 Welcome back to animation recommendations and today I want to talk about a short film called Substance directed and written by Jamal Bradley. I was very fortunate to have seen this movie this Friday and I wanted to talk about it and I wanted to spread the word about it because it's really really good. I wish I could go into all the story elements and the things that really grabbed me but it's a spoiler so I can't really talk about too much but I'm gonna keep it vague enough. Well let me back up. So this was written, directed and produced by Jamal Bradley and if you don't know him he's had a very long career in his industry working on so many different things in terms of features and in game development and now directing a short and the team he's assembled for this short is also massively talented. So you can see you have Jamal as the director and writer, you have Michael Yates as the co-writer lead story artist who comes from Pixar, Bruce W. Smith as the producer and the list goes on. It's a ton of super super talented artists working on the short. Now what you could watch is the teaser and again I'm gonna link to the cartoon brew interview and on that you have a teaser that doesn't really give away the central story but it introduces you to the characters and also gives you really quick insight into the animation quality of the short and given that I love animation I mean that's something I can talk about without spoiling things. The attention to detail to the face and the fingers and just the general interaction between the characters is absolutely fantastic and again I'll have a link in the description to this clip but you can see in those facial tests the amount of detail, the organic squishiness and the fine detail in the facial animation that really allows for very very expressive pantomime and I say pantomime because the other thing that's really really cool is that as the short starts and again no spoilers there's background sound you just do the streets and you can see this in the teaser when he walks you have sounds of the cars and people behind it and it starts traditionally with sound design and so on and then you're wondering well for me at least when people start talking how you know what are the voice actors how is the sound quality of the mics the recording all of that can kind of make or break a short or a movie for me sound is super super important so I was very curious about how he was going to implement that and the awesome thing is that there's actually no dialogue that you can hear because the moment the characters talk there's music that kicks in with lyrics and the music and the lyrics supplement the feelings and emotions of the characters but you can also just turn the whole thing off and play the whole short without sound and it still works and the other thing that was interesting right after I saw the short I takes a Jamal and told him my impressions and you know the things that that I got out of the show and what I interpreted and funny enough I was wrong about a couple things that I interpreted but the awesome thing was that it didn't change the central story and the impressions and the message of the short I thought that was really interesting and because of my cultural background being different I will see things interpret things differently so depending on who you are you will get more or less out of the short but the cool thing is that it was still powerful and resonated with me on a different level but the main message and the main impact of the short was the same and I think that's really interesting and speaks to the quality of the short that despite those differences in interpretations of and again I can't spoil it in terms of whatever I can't spoil it it still worked man I wish I could talk about the actual story but what's also cool is I'm a massive fan of this is that it's a heavier subject matter and it's just something that I'm always a big fan of that you don't always have to have fantastical elements or talking animals or whatever in feature animation there's always I don't know who said this first but if you can shoot a live action while you animate it I understand that there's a cost involved in the animation and it's painstakingly slow and you gotta go frame by frame it's probably easier to shoot something even this short live action but to me it's always why if you have a good story to tell if there's a good message why not tell it within that medium of animation because it's not a genre it's just a style of telling a story and you may or may not agree with this and to be honest I don't care because that's just I love animation I don't want it to tell different stories and it doesn't always have to be in the same family friendly I will say genre and I think this short really does that and I wish that you could take this and extrapolate it into a feature movie and have more of that but I could talk about this forever I really really really like the short and it's not because I got the chance to watch it I'm not doing anybody a favor just by pretending I really did like the short and I hope that you can see it now you're wondering but where can I see it good question I will go on to Jamal's Twitter again link in the description where he retweets and promotes the short it's screening at the Newark Theater in the West Los Angeles but I would follow Jamal if you know is contact him and ask him about future screenings he will know everything about the marketing side so if you have a chance to go watch it there or chance anywhere to watch it I highly highly recommend that you watch the short spread the word it's fantastic let's support him let's support the short let's support all the people involved in this I highly highly recommend it and thanks Jamal again for the opportunity to let me watch it it was absolutely fantastic it's just something I'm very passionate about and I really really hope it does well and changes people's minds in terms of what you can do with animation and the types of stories that you can tell but I'm gonna stop rambling again all the links in the description go in the description you can see his twitter the websites of the short all the things that you need to know again don't go too far into the interviews spoilers but anyway that's it go watch it if you can and that's all I'm gonna say