Les Spectateurs: a short Bradburyesque film

Les Spectateurs is a beautiful, Bradburyesque short film made by students at ArtFX in Montpelier, France. While the story is original, some of visuals and the mood of the film have strong echoes of Ray Bradbury - and Ray is listed among the acknowledgments at the end of the film.

The film is set on a "mega-satellite" orbiting Earth, but the satellite is soon to break away from Earth and make a new start. The inhabitants are given a last opportunity to return to Earth, before the breakaway takes place. We follow one couple, and especially one woman, who longs for Earth, but is unable leave.

The film is built upon a vast amount of CGI work, and this is fundamental to the story. Some of the CGI establishes the physical set-up of the satellite in relation to the Earth, Moon and Sun. But the more important CGI work creates the entire small town that the people live in, with their American-style suburbia. It's so well done that on first viewing you won't even realise that much of what you see is computer-generated.

So what of the Bradbury connection? Look for the visuals of the rocket ships heading back for Earth, and see if that doesn't remind you of The Martian Chronicles, especially the section of Bradbury's book when the atomic war has broken out back on Earth and there is a mad rush to return.

Look also for the melancholy tone of the relationship of the couple, and see if this doesn't remind you of any number of Bradbury shorts, from "The Rocket Man" or "The Last Night of the World". The film's subtitle is "saudade", which means "a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia". You can't get more Bradbury than that. The film also has a good central metaphor (which I won't spoil) which has no direct connection to Bradbury that I can think of, but which made me think of Bradbury.

It's not a perfect film by any means. The woman's depressed state needs a bit more fleshing out (why doesn't she just get on the first available rocket and go?), and some of the technology is out of whack (wind turbines on a space station?) - but it's a short piece and there's lots about it to like.

Here's the film itself, and below it is a very breezy "making of" feature. This is amazing work for a team of students.


// ArtFX OFFICIEL // Les Spectateurs from ArtFX OFFICIEL on Vimeo.


// ArtFX OFFICIEL // Les Spectateurs MAKING-OF from ArtFX OFFICIEL on Vimeo.

New Short Film - All Summer in a Day

All Summer in a Day is a short film production funded via Kickstarter, the crowd-funding website. It's based on the Ray Bradbury short story, which has been filmed once before. The Kickstarter target was a modest $5000 or so, which was reached in April.

You can read more about the production here, and here is the trailer/pitch:

Last Flight

"200 million kilometers from Earth, her base destroyed and her oxygen supply running out, a lone astronaut begins a perilous trek across the windswept deserts of Mars.

Her only company are the sporadic transmissions she receives from Earth; radio reports counting down the minutes to global war.

As her diffculties increase, the astronaut is forced to search for a way to come to terms with her circumstances - for herself and for the future of life in the universe."

So reads the synopsis of the short film Last Flight, produced in New Zealand on a budget of $17,000 by Damon Keen. The film has been touring film festivals around the world, and now available in its complete form on YouTube.

Keen documented the production as the film progressed on his blog Mars Shot. It was a long, slow process taking around two years, because the director was making it in his spare time.

Last Flight originated as a comic book story, "The Sparrow", which Keen produced in 2008. He then developed it into a thirteen-page screenplay, which he then proceeded to film - along the way having to figure out how to achieve the needed CGI and audio effects to bring the film to life.

First page of "The Sparrow". Click to enlarge.

Is there a Bradbury connection to the film? Well, it's set on Mars, so that tends to put us in Martian Chronicles territory. It's predicated on a countdown to global war on Earth, which is again reminiscent of the Chronicles. Then there's the sole survivor, and a hint of either dreaming or hallucination... all very Bradbury.

But there's nothing in Keen's blog (as far as I can see) that consciously references Bradbury, so it may be coincidental, or a case of a writer-director being unconsciously influenced.

You can read more about the film in the official press kit. It's a smart little film, and will only take about fifteen minutes of your time to watch, so why not give it a go? Here's the trailer; and if you scroll down, you'll come to the complete film.

Miscellaneous

In the US, the NEA's "Big Read" programme continues, and Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is again a popular book for communities of readers to gather around. LA-based Bradbury would probably be pleased to hear that nearby West Hollywood will play host to a number of events linked to F451. Details are here.



Illustrator Gary Gianni - whose artwork has accompanied the words of Melville, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert Louis Stevenson and many others - has created illustrations for a new chapbook, The Nefertiti-Tut Express: a Story in Screenplay. The text is taken from a previously unpublished Bradbury screen treatment dating originally from the mid 1970s. Originally due to appear in 2011, I hear that the book will be out during 2012. More details on the curious history of Bradbury's text can be found on Gianni's website.



Last year, Michael O'Kelly staged Live Forever, a play about Ray Bradbury's life. Now, he has a short film which is being entered into a film festival, and which is intended to be part of a much longer DVD study of the author. More details in this story from the Ventura County Star.



If you happen to be in Denver, Colorado, in April you can see a production of Bradbury's stage play version of Fahrenheit 451. Details are here.

Jack in the Box

Production has just begun on another short film based on a Bradbury story. Jack in the Box is directed by Alex Gray as his thesis film at the Colorado Film School.

The production is being promoted at IndieGoGo, where you are invited to contribute to the film's production fund - in return for a DVD (or something better still if you offer more money).

The short story of "Jack in the Box" first appeared in Bradbury's out of print Dark Carnival, and is also collected in his (first) greatest hits compilation, The Stories of Ray Bradbury. The only previous media adaptation that I know of was a BBC radio production for the series Ray Bradbury's Tales of the Bizarre.

Bradbury has given permission for this new adaptation. We can assume that the film will follow Gray's earlier short, Derek, onto the festival circuit.

Short Film Win

Chris Charles' short film The Small Assassin, based on the Bradbury story of the same name, has won an award at a film festival in Illinois. It picked up a $1000 first prize at the Elgin Film Festival. The full story is here.

You can read my 2008 review of the film here, although it's possible that the version in the festival is a different edit of the film. Although the film has been in existence for a few years, it's only this year that it has had its official world premiere, and has been touring the festival circuit to some great success.

You can view the press kit for the film here, and find out more about the makers (working under the company name of Beverly Ridge Pictures) here.

Dandelion Wine

On Bradbury's 91st birthday (Monday of this week), it was officially announced that a deal has been completed for the production of a feature film adaptation of Bradbury's 1957 novel Dandelion Wine.

The producers of the new venture are Mike Medavoy, whose credits include Shutter Island and Black Swan, and Doug McKay.

Many times on this blog I have cautioned about getting too excited over announcements of film deals, since the vast majority of film projects (in Hollywood at least) end up going nowhere. In the case of Bradbury adaptations we have already seen announced versions of The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451 and The Illustrated Man disappear from the radar.

What may make Dandelion Wine different is that the writer-director attached to the project is Rodion Nahapetov, who has a definite commitment to Bradbury's work. In fact, as a student in 1972 he directed a short film based around the Dandelion Wine character of Helen Bentley.

You can read more about the feature announcement here. Nahapetov's connection to Bradbury, and the development of the screenplay for Dandelion Wine is discussed on his website here.

And if you click here, you can view Nahapetov's Dandelion Wine short in its entirety. In Russian, of course!

I am indebted to Pavel for the Nahapetov links.