Logorama was this year’s winner for the Best Animated Short Academy Award, beating out perennial favourite Nick Park (with his latest Wallace and Gromit short), as well as French Roast, Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty and The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la muerte).
Produced by the French studio H5, who’s work boasts film clips for Goldfrapp, Massive Attack and Röyksopp, as well as advertisements for Dior, Hugo Boss, Audi and Volkswagen. The film is written and directed by François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy and Ludovic Houplain, and produced by Autour de Minuit, with Nicolas Schmerkin serving as Executive Producer and taking home the Oscar.
Set in a seemingly dystopian Los Angeles city where logos make up almost every image that is shown, two cops (in the form of Michelin Men) chase a psychotic runaway (Ronald McDonald). As a subplot, an Esso girl has also fled with the Big Boy in an attempt to escape this crazy world. Also pay attention for David Fincher providing the voice of the Pringles Original Man.
We see the world full of logos, obviously being an allegory for the world in which we live now, being overtaken by the forces of natural disasters. Have the story rendered in such a form, shows a world not too dissimilar from our own. Not too dissimilar indeed.
Looking at the film, one wonders, how on earth did these guys get permission to use all of these logos. In truth, they didn’t. See the film as being impossible to make if permission had to be attained for each logo, co-writer/director Ludovic Houplain notes (in an article in the Los Angeles Times) that “It’s a kind of time-sensitive snapshot, because in 20 to 30 years, when all of these logos will have been redesigned, the film will be obsolete. So we at H5 said to ourselves that we didn’t have to ask permission since this isn’t a commercial movie but rather one whose goal is to show the freedom of expression.”
Logorama joins the esteemed company of previous winners such as Wallace and Gromit’s The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave (in 1993 and 1995 respectively), as well as a stack of Pixar shorts (beginning with Tin Toy in 1988, and with For the Birds last winning in 2001) and our very own Harvie Krumpet in 2003.
Next up for the French duo, a 20 minute live action film “Future Soldier”, for the game “Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon”. The short will be Ubisoft’s next foray into the film industry after releasing “Assassins Creed: Lineage” last year.
