This film is the second in the Sonnet Project from director Daniel Finley. The first I saw of his was probably one of my favorites so far, as his film did a great job with sonnet 119. With this film of sonnet 139 though, I didn't think it was anywhere near as good in the way that the previous film had been good, but perhaps it had enough about it in other ways. The text of the sonnet is set, the location is set (the Oculus display in Chambers Street Stn) but this is a short film that feels like the means for delivery was decided almost independent of all those things.
In the short what we get is a young woman finding a note while she is riding on the subway. On the note is the sonnet, which gets read, and then, at the end of the film, we see the girl in front of Oculus with the note as she finishes the text. The guts of the film is in the reading or rather the delivery of the reading because the majority of the film plays out in animated typeface of the words as they are delivered. To just focus on this aspect of it, I liked it because it had energy and the animated words looked good, with nice use of fonts, graphics and general design to make it interesting to the eye and often compliment the words to a certain extent. It also helped, being honest, to have the words on the screen since it took the pressure off the ears to be wholly responsible!
The issues with the film though is that as part of the Sonnet Project ideal, it doesn't really fit and instead it feels like an unrelated animation/design project. This is because of course that is what most of it is, but it is also because the location has no real relevance to the delivery of the sonnet – the note could have been anywhere to trigger the animation, and standing next to the location in the final shot doesn't really mean the same. I get why the project staff chose this location for this sonnet, with its many use of eyes and looking, but the film itself doesn't seem too bothered about this and is really just about the design. It works for what it does, but it doesn't really fit into the Project thus far, and is a little disappointing from Finley because I thought his first film in the series really nailed what they were trying to do.
In the short what we get is a young woman finding a note while she is riding on the subway. On the note is the sonnet, which gets read, and then, at the end of the film, we see the girl in front of Oculus with the note as she finishes the text. The guts of the film is in the reading or rather the delivery of the reading because the majority of the film plays out in animated typeface of the words as they are delivered. To just focus on this aspect of it, I liked it because it had energy and the animated words looked good, with nice use of fonts, graphics and general design to make it interesting to the eye and often compliment the words to a certain extent. It also helped, being honest, to have the words on the screen since it took the pressure off the ears to be wholly responsible!
The issues with the film though is that as part of the Sonnet Project ideal, it doesn't really fit and instead it feels like an unrelated animation/design project. This is because of course that is what most of it is, but it is also because the location has no real relevance to the delivery of the sonnet – the note could have been anywhere to trigger the animation, and standing next to the location in the final shot doesn't really mean the same. I get why the project staff chose this location for this sonnet, with its many use of eyes and looking, but the film itself doesn't seem too bothered about this and is really just about the design. It works for what it does, but it doesn't really fit into the Project thus far, and is a little disappointing from Finley because I thought his first film in the series really nailed what they were trying to do.