Clocked In
The YoungCuts Film Festival is pleased to announce that it has selected Ike AhLoe's animated film Clocked In as one of our Top 100 International Short Films for 2011. The film is also shortlisted for consideration as Best Animated Film.
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| Clocked In Poster |
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The Official Final Deadline of the YoungCuts Film Festival was June 15th. While we will only announce our full selection of our Top 100 around July 15th and while there is still an opportunity for films that we haven't received yet to trickle in after the deadline, we thought that we would begin announcing some of the films that we know will be included in our Top 100.
These won't be announced in any kind of order and they should not be interpreted as any kind of ranking, just that we have all the material for this particular film and that we do consider it one of the Top 100 short films by filmmakers 25 and under that we have seen (and will see) out of more than a thousand films that we have screened from more than 30 countries.
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Clocked In
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| Ike AhLoe |
Directed and Written by Ike AhLoe
Clocked In uses modern open source technology to tell a very old story - the battle between the security of work and being bored out of your freaking mind.
We were impressed by Ike's effective use of technology and we admire his approach to music - finding local bands willing to give him free music to use. It is always puzzling when we get a film that uses music without permission. The music choice almost always feels forced and inauthentic, not to mention unnecessary.
But great free technology and great free music are just tools. The painter is not defined by his brush but by his painting. The animator is not defined by his tools but by his film. And by that measure we define Ike AhLoe as being very talented indeed.
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| Arriving at Work |
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Runtime: 9 min : 8 sec
Completion: 9 May 2011
Country of Origin: USA (Missouri)
Synopsis: The battle to remain conscious and find humanity in an otherwise hostile work setting reaches a destructive and hopeful climax.
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| The Boss |
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Filmmaker Bio: I'm from Kansas City, Missouri, in the United States. I've been interested in animation since early grade school. I would fill the margins of all my textbooks with stick figure flip-books and make stop motion tests with action figures. I grew up in KC going to a lot of DIY punk shows in the area, and a lot of my work is inspired by punk/soul/garage/ska/noise/hardcore records and local flyer art.
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| The Girl Next Cubicle |
This project was sparked by Black Flag's song "Clocked In" and the image of smashing the time clock off the wall. The story itself was inspired by previous work experiences of my mother, myself, and our respective co-workers. Actually, the office in the animation is a replica of an the old work place.
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| Dreaming in Colour |
I went to the Kansas City Art Institute and "Clocked In" is my senior graduation project. I'm interested in all kinds of animation, especially cut-out stop motion, and stylized 3D. When working on personal projects, I like to be involved with the whole process, including writing, design, direction, animation, and music/sound; but I do love to have friends help me out too. In this case, Don Beasley helped with the score, and my girlfriend, Stefanie, reluctantly helped voice act the word "What!".
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| More Dreaming |
The songs in the animation are from local KC (-1) DIY bands who contributed songs. Punk doesn't have much presence in the animation world, and while I'm not trying to be that voice, I want my stuff to promote the kids making awesome show flyers to think about what other creative options they have.
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| Suddenly Awake |
I used all free software on Linux for "Clocked In", so it's an illusion that you NEED super expensive software with questionable licenses to make what you want. Why shouldn't animations be included in hardcore 7" releases every once in a while? THEY SHOULD.
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| Definitely Dreaming |
Filmmaker Age: 23
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| Must Work! |
Production Note: Freestyle and Open Source Development
This is the first short film to utilize the Freestyle Renderer that is currently being integrated into blender. Because everything I used was pre-release software, I often came into bugs and problems. Because blender is open-source, it's easy to communicate directly with the developers. I would often report bugs to T.K., the main developer of the Freestyle Branch of Blender, and he would fix it overnight or give me advice on correct/alternative usage.
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| Dreaming of Maps |
One time I was having problems because, when Freestyle was active, the blur node values in the compositor would not animate even though they were key-framed. The blur values stayed at the first key-framed value. This is referring to the part where the main character punches the computer into blurred color vapor. This was the process I was basing the whole ending sequence on so I was pretty freaked out that it as failing me. Luckily I sent in a sample file to T.K. and he fixed the bug overnight.
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| Must Concentrate |
I also asked him early on to add the ability to animate freestyle line qualities and he implemented some of my ideas. There was another occasion where I paid a developer 20$ to implement a rigging feature.
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| Definitely Dreaming |
This is a great benefit open-source has for artists. Artists aren't locked into what's there. You can always expand the program or get someone to do it for you. This way the artist's ideas always come before technical obstacles.
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| Very Metal Dreams |
The 2011 YoungCuts Film Festival will begin on Thursday, September 29th. Screenings will be at the Guzzo Spheretech beginning on Friday, September 30th. Stay tuned for details on how to enjoy the amazing films that we will be presenting including Clocked In!
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