Don Hertzfeldt
Encyclopedia
Don Hertzfeldt is the creator of many short animated films, including the Academy-Award nominated Rejected
and Everything Will Be OK
. His animated films have received over 150 awards and have been presented around the world. Before the age of thirty, his films were already the subject of several career retrospectives. He was the youngest director named in the "They Shoot Pictures, Don't They" list of "The 100 Important Animation Directors" of all time, and in 2010 he received the San Francisco International Film Festival
's "Persistence of Vision" Lifetime Achievement Award at the age of 33.
The popularity of Hertzfeldt's work is unprecedented in independent animation
and his films are frequently quoted and referenced in pop culture. In 2009, the Sundance Film Festival
noted, "If cinephiles think shorts don't generate the same sort of hype and fanbase as feature films, they obviously haven't heard of Don Hertzfeldt."
Hertzfeldt has recently begun a multiple-city theatrical tour in support of his latest short film, the 23 minute It's Such a Beautiful Day, the third and final chapter to his 2006 film Everything Will Be OK
. The 2012 tour dates have not been announced yet. In 2008 and 2009, Hertzfeldt went on a similar 22-city theatrical tour in support of the second chapter in the series, I am so proud of you
. "An Evening with Don Hertzfeldt" presented a retrospective of his animated films followed by the regional premiere(s) of the new film and an onstage interview and audience chat with him.
Hertzfeldt lives in Austin, Texas. He spent many years in Santa Barbara, California after attending college there. He keeps a blog on his website that has been continually updated and archived since 1999.
where he attended local schools and drew homemade comic books. At 15, he began to teach himself animation with a small video camera. Two of Hertzfeldt's teenage VHS cartoons can be seen on the "Bitter Films: Volume 1" DVD collection.
From a 2001 interview, Don says: "I watched films relentlessly growing up, and was fascinated by visual effects. My family used to make outings to animation festivals in San Francisco every year, so credit my parents for that. I ended up seeing all of those classic [independent] cartoons throughout my teenage years. But animation production for me sort of just happened as a by-product. I've been drawing things and writing things all my life, and animating my stories was always cheaper to do and looked more interesting than low budget live action."
Hertzfeldt has never held any job other than creating his animated films, not even in his youth. His earliest video animations found film festival exposure, and in film school at the University of California, Santa Barbara
he was able to find international distribution for each of his 16mm student films.
, surrealism, and tragicomedy
. Some films contain deeper existential
and philosophical themes while others are more straightforwardly slapstick
and absurdist. His animation is created traditionally with pen and paper, often with minimal digital aid. Hertzfeldt uses antique 16mm or 35mm film cameras to photograph his drawings and very often employs old-fashioned special effect
techniques such as multiple exposure
s, in-camera mattes, and experimental photography (significantly used in works such as Everything Will Be OK
and I am so proud of you
). While some of these techniques are as established as an occasional stop-motion animation sequence (as in Intermission in the Third Dimension) or a universe of moving stars created by back-lit pin holes (The Meaning of Life
), other effects are new innovations on classical methods, as seen with the rippling and blurring paper landscapes of Rejected
or the in-camera compositing of multiple, split-screen windows of action in the Everything Will Be OK
films.
Since 1999, Hertzfeldt has photographed all his films on a 35mm Richardson animation camera stand, believed to be the same camera that photographed many of the early Peanuts
cartoons in the 1960s and 1970s. Built in the late 1940s, it is reportedly one of the last remaining functioning cameras of its kind left in America (if not the world), and Hertzfeldt finds it to be a crucial element in the creation of his films and their unique visuals.
Discussing film and digital technology with The New York Times
, Hertzfeldt noted:
It's not unusual for Hertzfeldt to single-handedly write, direct, produce, animate, photograph, edit, perform voices, record and mix sound, and/or compose music for one of his films, at times requiring years to complete a single short. The animation alone for one of his films may often require tens of thousands of drawings.
Hertzfeldt frequently scores his pictures with classical music and opera. The music of Tchaikovsky, Bizet, Smetana
, Beethoven, Richard Strauss
, and Wagner have all appeared in his films. On occasion, Hertzfeldt has also scored portions of his films himself, with a guitar or keyboard.
Hertzfeldt's early films have been credited with being a prominent influence on surrealism and absurdism in animation in the 2000s, as well as influencing Adult Swim
style animated comedy. In 2008, Comedy Central
noted his work as having "influenced an entire generation of filmmakers."
His more recent films, such as The Meaning of Life, Everything Will Be OK, and I am so Proud of You, expanded upon his signature style of dark humor to explore deeper themes of existentialism and life and death philosophy. Critics have favorably compared these shorts to the work of Stanley Kubrick
and David Lynch
, respectively. Everything Will Be OK was described as "probably the best work he’s done in his very incredible and consistently amazing young career."
