Animal Beat Box

Tonight my friends and I all went up to Sydney (along with about 40,000 other people) to see TropFest 2011, the World's Largest Short Film Festival.   The festival started in 1993 with one guy who wanted to show his film and 200 people showed up to the Tropicana café to watch.  Now 18 years later, over 150,000 people were watching live from large cities across Australia, with all the main events occurring right in Sydney in a park near the Botanical Gardens.  The free event is sponsored by celebrities (Nicole Kidman donated a few cash prizes), the Australian government and local companies and they even had a purple carpet.  I didn't recognize any of the people that they kept calling "stars" except for Olivia Newton-John who handed out the award for the winning film and was also a guest judge.

TropFest 2011 at The Domain in Sydney:
The films were shown on a three-sided screen in order to
provide all 40,000 people with a good view.

All of the films had to be under 10 minutes long and include somewhere in the film the TSI (TropFest Signature Item) which was a key.  It was hard to find the key reference in some of the films, but I thought that was an interesting thing to add and made sure that the films were made specifically for this event.  I liked the winning video a lot, but didn't think it should have won and when the director of it (the only non-Australian of the total 16) announced that he had spent only 4 days and $80 making the film, I knew that some of the other directors were feeling even worse about losing.  Winning meant a $5,000 cash prize and a round trip flight from Sydney to LA to meet with film executives.

The winner, from South Africa, made the film "Animal Beat Box" which was basically exactly the title...a beat box song created from animal names.  I hope the video is made available soon, because writing won't really work, but the main line was "dogs and cats and dogs and cats and dogs and cats" and the hook was "dolphin dolphin dolphin eeeeeeelllll" then later "llamallamallamallamallama"...While this was happening, pictures of the animals being named were popping up out of a paper maiche jungle....So while the other films managed to sum up current political issues or make powerful statements about humanity and love, this was the film (more a music video) that beat them all, and I'm pretty sure a lot of people were a little more than disappointed.

It was so great to be a part of a huge event like this one and experience a lot of modern Australian culture all at once. I'm definitely enjoying soaking up the big city life!