The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

[largento]

I had heard about this previously, but finally made an effort last night to find it. Luckily the full short film is available on the iTunes Store. (It's hidden away, but if you go to the Movies section and look for "shorts" under the categories, you can find short films for sale. They have a smattering of Disney shorts, Oscar nominated shorts and even some old Laurel & Hardy.

 

 

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is an amazing short and looks amazing, too. Moonbot Studios created it both as a short film and as an interactive iPad Book App (that's how I first heard about it.) They are working on future projects that follow the same form.

 

According to the making of series of videos (there are going to be ten, but only nine are available right now), the story was inspired by Hurricane Katrina and the blank looks on people's eyes in New Orleans afterwards. They say how it was like the storm wiped away their stories, but once they began to tell their stories, the life seemed to return to their eyes. In this story, a Wizard of Oz type storm takes all the people and books and buildings away and deposits them in a black and white landscape. Even the type is blown off of the pages of the books. Our hero finds a library and begins to return color and life to the people and begins to write his own story.

 

It's pretty amazing, the sets are mostly miniatures that are seamlessly integrated with the CG characters. I saw this done with the short The Gruffalo and I think it adds a level of unrealistic realism to them that you can't get just with CG. The main character is modeled after Buster Keaton (the film is silent, with no dialogue, only music built chiefly around "Pop Goes the Weasel.") It works like gangbusters, as his large eyes are instantly expressive and slightly mournful.

 

I think what Moonbot is doing is pretty smart. They are developing two avenues for their films. The book app version is probably the most profitable, but the short allows them to build up legitimacy in film festivals and whatever sales they can get for distributing it.

 

The website I linked to above has some cool stuff about the film and app. For some reason, they don't seem to have all of the making of videos on the Making Of page, but the nine that are out are all at Vimeo. The tenth is supposed to come out January 1st. They aren't very long, but they do have some neat stuff.

 

Very inspiring.

[NancyGormezano]

Beautiful. Beautiful.

 

Inspiring? Yes!

 

(and discouraging for small potato people, such as moi ? Mais Oui!)

[largento]

Just saw that the short film is available for free in HD in the iTunes store right now! I highly recommend it!

[NancyGormezano]

It's also available for viewing online at the short of the week website

 

lovely!

[Paul Forwood]

Thanks, Mark!

Thank you for the link, Nancy!

I've been wanting to see that since I saw the first clips, some time ago. Beautifully done with some great Buster Keaton sequences and some lovely ideas throughout.

[robcat2075]

That's a charmer! Tastefully done in all its details.

[Shelton]

Thanks for sharing this. I have always been a fan of William Joyce. That was very nice.

[Rodney]

Impressive project.

 

They've certainly got a lot of hooks and layers to this project that will relate to a wide variety of interests and experience. The story itself seems to have many themes that loop back into each other in such a complementary way that I think this film will be well received for many years to come. I think it will appeal to young and old alike also.

 

The style of the film seems perfectly suited to our time of transitioning into new realms of animation and the films gift to us in the merging of traditional, stopmotion and computer animation is notable.

 

Tying the film to Hurricane Katrina is something of a master stroke because it really brings a timely yet timeless weighting from the real world into the story and yet the addition of the whimsical and cartoony allows it to far enough removed so that it won't be overly serious or depressing.

 

And who can resist the themes of the old ways being swept away and not knowing how the next chapter will be written? The symbolism of books and over all theme of our need for storytelling is powerful.

[Rodney]

There is a sequel of sorts... more aptly an homage... to 'The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore' called 'Silent'.

 

KA6azZALMiE

 

 

...and here's a video on the making of:

 

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