Natcoll Student Vid Blast

There were several excellent short films at last night's Natcoll end of year show for 3D animation and post production video courses. For us the outstanding item in the 3D was David Morris's "Breaking Point" which he rightly described as dark, but which was stylish and well executed. We also especially enjoyed "My Apocalypse" (Govind Dhir Singh) an interesting POV short about a dragon attack with an ear splitting sound track and an iconic shot of a dragon landing on the Auckland Skytower.
While the 3D show was obviously the work of a class of 100% young male artists (ie games, comics and movie influence) they were mostly original in their take on popular media.

The Video post production show was more diverse and included an excellent, although unfinished hand drawn animation by Joe Faga ("Fetu"), which I sincerely hope he finishes and we can see in its entirety, and a very accomplished live action short from Michael Miller ("And We Think in Colours"). This was a film that worked on every level and would have been at home in any professional short film programme. Miller tracked the story of a relationship in a symbolic, short form way that was emotionally and artistically complete.

The debate-stirrer of the night was the first item, the joint project for the 3D animation class. This was a film they made for a client and thus they were not responsible for the design of the characters. In fact they seemed embarassed by them. The two female characters were basically naked, which is not how any woman would (un)dress in order to "kick butt". This is a common fantasy in the gaming world, but is, in all practicality, laughable. Breasts flop around and are uncomfortable and get in the way, guys!