I am going to put all the short films we watched on one blog post to make it a little easier I hope. The first short we watched was Hardware Wars, this video is hilarious, I am pretty sure I have seen it at some point in my past because I remember liking it more than the actual Star Wars. It is basically a parody of star wars using appliances instead of spaceships and of course using comedic names and personalities for their version of the Star Wars heroes. I really enjoyed the film based on creativity with the technology of 1977, today almost all special effects are done by computers and so they have a certain look to them. When they use different perspectives and angles in the older films it makes me as the viewer appreciate the involvement of the actors, crew, and everyone involved basically in putting a film together. When special effects are computer generated I feel that involvement is taken out and creating more separation on the final product. The use of the same clip but rotated of some how modified is funny and clever. The sci-fi tropes were a major theme of what we talked about in our discussion and this idea that has remained with me since the start of the semester is what makes a sci-fi film a sci-fi film! The variation of themes, subjects, and aesthetics in the short films viewed can give good examples of new sci-fi, also how sci-fi films of the past have influenced those new films/ideas. Alfonso Cuaron's "IKEA" is a great example of taking themes and tropes from other films and turning into something new and hilarious. The film is a parody of Gravity using stereotypes and actualities about IKEA stores. 
The two main characters are a young man and woman that seem to be dating visit an IKEA store. The angles and music used with the choppy clips really adds to the drama of the short, as well as the literal comedy of it all. Where is the sci-fi in this film? Well is the mere fact that it is strongly influenced by Gravity in a purposeful manner enough to call it a sci-fi film or does the store actually have abilities to confuse its customers in every way, and is that sci-fi even? The next short was called Cargo, its from the Tropfest Australia 2013 Finalists. Here we have a classic example of a horror/sci-fi theme...the zombie apocalypse.
It starts out with a groggy awakening of a man in the passenger seat of a car, he looks over to find his wife is now a zombie and wants to eat him! He escapes the car and we find out he has a baby in the back seat!! He gets the baby out and realizes he has been bitten and if the rumors are true then he is doomed to become a flesh eating walker, leaving his baby to be eaten by her father. Instead he gets smart and makes himself a zombie weight losing device, a bag of guts tied to the end of a stick held in front of him. Genius really. And to add to it he attaches a balloon to himself, now someone will notice him more hopefully and think twice about attacking, also the baby is entertained. Some survivors find him and the one girl has her motherly instincts save the baby! This was good because it's a story we haven't really dealt with too much in zombie films and television; how to deal with children, especially infants, in a zombie apocalypse. The chances of a baby surviving just regular life are already hard but when no one is safe then it's really going to be hard. However entertaining this short was I am still aching for a zombie movie that is different extremely than all others. The next short film we watched was called The Silent City, it takes place in a war struck city that is left in ruins, in the beginning is a scene of one soldier getting sniper shot right in the head. The remaining three use dental mirrors to look around corners, one eventually sets off a boobie-trap reaching for his gun, the two guys closest get terribly injured to the point of death, the third is drastically calling for help but there is no help for them.
It's the end of the city as they know it! The shooter turns out to just be a skeleton, so the chances of life are limited making it seem there is no one left on earth. This one was pretty dark so it was not my favorite of the set but it was very intriguing and brought the viewer in and made me want to watch the whole story.
Overall I really liked watching these shorts because they were really well put together and creative. It makes me think twice about the movies that are in theaters because of all these other amazing options out there that the big names aren't putting out.
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