Don Hertzfeldt

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Don Hertzfeldt at his animation desk.
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Don Hertzfeldt at his animation desk.

Don Hertzfeldt (born August 1, 1976) is the creator of many short animated films, including, but not limited to, the Academy-Award nominated cult favorite "Rejected". Collectively, his animated films have received over one hundred awards and have been featured in over a thousand film festivals and venues world-wide. His work has already been the subject of several career retrospectives.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Hertzfeldt is a Film Studies graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara. He still lives in Santa Barbara and is well-known there, though is something of a recluse - as parodied in the satirical headlines found on the back of the "Bitter Films Volume 1" DVD booklet.

[edit] Filmography

[edit] Career in Animation

Hertzfeldt's films typically feature hand-drawn stick figures acting out dadaist combinations of slapstick, absurd, and black humor along with heavier existential themes. Hertzfeldt creates his films with traditional pen and paper animation, without the aid of computers. Instead he works mainly with 16mm or 35mm film cameras and occasionally employs older special effect techniques such as multiple exposures, in-camera mattes, and experimental photography. This lends a more organic feel to his works, most evident in occasional stop-motion animation sequences (as in Intermission in the Third Dimension), as well as in the use of the celluloid and drawing mediums themselves as part of the visuals (as in Rejected and Genre).

The enormous popularity of his films, unprecedented in the history of independent animation, has led to a countless number of online video bootlegs, bringing Hertzfeldt's material to a wider audience of millions. His production company, Bitter Films, has never placed any of these films online themselves and while they "are not interested in harassing fans", Don is said to frown on the very poor quality that Internet video provides.

A DVD collecting all of Hertzfeldt's films from 1995 to 2005 is available exclusively on http://www.bitterfilms.com, remastered in high definition from the original camera negatives. Released in 2006, it is the first time films such as Genre and Lily and Jim are widely available to the public - they were previously only found on limited-release VHS collections of animated shorts, long out of print. The DVD has many special features, including a short documentary entitled "Watching Grass Grow: Animating The Meaning of Life", commentaries, footage from Don's earliest cartoons, interviews, deleted scenes, and an extensive 140+ page "archive" section. The first 750 pre-orderers received an 'exclusive mystery gift': either a 35mm clipping from Rejected that was autographed by Don, or a unique drawing by Don on a Post-it note.

In 2003 Hertzfeldt created and now annually curates The Animation Show with Beavis and Butt-head creator Mike Judge, a traveling North American exhibition of innovative animated shorts that visits more theaters than any distributor in history. A second Animation Show toured throughout 2005, featuring Hertzfeldt's short film The Meaning of Life, almost four years in the making. The third season of The Animation Show is scheduled for nationwide release in January 2007.

In 2005, Hertzfeldt wrote and illustrated a short piece called, "Dance of the Sugar Plums (or, Last Month on Earth)" for the graphic novel anthology, "Flight". His comic was entirely created on Post-It notes in pencil, with each Post-It faithfully reprinted life-size in the book, over a black background. Also, in November 2005, Hertzfeldt's shorts "Billy's Balloon" and "Intermission in the Third Dimension" were aired on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block.

Hertzfeldt's most recently completed film, Everything Will Be OK, premiered unannounced at the Nevada City Film Festival in October 2006, where it won the Jury Award for Best Film. It is apparently partially based on his short-lived comic strip, "Temporary Anesthetics". A short preview for the film was aired at San Diego Comic Con 2006 during the Animation Show panel. According to Hertzfeldt, "With luck the movie will be really quite good. With bad luck it will shoot acid and spread plague." According to Hertzfeldt's production journal, Everything Will Be OK is intended to be the first chapter of a three-part story and he is currently animating the second episode. Everything Will Be OK plays in competition at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2007.

Hertzfeldt refuses to sell any of his original or production artwork. Instead, through Bitter Films in the late 90's and early 00's, he annually auctioned pieces off online to raise thousands of dollars for local Santa Barbara charities. Other original artwork has been occasionally given away through the Bitter Films online store through special promotions. Because Hertzfeldt also rarely does signings, his artwork is very rare for animation collectors or casual fans to own.

[edit] Awards and Honors

In 2000 the animator's fifth major film, Rejected, was nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film.

In 2001, Hertzfeldt was named by Filmmaker Magazine as one of the "Top 25 Filmmakers to Watch".

A list of individual awards for each of Hertzfeldt's films can be viewed on his website.

[edit] View on Commercials/Controversy

Hertzfeldt has been offered numerous commercial deals, including one from Cingular Wireless, which he writes about on his website. However, he has turned all of these deals down, as he personally feels that commercials are "lies", and feels that he should not lie to his audience. Despite this, there have been several ad campaigns, including the above mentioned one from Cingular and one involving feminine products, that have borne enough resemblance to Hertzfedt's work as to be mistaken for it.

The most well-known instance of this is a series of recent (2005-2006) television ads for Kellogg's Pop-Tarts, which has used stick figures and black humor (albeit heavily toned down) similar to Hertzfeldt's style. Despite similarities, Hertzfeldt was not involved in any way. It is unclear if the Kellogg Company was intentionally trying to mimic his style, or if the similarities are coincidental. Hertzfeldt is currently looking into possible litigation[1].

  1. ^ "Ain't It Cool News", Ain't It Cool News, August 7, 2006.

[edit] External links

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