Showbits

Today's short is the shortest short of the shorts I'll be posting here shortly. After the frenetic nature of What's in the Box?, I thought it'd be a nice change of pace to enjoy the contemplative and solitary nature of The Black Hole:

Given this film's dimly-lit environment, I was pleasantly surprised to find the overall tone of the film to be less dark. I'd worried that the hole itself would prove to have a nefarious or accursed purpose, similar to the extremely disturbing "Girl With Pencil" short. Fortunately, the director did not borrow Stephen King's style of horribly punishing his main character, resulting instead in a mildly amusing variation on the greed and regret of Office Space.

The Black Hole was produced for the fifth annual National Film Board of Canada Online Short Film Competition, as were three other films, each of them equally dialogue-free. Two are entirely computer-generated, while the third and longest of the set is special effects-free. Like The Black Hole, it's amazing how much can be said with so few words and embellishments.