Shift

Ever wanted to do something different? When life becomes a routine, step out of the ordinary and follow your dreams. Shift follows a white-collar worker who escapes the confines of his working environment, exploring and dancing freely through the outside world.

Award winning Director Patrick Ryder and renowned creative director and choreographer Del Mak team up to create and direct this inspirational narrative based dance short film. Shift stars Renako McDonald famed for achieving runner's up position on Got To Dance, UK and Ireland's biggest reality TV talent dance show as contemporary couple act 'Alleviate'.

Caminandes: Two Very Funny Llama Dramas

Caminandes is about as hapless a llama as you are ever likely to meet.  Yet through adversity our Patagonian friend makes it through – often by the skin of his teeth.    Of course, in the spirit of classic animation, you have to root for the guy! The first episode is above but I do have to say that the new episode below is my favorite of the two! Both episodes are Open Movies produced by the Blender Institute in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Stingray

Struggling novelist Kurt endures a painful and unsuccessful pitch at the hands of a pair of publishers. He seeks refuge in his local aquatic design store only to receive ill-advice from the resident Stingray. Bemused but not swayed he attempts to connect with a nearby pretty young teacher.

This short black comedy stars Mat Horne (Gavin & Stacey), Andy Serkis (King Kong, Lord of the Rings), Dominic West (The Wire, 300), Lucy Punch (Hot Fuzz) and Kate Isitt (Coupling). It was directed by Neil Chordia and written by Charlie Gee.

Salina Turda: Romania’s Amazing Salt Mine turned Museum

The historic region of Transylvania has long been associated with vampires. Yet there is something in Transylvania which predates even the legends of blood-sucking fiends: salt mining has been going on in the area since Roman times.

Salina Turda is an ancient and wondrous example of a salt mine, now a museum and center for halotherapy - with a distinctively modern twist.

Image Credit Flickr User Christian Bortes

Yet as well as the preservation of historic mining facilities, Salina Turda holds some unexpected pleasures. It now looks as much like the lair of a James Bond villain as a salt mine – albeit a very playful Bond villain.

Out of Bounds

Paul 179 is a goldfish – the latest in a series owned by a young man with Aspergers.

He is determined to keep this latest fish alive but when the fish food runs out and its replacement is delivered to the wrong house he must venture out of doors.  This is a charming and unique little story by students at The Animation Workshop.

Machu Picchu: Diverse Perspectives

For most people, this view is the one most associated with Machu Picchu, the broad mountainous prominence dotted with ancient buildings, sharp peaks towering above them.  It is little wonder this place is the most instantly recognizable icon of Inca civilization for so many. Yet a closer look gives a greater insight in to how it must have felt to live there, its thick stone walls echoing to the sounds of everyday life. Take a look at Machu Picchu from different perspectives.

The walls are perhaps the most remarkable thing about the place.  They are known as dry stone and as such there was no mortar holding them together.  Their structural integrity came entirely from the forces of compression and the way that the stones interlock with each other.  At Machu Picchu this interlocking is an art from in itself. 

Roommate Wanted - Dead or Alive

If you have ever been a student then you have probably had to face the prospect of living with strangers in order to afford a place to live and all its associated expenses. So it is with this medical student in this entertaining short by students of the Animation Workshop. Yet smelly socks and untidiness are the least of this medical student’s problems when his prospective roommate turns out to be a zombie.

How Will The Universe End?

Science should be big, bright, bold and engaging – and you are going to find this video by Beakus all of those and more. It asks the question that, at some point or another, many of us ask – when is the universe going to end?

Fortunately the answer is not tomorrow or indeed the day after. Created for the Royal Observatory Greenwich this is science and art in blissful union.

A Strange Young Man: A Short Film about Autism

Erdem is the strange young man of this short film’s title.  Or, at least that’s how the rest of the world sees him.  Erdem himself lives in a world which amuses, perplexes but regularly frightens him.

Yet he navigates this bewildering array of sights and sounds with the help of his intimate knowledge of Hollywood movies (and see if you can get all the references!). 

We follow him through the course of his daily journey to class at the Autism Orientation Center.  Unsurprisingly, this film won both first place and the Audience Favorite Award at the Cinema Touching Disability Film Festival 2014 in Austin, Texas. It is in Turkish with English subtitles but please, please don’t let that put you off watching this remarkable short film directed by the very talented Emre Sert and Gözde Yetişkin.

