"Berlin Horse"

Berlin Horse

Date: 1970

Time: 6:37 mins

Director: Malcom Le Grice

This was the beginning of very experimental, and ‘trippy’ short films. The film is of a horse running around in circles, but in the editing process the director has rewound parts of it, changed the hue and contrast to create sickly-sweet neon colours. The music being played on loop, is almost entrancing, a lot different to some other short films, which makes you an active audience member. It is almost a dipiction of mainstream cinema: puts you into a trance for an hour and a half (in this case 7 minutes).

More and more, directors kept wanting to push the boundires, push the mainstream to the edge and produce new and innavotive creations. This was just the beginning of the trippiness...

In 2005, Rubber Johnny by Chris Cunningham, a six-minute experimental short film, was created taking the internet world by storm. It was used as a music video for the Aphex Twins too, which helped with its promotion and distribution vastly as the Aphex Twins were famous in the techno music 'scene'. In the space of 25 years, the editing process had clearly vastly changed and expanded. The character himself was warped and distorted in the editing process and also had prosthetics on too; creating this disturbing look, with hidden dark undertones of humour to it aswell.

Another film i saw was A Crazy Freakin Trippy Film by Heide StrangeSky, 2006 which used old fashioned editting methods, similar to that of the Berlin Horse. Scratching 35mm film that she had recorded on and using an odd yet delicate soundtrack, she produced an equally trippy looking film. Unlike the Berlin Horse where it did not have a particular narrative, this short animation, was about the Earth's love affair with machines and how this love and desire has taken over. Which seems to be more and more prodominant in short films of today:letting people have their say, sending their message to people of this huge and ever-expanding world.