Piper
Pixar’s Piper took home the Best Animated Short Film Award at the 89th Annual Academy Awards. Easily the cutest of the entries, Piper also the most photorealistic of the animated features and, honestly, the only one with real moments of humor. In Piper, writer-director Alan Barillaro‘s contribution, a young sandpiper needs to learn how to feed itself at its mother’s encouragement, but the threatening, relentless ocean waves make this a tough task. But when the little bird learns how to see the world differently thanks to her crab friend, she’s soon able to provide for herself, her friends and family in an unexpected way. Like any of Pixar’s projects, there are some shades of meaning behind the colorful palette displayed on screen. Piper overcomes her fear and shyness to find a new, unique approach to something that her fellow feathered friends and family have been doing for generations
Blind Vaysha
Working with the National Film Board of Canada since 2003, Bulgaria-born animator Theodore Ushev short film Blind Vaysha was his first Academy Awards nomination. Based on a story by George Gospodinov, Blind Vaysha centers on its title character, a young girl born with the curious curse of one eye that only sees the past while the other sees only the future. In other words, Vaysha never sees what is happening in the present and is thus technically blind. The most striking thing about Blind Vaysha is its distinct animation style, one inspired by a medieval drawing. The most striking thing about Blind Vaysha is its distinct animation style.An incredible amount of work went into the production of Blind Vaysha, totaling between 12,000 to 13,000 drawings over six months.
Pearl
Pearl, is an animated short from director Patrick Osborne, who brings solid animation experience along with a previous Oscar win for Feast. It also marks the first animated short with a virtual reality component that was nominated for an Oscar. The viewer experience story came out of Google’s Spotlight Stories project which allows audiences to view the story in 360 degrees. The story of Pearl is narrated mostly by music and an old tape recording found in the back of a beat-up hatchback by a young woman. All the action takes place in and around the car as a father and his young daughter go on an extended road trip, while working on their musical skills. This vibrant, tale encapsulates quite a bit of storytelling in a very short period of time.
Pear Cider and Cigarettes
Roughly five times as long as any of the other animated shorts on this list, Pear Cider and Cigarettes was by far the most mature and adult of the nominees.
Narrated by Rob Valley, Pear Cider and Cigarettes tells the story of his friend, Techno Stypes, a hard-living sort who is destined to die young. Viewers follow Rob’s travels to and from China with the aim of getting Techno to stop drinking and come home to Vancouver for a liver transplant, a task that’s easier said than done. The short acts as a biographical homage to Valley’s real-life friend of 25 years; equally, it’s an absolute showcase of Valley’s talents as an animator; he’s known for work on Aeon Flux, TRON: Uprising, and the Gorilla music videos, to name but a few.
Borrowed Time
The final Oscar nominee was Borrowed Time, the dark, Western-themed short from directors Andrew Coats and Lou Hamou-Lhadj. The incredibly rich, realistic, and detailed short has no dialogue and uses musical cues quite sparingly. Like almost all of the other nominees, Borrowed Time plays with the concept of time, focusing on the past and the present; this aspect is as essential to the plot as it was in Blind Vaysha.
You think you know what’s going to happen and then BANG, something catches you off guard. That’s half the fun (and half the torment) of watching this short for the first time. Borrowed Time follows a lawman in the Wild West through two different tracks in time: one as a young man riding shotgun alongside his father, and another in which he’s an aging sheriff dealing with the difficulties of his past.
