Unlikely relationships: the themes of their short films are atypical attachments, but the student filmmakers are hoping to use the projects to build professional bonds.(Knowledge & Career)

The following four student films from the SIGGRAPH 2007 Computer Animation Festival--"Burning Safari" from Gobelins l'ecole de l'image in Paris, "The Itch" out of Bournemouth University in the UK, and "Respire, Mon Ami: Breathe, My Friend" and "The Animator and the Seat" from the Ringling School of Art and Design--all explore relationships of a most unusual kind.

Three of the pieces, "Burning Safari," "Respire, Mon Ami," and "The Animator and the Seat," involve interactions between animate and inanimate objects. In "Burning Safari," technology meets nature head-on, and none of those involved will ever be the same. In "Respire, Mon Ami," the film's creator investigates a relationship between the living and the dead. And in "The Animator and the Seat," a piece of furniture becomes a force to be reckoned with when it decides to interact with a human.

Friendship is a crucial element of these films, though in "Burning Safari," the possibility of friendship between "species" lasts for only a split second before it goes up in smoke. "The Itch" and "Respire, Mort Ami" remind us that friendship has many definitions, and someone who is initially an annoyance--a little man who appears from nowhere to relentlessly tap the legs of the narrator--may grow over time to become someone we depend on. Loneliness might seem preferable to having a severed head as a friend, but the cheerfully determined child in "Respire, Mon Ami" shows us that matters could be otherwise. In "The Animator and the Seat," a chair keeps its occupant focused on the task at hand through a combination of tough love and shoulder massages.

Each of these films uses the CG medium differently--and successfully--to explore unlikely relationships. Their directors have different areas of focus--from lighting to character animation. Yet all of them somehow managed to create films that investigate the meaning of friendship, life and death, and humanity.

BURNING SAFARI

When nature and technology collide

"Two worlds not made to meet," is how Maxime Maleo describes the award-winning short film he and his five codirectors created for a school project at Gobelins l'ecole de l'image in Paris. In the case of "Burning Safari," the main characters are literally from two different worlds, but Maleo's reference could easily apply to any situation in which visitors and those they're visiting find themselves terribly out of sync.