awkward
A day full of socially awkward moments.
In this film I wanted to feature social awkwardness that people experience in everyday life, with a touch of embarrassment and absurdity.
production: self-produced
direction, animation: Nata Metlukh
sound, music: Daruma Audio
story
Usually my films begin from a bunch of unconnected episodes that later form a story. For a long time I had a list of awkward moments, but couldn’t come up with a solid plot.
I thought it could work without a unifying idea, if there is a narrative structure. For that, I set 3 rules:
Everything happens during one day, and events in the film go from early morning to midnight.
There are the same two characters in the beginning, the middle and the very end, progressing in their awkwardness.
In the climatic shot at the birthday party all the characters gather together.
All awkward moments in the film are based on a real life, with added absurd twists.
The story of the car covered with post-it notes parked on a disabled parking spot is real. I’ve just imagined what would happen if the driver was a disabled person after all.
I saw two blind men energetically walking down the street until they collided, in reality they didn’t annihilate though.
production
first pass of characters design
colorscript
a test of the new animation technique, when everything is drawn in photoshop frame-by-frame
lipsync for singing happy birthday song
credits morph
language
I find subtitles very distracting in animation short films, and to avoid them I used “fictional” english.
Characters speak english-ish something, but their speech bubbles are correct.
posters
The idea was to show all the props.
the actual
alternative version
awards
Grand International Jury Prize at Roanne Animation Short Film Festival (France, 2022)
Best Short Film of the Year at Promofest (Spain, 2020)
Best of the Month Vimeo Staff Pick (USA, 2020)
Audience Award at VOID International Animation Film Festival (Denmark, 2021)
Audience Choice Award at Soo Film Festival (USA, 2021)
Audience Award at Pssst! Silent Film Festival (Croatia, 2020)
Special Jury Award at Sommets du cinéma d’animation (Canada, 2020)
Best Animated Short Film at Roberto Di Chiara International Film Competition (Argentina, 2020)
Best Use of Sound and Music at Short Sounds Film Festival (UK, 2021)
Diploma of the Jury at Insomnia Animation Festival (Russia, 2021)
Special Mention at Tindirindis International Animation Film Festival (Lithuania, 2022)