Stylish (if a bit overwrought at times) and simple (no sync sound, one character, more or less real situations). Good music. Well-observed visuals.

An idea via a thing via a person. This matryoshka theming is what I, Party Cup could emulate.

So much to learn/steal/emulate here it’s hard to get it all down.

1. Giving graphics and visual “info dumps” an aesthetic dimension, a texture. Embedding them in sensory reality, making them real, i.e. physical. Not just poor-man’s Ken Burns “pan over a JPG” shit. 

2. Eye contact.

3. “Moving still photographs” as b-roll. Friedman is a photographer and his eye for still images is keen. Setting up a “still” like the slow rack focus from Goetz holding up his patent papers to Goetz’s face: simple, stylized, but full of documentary depth, and feels like a scene even though it’s just a “still.” 

4. Wide shots and a sense of detailed space. Goetz isn’t just a disembodied torso in medium closeup. 

5. Narrative atmosphere over explanatory terrain. Goetz tells brief anecdotes to get at the idea of a software patent, but there’s no contrived or over-emphasized “storyline” pulling the film along. Other hints at narrative: the hands that open the laptop at the beginning and close it at the end, with searching/reading in between—there is a sense of seeking, of something storylike “happening”, but it’s just a sense. 

6. Personal interlude. I loved that the film basically stopped, took a hard left to introduce Goetz’s wife (also subtly changed “look” as well: looser, rougher, less stylized), then resumed. Doesn’t make structural sense “on paper” but felt just right. 

7. Leave me wanting more. The film doesn’t try to teach me everything about software patents or about Goetz. It feels whole enough to be satisfying, but not encyclopedic or exhaustive.  

Neat “notemation” (simple animation using Post-Its) from Frog Design. Feels a bit wall-papery (like those lame RSA whiteboard vids, which just visually transcribe what the VO is saying), and I also wish they played more with the physicality of the Post-Its instead of just using them as Powerpoint slides. 

Thoughts: this kind of approach works well for a non-narrative explainer b/c it adds sensory detail to the abstract, intellectualized “idea stream” of the voiceover. But for a piece that is already narrative — something like Storycorps or Story Collider — it may just feel redundant and “flattening”: forcing your mind to see pictures that are less rich and less personal than the ones the narrative VO can conjure up in your head. What role should the visual stream play in those contexts—what work should it do, if not simply slavishly replicating the “word pictures” of the VO? 

CYBORG FOUNDATION | Rafel Duran Torrent

Mix of VO, found footage, and occasional ultra-stylized interludes. Janky but effective.

(Source: vimeo.com)

Stop-motion surfing “documentary”/music video. Process value, brilliant attention to detail in the visual storytelling/framing. 

Ken Burns on Story. Essay + profile = more than both. 

“We all think that an exception is going to be made in our case, and that we will live forever.” 

Kodachrome 2010. Structure, graphic design, music.