New Short Film - "ANIMAL BRAINS"

[matt35mm]

Hi all.  So, I just completed a short film that I wrote and directed.  The best synopsis I've been able to come with so far is:

A philosophical narrative about animals, brains, and appearances involving a teacher's assistant, a student in her class, and the student's grandmother.

Still kinda vague, but I'll work on it.



Click Here to Watch "Animal Brains"



It's 20 minutes long, and in HD. If the streaming video doesn't play very well on your computer, you may want to download the full file at the lower right corner of that webpage.

I'm pretty proud of it.  Hope you enjoy!

[last days of gerry the elephant]

I am going to have to give this another watch, but just real quick: I loved your intro there.

[©brad]

i really liked it matt. you definitely muse on some interesting ideas here. granted i am by no means a philosophical savant but it got me thinking. i want to watch it again when i get home.

as usual with your work, the photography was beautiful. the actors were good too, my favorite being the grandma. she was so sweet. what was it like working with her? and generally, what kind of direction did you give the actors? was it more superficial or did you really want them to understand the philisophical motives behind their characters?

[matt35mm]

I'm glad you liked it!  And I'm especially glad that you want to watch it again--much better than watching half of it and not wanting to watch the rest.  It's especially difficult to make an interesting short film because usually it either has so many ideas that it should be a feature, or it has to rely on being clever or fancy, and I didn't want to do any of that.

I let the actors run pretty free.  They read the script, talked to me about it, talked to each other about it (which was more beneficial), after which their instincts were pretty spot on.  I've been through the phase of giving a lot of superficial direction (for Thomas Edison, which I now hate for that reason), and also refusing to give any superficial direction, and now I've found a happy medium.  There's nothing wrong with letting everybody know the pace and mood of this scene with words like "slower" and "less emotional," despite what it says in those books on directing actors.  And I don't say anything unless there's something I can say to give them a better sense of direction.  I'm personally very happy with what they did.

The grandma character was actually my landlord.  She lives at the house and we always had interesting conversations, so one day I just asked her if she would be interested.  Plus you always see a bunch of 20 year olds in films made by people my age, so I just thought it would be lovely to see her in this movie.  Other than having to do fewer takes because she had a limited amount of energy, it was fine and she knew what to do to make it interesting.

So hey everybody, watch it, because I worked hard on it and someone other than me said it's good.

[Ghostboy]

I also say its good. But I'll e-mail you my more extensive thoughts later...

[matt35mm]

What I meant to say was, if you want to see how I direct actors, go to:

www.vimeo.com/matt35mm

And select "How To Direct Actors."

Hey everybody, watch Animal Brains!  Ghostboy said it's good!  Tell all your friends!

[©brad]

What I meant to say was, if you want to see how I direct actors, go to:

www.vimeo.com/matt35mm

And select "How To Direct Actors."

hahah, awesome.

[matt35mm]

This Halloween, watch Animal Brains--the most terrifying peer into the deepest, darkest red recesses of the most crucial of organs!!

[matt35mm]

I'm gonna pimp this again because I re-watched it and still like it, and it's pretty rare to re-watch your own work from a while ago and not feel like it totally sucks.


Click Here to watch "Animal Brains"