The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that 11 live action short films will advance in the voting process for the 85th Academy Awards�. A tie in the nominations balloting resulted in 11 films being shortlisted. One hundred twenty-five pictures had originally qualified in the category.
Two of the shorts garnering shortlist slots strike a responsive chord in the ad community. Director Bryan Buckley of Hungry Man, a noted spotmaker whose resume includes winning the DGA Award for Best Commercial Director of the Year, saw his short film Asad make the Oscar shortlist, as did director Bryce Dallas Howard’s when you find me, a short spawned by the Canon Project Imagin8ion marketing initiative.
Canon’s Project Imagin8ion contest solicited submissions of still photos from the public at large, with commercials on air and online promoting the competition and soliciting submissions. From those 96,000-plus entries, eight images were selected which served as inspiration for and appeared in when you find me, a short produced by Oscar-winning filmmaker Ron Howard, directed by his daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard, and shot on the Canon Cinema EOS C300. Freestyle Picture company produced when you find me.
Meanwhile, Asad made its first major splash at this past April’s Tribeca Film Festival where it won the Best Narrative Short honor. The following month Asad was screened at SHOOT‘s Directors/Producers Forum at the DGA Theatre in New York City during a morning “In The Director’s Chair” session for which Buckley was on hand to discuss the film.
Asad centers on the title character, a 12-year-old lad in a war-torn fishing village in Somalia who must decide between falling into the pirate life or rising above it to choose the path of an honest fisherman. The project was sparked in part by a United Nations short documentary, No Autographs, which brought Buckley and his Hungry Man producer Mino Jarjoura to refugee camps in Kenya and Sudan a couple of years ago. Buckley and Jarjoura encountered Somalian refugees in Kakuma, Kenya. “Their stories and their outlook on life haven’t been fully told and haven’t gained the exposure they deserve,” related Buckley during the Forum discussion. He noted that media have a fascination with the Somalian pirates and to a lesser extent with the Al-Shabaab [terrorist] group in the Southern territory of Somalia but as a result the spirit of the everyday people themselves gets overlooked.
Buckley wrote a script in an attempt to do justice to the humanity of the Somalian people. In that lensing in Somalia would have been too dangerous a prospect, the short was shot entirely in South Africa, spoken in Somalian (with English subtitles). The cast consisted entirely of real people, including two refugee boys, the title character and a younger sidekick. Neither spoke English and both were illiterate so Buckley had to deploy a translator and the youngsters had to memorize their Somalian lines sans a script or written point of reference.
Initially the younger of the two was slated to be the short’s protagonist. But it became clear that the lead role was too much for him, resulting in the older boy becoming the focus of the film. Buckley described his two young “actors” as being “amazing and so bright. They were able to memorize all the dialogue.”
Hungry Man footed the bill for the short’s production, bringing the cost down by careful planning and calling in favors. Still, Buckley shared that the final budget was in the $500,000 range.
While on the surface Asad would seem to be quite a departure for Buckley—whose reputation is in comedy, particularly in high-profile Super Bowl commercials—he observed that the short isn’t all that far afield from his filmmaking core, which is to get to the truth of a situation and a character, often mining the inherent humor and simply doing justice to a story or concept. Asad indeed offers some unexpected comic relief even within the context of daily lives challenged with major adversity.
The full shortlist
In addition to when you find me and Asad, the Oscar shortlist in the live-action short category consists of:
o A F�brica (The Factory), Aly Muritiba, director (Grafo Audiovisual)
o Buzkashi Boys, Sam French, director, and Ariel Nasr, producer (Afghan Film Project)
o Curfew, Shawn Christensen, director (Fuzzy Logic Pictures)
o Death of a Shadow (Dood van een Schaduw), Tom Van Avermaet, director, and Ellen De Waele, producer (Serendipity Films)
o Henry, Yan England, director (Yan England)
o Kiruna-Kigali, Goran Kapetanovic, director (Hepp Film AB)
o The Night Shift Belongs to the Stars, Silvia Bizio and Paola Porrini Bisson, producers (Oh! Pen LLC)
o 9meter, Anders Walther, director, and Tivi Magnusson, producer (M & M Productions A/S)
o Salar, Nicholas Greene, director, and Julie Buck, producer (Nicholas Greene)
The Short Films and Feature Animation Branch Reviewing Committee viewed all the eligible entries for the preliminary round of voting at screenings held in Los Angeles.
Short Films and Feature Animation Branch members will now select three to five nominees from among the 11 titles on the shortlist. Branch screenings will be held in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco in December.
The 85th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Thursday, January 10, 2013, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.
Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2012 will be presented on Sunday, February 24, 2013, at the Dolby Theatre® at Hollywood & Highland Center, and televised live on the ABC Television Network. The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 225 countries worldwide.
