Think of these video vignettes as creative energy shots. Brief blasts of sonic and visual adrenaline or ephemeral alterations of mood. Made by amateurs and pros, and posted on SMM’s YouTube channel, the videos sprout from the simplest of film school exercises: Come up with one word, and make a movie about it. There are no wrong answers.
Stuart Ferrier's daughter Sarah founded Seattle Minute Movies in early 2014, with a manifesto that states: “I like how film is a diversion and a distraction. You can learn so much through film; it can transport you to another time and place. A one minute film can tell a profound story yet can be produced in a very short period of time.”
Here are several films from the latest Minute Movie crop that serve to underscore Ferrier's point.
Take, Flow, for example, introduced in this man-on-the-street prologue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiT7LFlIMa4&list=PLEllJgaAN965ToPy8MJ1b…
And then followed up by some wonderfully expressive conceptions, like this time-lapse by a man trying out his Go Pro Hero.
And this snatch of memory from a photographer’s experience with glass blowing in the North Carolina woods.
Strength was last November’s theme, exemplified by the ability to eat only one square of a Hershey’s bar.
Or, in an interview piece titled Joya’s Strength by Stuart Ferrier, the ability to come back from a traumatic brain injury and open a coffee shop in Hillman City.
Joya’s Strength is a simple, unedited answer to a question. Seattle’s Gum Wall (prompted by the word Sticky) is a straightforward mini (very mini) documentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuuEvh7JPZg&index=6&list=PLEllJgaAN966X…
This narrative sci-fi sketch is a more ambitious illustration of “sticky”, featuring giant, blazing blue butterflies (illustrated with appropriately schlocky Z-movie special effects) and something else a bit more, um, unsettling.
All films are screened in a meet-up at the Seattle Film Institute. This month’s theme is Obscure. Got any brilliant ideas?
For more Viral Video, go here.