Gea and Fossils

Don’t be put off by the rather uninspiring title.  This is, quite simply, the best educational animation I have seen for an age.  It’s about fossils and introduces us to Gea who has an inventor uncle (don't we all?).

He sends her a package and she finds Zum (pronounced Zoom), a flying robot designed to assist in the cataloguing of fossils.   Unfortunately, Zoom knows nothing about them so it’s up to Gea to show him the ropes – and the complete history of fossils. This explains the length of this animated short but believe me, the time will zoom by.

This animation is wholly delightful in as much as it makes what can be quite a difficult subject wholly accessible if not entertaining. It was created by Render Area, a visual effects, 3D animation digital production company based in Spain for Museo Geominero in Madrid. They have thrown the animation equivalent of the kitchen sink at this piece with so many different techniques used to form the whole.

So, if you happen to have a kid rampaging around your house at the moment (or one who is staring listlessly at the ceiling) who also happens to be fascinated by dinosaurs and how they came to be fossilised, plonk him or her down in front of this.  You will have peace and quiet for almost exactly half an hour.

On Scaffolded Descriptive Writing for GCSE English Language 9-1

Paper 1 Question 5 in the AQA GCSE English Language exam is worth 40 marks.  Put that in to a percentage and it’s worth 25% of the qualification.  So it’s vital that learners do well on this question.

Here, grandmother, suck on this egg… 

There is a however, of course (isn't there always?).  The however in this particular instance is that it is often quite difficult to give students a feeling of almost immediate success when approaching this question - this is a long-haul situation. The faint-hearted can give up almost before they begin. Not only that, a number of students have developed some very fixed ideas about what makes a descriptive text - I teach in FE - and quite often it bears only a passing resemblance to what examiners are looking for (at least in order to award it good marks!).

So I wanted to do something to address this. I did a little research (OK, I used a search engine) and found that some teachers were giving their students scaffolded writing tasks, at least for the first paragraph of a descriptive piece.  Here is an excellent article (the best I found, to be honest) on The Learning Profession blog about how scaffolded descriptive writing openings can work brilliantly.  The rest of this post details my journey from this point - it isn't advice about how to teach this part of the syllabus, it's simply about how I developed my ideas about scaffolding and how I then went on to embed it in my classes.

Hazed

Do you remember the story of the scorpion and the fox? Sometimes things are simply in your nature. So, what happens if you happen to be a factory, belching out smoke and noxious fumes? If you have anything approaching a heart then you might begin to feel a little guilty about what you are doing to the environment, despite the fact that it is what, essentially, you were created to do.

So it is with this animated short by Matt Hammill. Hazed was initially created as his grad film from Sheridan College. One thing before you click play – make sure to watch this to the very end, you may not quite get what you were expecting! We guarantee that you will laugh, however!

How does a Neurotransmitter work?

This is an animated film for people who want to learn more about the chemistry of our emotions in a humorous and entertaining way.

Take a journey through the human brain and experience the fantastic world of neurotransmitter.

Neurotransmitter was created by Katharina Petsche.

Koi No Yokan - 恋の予感

Koi No Yokan (恋の予感) is one of those Japanese sayings for which there is no real English equivalent.    It isn’t about love at first sight it is more a trust in the inevitability of love when you first meet someone – a presentiment if you like.   There is no implication that the feeling of love exists just that a union is inexorable. Directed by Kevin Chiu it follows a pair of New Yorkers just as koi no yokan kicks in.

A la Française

Versailles in 1700 and the court is in full swing – yet something is not quite what you might expect.  Yet even in this fowl world, the court recorder doesn’t miss a thing but the balance of courtly life can be upset by nothing more than a gust of wind.  An entertaining Supinfocom graduation short by four of their brightest - Julien Hazebroucq, Emmanuelle Leleu , Morrigane Boyer, William Lorton and Ren Hsien Hsu.

The Sky Blue Mushroom

It looks like it could be something offered to Alice just before she makes a journey in to Wonderland but this sky blue mushroom is not a product of the imagination of Lewis Caroll.  It can be found on both islands of New Zealand – and bizarrely enough in a few places in India.

Image Credit Flickr User Ewan-M