF Vimeo site. Maybe it was because of this or the 'MINDBLOWING' hyperbole in their description but I was left a bit disappointed by these titles. I actually don't think they compare very well with previous years' OFFF titles by, say, The Mill or Chris Hewitt; someone they're clearly heavily influenced by.

Obviously, there's some beautiful and beautifully composited shots in there, don't get me wrong - I bet it looked great on a big screen - but there just seemed to be a lot of clichés; the bleak DSLR motion-tracked shots set to a melodramatic HecQ soundtrack, the ink in water shots, all the macro stuff, the buildings deconstructing, the spiky magnetic metal effect. It does read like a brainstormed list of 'effects I want to try out this summer'. The stag head shots actually started me wondering if this was a deliberate summary of trends of the last year or so. Likewise, with the Aphex Twin bit - a deliberate homage? Why?!

It doesn't feel like it's been designed with the Barcelona OFFF in mind at all. Clearly, the titles don't HAVE to be related to where the festival is held but it must have been slightly odd sitting in sunny Barcelona watching a film dominated by so much Eastern European misery.

It's interesting that on the OFFF Vimeo site, the director Mischa Rozema says, "This project has filled our spare hours for the past 6 months and it is incredibly satisfying to work on something that we were given complete creative freedom on – that’s a rare luxury these days.”

I'll probably be alone on this but I think some limitations would have hugely benefitted this project.
Nicholas Maroussas
2011-06-13 17:19:23

i quite agree with you ... respect for the workmanship, but for me it's a slightly boring tech-demo
mrakuz
2011-06-14 11:23:24

We read this somewhere: The title sequence is linked to a fake post-apocalyptic film, Barcelona Year Zero, that is providing inspiration for a number of creative projects lined to OFFF 2011. The titles were influenced by the music videos of Mark Romanek -- especially his work for Nine Inch Nails (who released an apocalypse-themed album called Year Zero in 2007) -- and Chris Cunningham.
PedanticScouser
2011-06-15 09:56:30