The beautifully animated One Rat Short from our 2007 festival won several awards at other festivals including Best Animated Short Film at the 2007 Cleveland International Film Festival. Written and directed by Alex Weil, it was the first short film produced by Charlex, the New York-based digital design and production studio he founded. At 9 minutes, it was quite a departure from the 30-second commercial format that Charlex specializes in.
In contrast to the superb cinematic storytelling in One Rat Short, Weil merged dream logic and stunning CGI in the fantasy short ShapeShifter. While only a tad over 2 minutes in length, production stretched from its conception in 2008 to completion in 2010. Fitzgerald Scott, a friend of Weil’s, wrote a prose poem to go with the incredible visuals created by co-director and designer Diana Park. Irish actor Gabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects) performed the dream-like voice-over. Weil debuted the short on Vimeo in early January. Within a couple of weeks, it had soared past the half-million view mark. On Feb 3rd, Underwire’s Scott Thill wrote about its success in Making of Surreal CGI Short ShapeShifter referring to it as “a surreal road movie featuring cyborg creatures and alien flora and fauna [that] is what car commercials would look like if they weren’t so lame.”
