FARD

April 11, 2010 5:08 PM

FARD is nice little animated short about a man who comes into possession of an object which shines an new light on his reality. It's in French and there are no subtitles, but the dialogue is minimal and the story is easy to follow. [Via]
posted by homunculus (17 comments total)

And to think I *just* had a conversation about Cool World.

This was better, FYI.
posted by The Whelk at 5:18 PM on April 11, 2010

Yeah, that was excellent, really enjoyable. At first I thought, wow, what a great idea, making animation look as though it was shot on a hand held camera, then realized, of course, as the story progressed, that it no doubt started as film, shot, in fact, using a hand held camera.

Also loved the very creative representation of light in this film.

Cool stuff. Thanks, homunculus.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:25 PM on April 11, 2010

Yeah, it's hard to make rotoscoping (or whatever they did which, I ASSUME was painting over live action) look any where near decent and this short turned the shortcomings of the method into assets.
posted by The Whelk at 5:28 PM on April 11, 2010

This is excellent.
posted by threetoed at 5:35 PM on April 11, 2010

Truly amazing.

The stylized stuff reminded me a lot of Batman Beyond.
posted by oraknabo at 5:42 PM on April 11, 2010

What trope would this type of story be under on tvtropes? The "something terrible happens and then everything is reset" type of story.
posted by thylacine at 6:12 PM on April 11, 2010

It also kind of resembles They Live in a lot of ways.
posted by oraknabo at 6:21 PM on April 11, 2010

So cool! Like Pleasantville meets District 9. I wasn't super satisfied at the ending, but it was great in general. If the lack of subtitles bothers anyone, here's more or less what's going on:

All the announcements are typical "next stop, ground floor" type things. The e-mail says: "Hi Oscar. I'm out today and I forgot a packet in my drawer. Take it. I'll stop by your house around 6pm to pick it up. Thanks in advance. Martin."

A worker stops by and says: "Congratulations on your presentation yesterday Oscar. The committee was very impressed." The face says "Have a nice day."

Oscar just exchanges "see you tonights", etc. with Lisa in the elevator.

For the messages, Martin first asks normally if he's got the package and says he'll be by soon. Then in the third message he says "I have a problem! I won't be able to get it right away! Hide the package! You hear me? Hide it!"

The men are just like, "get him!" Oscar and Lisa's argument basically consists of him yelling "Shut up! Look. Wait!"

I can't make out much of Oscar and Martin's fight in the sewer. Oscar's generally freaking out, Martin says something like "Look at what they've done to us" or "what they're going to do to us, in any way it's too late." Someone with better french skills than me will have to fill that in.

The agents say, "It's him." when the catch him. At the end, Martin's like "you're going through my things?" and the worker comes by and says "Congratulations on the presentation..."
posted by Solon and Thanks at 6:54 PM on April 11, 2010 [3 favorites]

By the way, "fard" means "make-up" in french. If you speak "sans fard" = without any make-up = completely openly.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 6:59 PM on April 11, 2010

That guy looks like Kratos
posted by azarbayejani at 9:21 PM on April 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

I watched this yesterday and enjoyed it.

The Whelk: Did you mean Out of this World? Also it looks like it's more of a Cel-shaded type of style.
posted by P.o.B. at 9:23 PM on April 11, 2010

I totally forgot about Out Of This World and yes it is a match.

coooooool.
posted by The Whelk at 9:27 PM on April 11, 2010

Very entertaining short; I'd love to see a full movie built on this concept.
posted by flatluigi at 10:04 PM on April 11, 2010

I expected more.
posted by humannaire at 10:28 PM on April 11, 2010

It has shades of More, as well. (More has better music, though.)

On preview: Hah! There you go, humannaire.
posted by whatnotever at 10:47 PM on April 11, 2010

Huh, I forgot all about More.
posted by homunculus at 11:36 PM on April 11, 2010

Solon and Thanks,

Thanks for the translation. What's hilarious is that I basically nailed it, by deriving a little (noveau message and such is pretty simple, and you could make out "presentation" with the worker) and guessing the rest of the way. Kind of a fun, yet very simple challenge in a way. The sewer part was of course the most ambiguous, but I imagined it was something along the lines of "crap, we're fucked" and "dude, shut up, I know we're fucked, look, we're in COLOR" and then "fuck, you did this to me!" and "you did this to YOURSELF" etc.

I rather wish it had gone someplace else—I wanted to see the beam applied more and watch more general freak out and malaise, but I appreciated its scarcity for what it was, too.
posted by disillusioned at 1:17 AM on April 12, 2010