Director: Kate Parry
Running time: 4mins
Over the last year, we’ve been privileged to receive several works from students of the University of Dundee’s Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design. The latest (and hopefully not last) is Off-Beats, directed by Kate Parry – and featuring familiar names including production manager Frank O’Neil and concept artist Simon Krawczyk. No doubt, there are many others who have worked on Crèche & Burn and Safe Travels hiding throughout the marathon credit list that rolls at the end of Off-Beats! – and once again, there is plenty to be proud of in this work.
In a world where young artists heading out of education and into the workforce are being bombarded with messaging that they are supposedly surplus to requirements, that is especially important. The collapse of generative AI tool Sora shows what this really boiled down to – not a serious method of replacement, so much as a snake-oil stand that studio bosses (including Disney) could throw their weight behind as a means to con their staff into cuts to pay and conditions; and one which fell apart in no time at all thanks to OpenAI’s absurdly unprofitable business model. But even if the obvious shortcomings of the hype around the technology had not been exposed, here Parry and her team show us a glimmer of something even more important, when it comes to creating animations that people want to spend their time and money engaging with.
Sora and its equivalents are often cited as a threat to artists because of their view-counts on social media – but even if you ignore how few of those clicks may now be from actual people, it doesn’t show that anyone wants this to take the place of animators at Pixar or Aardman. You can get a few million idiots to gawp at fruit-based Love Island caricatures, but that doesn’t translate to a profitable mode of production, because it doesn’t speak to anyone in a way that they care enough to pay for the alleged privilege of accessing it. Machinery will never be capable of replicating visual storytelling driven by personal, emotional experience.
Here, Parry uses her own lived experience, and transposes it to tell an impactful, if brief, story that will echo her own experiences at art college. As I have noted before, school offers a concentrated pool of all the talents – where people with different abilities and interests converge to learn how they can make their way in the arts. And while the world beyond the safety of those walls feels hostile – like it’s set up to crush dreams rather than enable them, where industry gatekeepers seem keener to laugh at new talent than to help it – it offers a unique safe-haven, where each individual can find collaborators and supporters, to make that coming world more survivable.
This silent story mirrors that process. It follows a gang of cutesy animals, on the road to musical stardom – beginning with just a shy mouse and a supportive cat, gazing up at a deserted stage during an open-mic night. After failing to work up the courage as just a duo – hooted at by an owl and their obnoxious bandmates – the pair begin to collect other undiscovered talent, adding a string to their collective bow with each appointment, but more importantly, finding solace and solidarity in each other’s company. A keyboard-playing frog, a rabbit drummer, and badger on bass swell the band’s ranks, and also empower the mouse to finally let loose on vocals in front of a busy venue.
Without any words, the character design has to do a lot of heavy-lifting to clue us in on these characters, and how they are developing through their short-but-sweet arcs. And while the style behind these figures might be considered a little generic (you will have seen cartoon characters like these before, if not these exactly), there is still enough personality and uniqueness to let us know where each individual sits on their journey. An oblivious rabbit at a rainy bus-stop, whose face is miraculously revived the second his drum makes a sound. A frog frustratedly sighing at a laptop screen, longing to go to work on something that moves them, comes to life when the beat kicks in. These are great little moments – which build smartly with a soundtrack which builds to a layered crescendo, before the movie’s final moments.
Perhaps the biggest problem with that, is that after building so well, the film ends abruptly just as our protagonist mouse is about to belt out their first song in front of a crowd. It feels like the dictionary definition of an anti-climax – the musical equivalent of a thriller which ends by cutting to black, and playing a lone gunshot before the credits role – and all that energy dissipates in rather disappointing fashion. Perhaps this comes from a practical necessity: they couldn’t find anyone willing to put their own voice on the line for that triumphant last scene. But that is something which I find slightly hard to believe, at an educational facility where so many other forms of talent reside, and were willing to lend a hand with this work.
The lack of this final showpiece performance to put a cap on Off-Beats! is, in the context of a film about musical performances, a big problem. As was the case with Blaze Beat Jitters, it serves to undermine the narrative power of every moment that came before. It’s like if you were to finish a Rocky film where the screen fades to black just as Stallone throws his first punch. And while that does not detract from the technical craft exhibited by Parry and her league of talented animators, it does show that as a filmmaker and director, a little sharpening of her intuition as a complete storyteller is still needed. That will surely come with time – and I hope it is time she is afforded as she embarks on life after university, supported and empowered by the brilliant band she has assembled here.
Some people argue music is as close as we have to a kind of universal language – and while I don’t necessarily agree, it is easy to see why it attracts filmmakers time and again, as a venue for which they can discuss the emotional highs and lows of the human experience. With that being said, I would perhaps like to see some of these plot-beats appear in a film about filmmaking. It’s worth reminding people – especially now – that there is something arguably as universal, and human, at the heart of this industry, as there is in music. That – not eerily ‘perfect’ recycled character designs or the suspiciously smooth camera movements that AI ‘creators’ lust after – is the essence that makes visual storytelling truly magical; and as this new generation of animators heads into the industry, I hope they find ways to shout it from the rooftops.