This short film was produced as a collaborative project to support a bullying awareness campaign last year. It is based around a spoken word piece written and delivered by Shane Koyczan which deals with the struggles of children to shake off the cruelty of taunts and name calling experienced many years prior but yet shaping and influencing in untold and damaging ways, and it is delivered by a large number of animators all producing a 20 second section in their own style and voice. So, to tick off the list – spoken word poetry, lots of animators doing their own thing and a topic that is well meant; it sounds like it will be a well-meaning failure but yet it is a tremendous success.
To focus on the high level, the spoken piece is very engaging, with great rhythm and flow to the words, as well as a lot of emotion and heart in there too. I found it moving from start to finish and I appreciated that Koyczan's delivery was mostly restrained but yet with enough emotion in his voice that it added value to the words and to the film. In terms of the message it delivered it really well and the use of the line "to this day" is a very well chosen theme and title. What is more impressive is that the animation works. I have seen a few collaborative animation projects and too often they struggle to gel into one vision, particularly when the styles are all different. Here the challenges are the same but yet it predominately works and works well.
I think one or two of the bits maybe didn't fit as well as they might have, but maybe this was my own personal taste; the remainder worked very well with the short section of prose that they fell under and also managed to merge well together with the other sections – amazingly it rarely felt like the film had stopped then started again but rather it was one visual and poetic flow. It is a beautiful short film – and all the more impressive for how well it comes together as one unit.
To focus on the high level, the spoken piece is very engaging, with great rhythm and flow to the words, as well as a lot of emotion and heart in there too. I found it moving from start to finish and I appreciated that Koyczan's delivery was mostly restrained but yet with enough emotion in his voice that it added value to the words and to the film. In terms of the message it delivered it really well and the use of the line "to this day" is a very well chosen theme and title. What is more impressive is that the animation works. I have seen a few collaborative animation projects and too often they struggle to gel into one vision, particularly when the styles are all different. Here the challenges are the same but yet it predominately works and works well.
I think one or two of the bits maybe didn't fit as well as they might have, but maybe this was my own personal taste; the remainder worked very well with the short section of prose that they fell under and also managed to merge well together with the other sections – amazingly it rarely felt like the film had stopped then started again but rather it was one visual and poetic flow. It is a beautiful short film – and all the more impressive for how well it comes together as one unit.
