Oscar Animated Shorts Screening

One of the benefits of being an Academy member is the power to help select the Oscar-nominated short films, and (along with all of the other members of the animation branch), the eventual winner.

About 20 of the New York and Canadian members met at the Academy's screening room last weekend, to watch 56 Oscar-eligible animated shorts over two days.

It was a great opportunity to catch up with old friends and talk about animation. Of course, when you have 56 films from all over the world, there could be a bunch of duds, but all in all, the quality of the films presented this year was quite high.

Here is my list of the films that I think will be "shortlisted", and thus eligible for the final list of 5 nominated films:

                                       "Subconscious Password", directed by Chris Landreth

                           "Get a Horse" from Disney Studios, directed by Lauren MacMullan

                                                     "Feral", directed by Daniel Souza

                                                     "Gambo", directed by Hiroaki Ando

                                         "Hollow Land", directed by Michelle + Uri Kranot

                                         "Kick-Heart", directed by the great Masaaki Yuasa

                                                     "Pandas", directed by Matus Vitar

                                 "The Blue Umbrella" from Pixar, directed by Saschka Unseld

                             "Mr. Hublot", directed by Laurent Witz and Alexandre Espigares

                                              "The Missing Scarf", directed by Eoin Duffy

Of course, my animated short "Drunker Than a Skunk" is also competing for a nomination, but it's a tough challenge because a lot of these films have million-dollar budgets, and "Drunker" cost me only about $3,000 out of pocket and was made with a ball-point pen.

So, watch the media, we should get the Short List soon.

Bill