By Robert Goldrich
A silly joke calls our attention to a serious health issue in this PSA directed by Tim Abshire of Backyard, Venice, Calif.
We open on two dorky guys, both a bit overweight, standing in a residential driveway. One is holding a large oddly shaped hunk of concrete. He asks his cohort, “Do you know what this is?”
“No” is the response.
The first guy then proceeds to clunk the other man in the head with the concrete.
The impact elicits a relatively quiet “Ow” from the bewildered victim, who rubs his head.
A supered message relates the simple truth, “What you don’t know can hurt you.”
This is followed by a serious super, which reads, “Learn more about the link between obesity and heart disease.”
An end tag logo for the American Obesity Task Force (AOTF) then appears on screen, accompanied by a Web site address, obesityrisk.org. The Web site takes visitors to links about diet, scientific research and other info that can help reduce weight and cholesterol.
The PSA’s creative silliness is heightened by a live-action approach akin to cartoon-like violence. Getting clocked by a hunk of concrete that hard and big should normally have resulted in considerable pain, if not an outright concussion and/or the victim being knocked unconscious. Instead the guy lets out a rather subdued, matter-of-fact “Ow,” and tends to the “injury” by merely rubbing the side of his head.
Freelancer Lisa Leone served as creative director on “Ow.”
Director Abshire was backed by a Backyard support team that included executive producer Kris Mathur and producer Kyra Shelgren. The DP was Peter Selesnick.
Editor was John Dingfield of Cutters, Chicago. Colorist was Craig Leffel of Optimus, Chicago. Audio post mixer was Ben Keller of Another Country, Chicago.
Review: Writer-Director Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”
"Is it too real for ya?" blares in the background of Andrea Arnold's latest film, "Bird," a 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) rides with her shirtless, tattoo-covered dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), on his electric scooter past scenes of poverty in working-class Kent.
The song's question — courtesy of the Irish post-punk band Fontains D.C. — is an acute one for "Bird." Arnold's films ( "American Honey," "Fish Tank") are rigorous in their gritty naturalism. Her fiction films — this is her first in eight years — tend toward bleak, hand-held verité in rough-and-tumble real-world locations. Her last film, "Cow," documented a mother cow separated from her calf on a dairy farm.
Arnold specializes in capturing souls, human and otherwise, in soulless environments. A dream of something more is tantalizing just out of reach. In "American Honey," peace comes to Star (Sasha Lane) only when she submerges underwater.
In "Bird," though, this sense of otherworldly possibility is made flesh, or at least feathery. After a confusing night, Bailey awakens in a field where she encounters a strange figure in a skirt ( Franz Rogowski ) who arrives, like Mary Poppins, with a gust a wind. His name, he says, is Bird. He has a soft sweetness that doesn't otherwise exist in Bailey's hardscrabble and chaotic life.
She's skeptical of him at first, but he keeps lurking about, hovering gull-like on rooftops. He cranes his neck now and again like he's watching out for Bailey. And he does watch out for her, helping Bailey through a hard coming of age: the abusive boyfriend (James Nelson-Joyce) of her mother (Jasmine Jobson); her half brother (Jason Buda) slipping into vigilante violence; her father marrying a new girlfriend.
The introduction of surrealism has... Read More