The Screening Room

I had never heard of YouTube's Screening Room. So when I got on, it was a little different for me. I watched "Fast Film". A film done with entirely pieces of paper and a little animation. In the film, there are several plots to the story. It starts with the typical 50's film mantra of a man coming in and passionately and maybe a little over zealously kissing an attractive actress. The film then moves from this to a horse. The horse, in true classic western fashion, runs along side a train. By the time you come to the climax of that scene, there are four trains. All have some sort of bad guy aboard and there is only one "good guy" train featuring Cary Grant as the good guy. Grant goes into a car on the train to rescue a girl, which, of course, he completes with ease. He rescues her as the four trains are plummeting toward the ground because they've run off a cliff. The girl and Grant drive a car out of the train James Bond style. Then you see Grant and a host of other 50's actors walking through a darkened cave. The hero comes to a torture wheel where the body is stationary, but the head is not, the film rolls through several different heads on the wheel. It switches heads on the wheel like those boards at carnivals where you put your face inside the circle and become the old farmer and his wife, or a cow and host of other barnyard animals. The film ends with a dog fight in the air with good guys like John Wayne shooting down Frankenstein and other traditional villains.

I really enjoyed the Fast Film for many reasons. One is I'd never seen a film like that before. Every time you watch it it could become something different. The horse, death wheels, planes, trains, and automobiles, etc. were all shapes in it of themselves. Inside these objects were moving film snippets from a variety of different 50's, 60's, and 70's movies. It gave you a great walk through history if you're a old movie watcher like myself. Different films I recognized gave me a sort of nostalgia and made me want to go back and watch them again. You could either keep up with the films themselves, or follow the story of the moving object independently. Moreover, if you watch the subsequent film 'Making of Fast Films' the directors, producers, and makers of this film walk you through this complicated art. It's a great change of pace from your traditional animations and special effects of today. It was somewhat hard to follow, but that's because you're trying to follow two different story lines at once. Overall though, a really nice change of pace and a great work of art to appreciate.