Hertzfeldt's films are regularly found in film festivals around the world, touring animation programs like the Animation Show
, and on DVD collections. The cartoons are also featured occasionally on television: MTV
, Bravo, Via X, Sundance Channel, IFC, Showtime, and the Cartoon Network
being a few channels that have carried his work internationally.
The popularity of Hertzfeldt's shorts has led to many Internet bootleg
s, bringing his work to an audience of millions. Though he's unhappy with the poor quality most of these online videos offer (as well as the frequent re-editing of them), he says he is not interested in "harassing fans." In the FAQ of his website, Hertzfeldt simply notes that movies are not meant to be seen on the Internet: "If you've only seen a film downgraded on the Internet or some strange miniature device, in many ways you haven't really seen it yet. YouTube is great for home videos of your cat falling off the roof but it is not really the proper setting for "cinema"... Movies are meant to be seen in the dark, hopefully with an audience, and with your undivided attention - this last one is non-negotiable." Recently however, Hertzfeldt has allowed "official" versions of The Meaning of Life and Everything will be OK to appear online in high quality on sites like MUBI and YouTube. Wisdom Teeth also debuted online after being acquired by Showtime.
Hertzfeldt prefers to not sell any of his animation artwork. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, his website Bitter Films annually auctioned off artwork instead to raise thousands of dollars for local Santa Barbara
charities. Other original drawings have 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.
.
Ah, L'Amour
and Genre
were produced at the ages of 18 and 19. Ah, L'Amour would win the HBO Comedy Arts Festival Grand Prize for "World's Funniest Cartoon."
His first dialogue short, Lily and Jim
, was released in 1997, and tells the story of a disastrous blind date, rife with awkward conversations. Its partially improvised vocal performances helped the short win twenty five awards, including the Grand Prize at the New Orleans Film Festival.
His last student cartoon, Billy's Balloon
, is about an inexplicable attack on small children by malevolent balloons. It was nominated for the Short Film Palme d'Or at the1999 Cannes Film Festival
, and won the Grand Jury Award at the 1999 Slamdance Film Festival
. In total it won thirty three awards.
The popularity of each student short at film and animation festivals - and eventually around the world from screening on MTV
and other networks - helped fund the next one, and eventually financed the production of his first film after college.
. Released in theaters in 2000, the short won dozens of awards, was nominated for an Oscar, and is an enduring cult classic that is frequently quoted and referenced in pop culture. Fans of the cartoon have been known to wear costumes, re-enact their favorite scenes in fan film
s, and some have had tattoo
s made of their favorite characters. Public screenings of the short sometimes become a "Rocky Horror Picture Show-esque feedback loop" of fans reciting favorite lines back at the screen. The short's enduring popularity has led the film to be described as "this generation's A Hard Day's Night
".
The film presents itself as a reel of rejected commercial work by a fictional version of Don Hertzfeldt. The commissioned animated vignettes grow more and more abstract and inappropriate as the animator suffers a mental breakdown, until they literally fall apart.
Although the film is of course fictional and Hertzfeldt has never done commercial work, he did receive many offers to do television commercials after Billy's Balloon
garnered international attention and acclaim. Hertzfeldt is an artist with anti-corporate leanings and in appearances has often told the humorous story of how he was tempted to produce the worst possible cartoons he could come up with for the companies, make off with their money, and see if they would actually make it to air. Eventually this became the germ for Rejecteds theme of a collection of cartoons so bad they were rejected by advertising agencies, leading to their creator's breakdown.
The Animation Show In 2003, Hertzfeldt created The Animation Show
with Beavis and Butt-head
creator Mike Judge
. It was a biennial North American touring festival that brought independent animated short films to more movie theaters than any distributor in history. The programs were personally curated by Hertzfeldt and Judge. A second Animation Show edition toured throughout 2005, featuring Hertzfeldt's short film The Meaning of Life and new films by animators like Peter Cornwell and Georges Schwizgebel
. The third season of The Animation Show began its nationwide release in January 2007, featuring new work by animators Joanna Quinn
and Bill Plympton
, as well as Hertzfeldt's own Everything Will Be OK.
A stated goal of The Animation Show was to regularly "free the work of these independent artists from the dungeons of Internet exhibition," and bring them into proper movie theaters where most of the short films were meant to be seen. The Animation Show has meanwhile launched a supplemental DVD series of animated short films, with content that often varies from the annual theatrical programs. These DVDs are distributed by MTV.
In a March 2008 entry in his blog, Hertzfeldt announced he had decided to leave The Animation Show, after having programmed (and contributing films to) three tours. A fourth season of the program was released in theaters in summer 2008, with no involvement from him.
The Meaning of Life Almost four years in the making, Hertzfeldt's twelve minute The Meaning of Life
premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival
and toured film and animation festivals in 2005-06. Though its abstract nature puzzled some critics, it received almost universally positive reviews. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called the film "the closest thing on film yet to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey
."
In the film, the evolution of the human race is traced from prehistory (mankind as blob forms), through today (mankind as teeming crowds of selfish, fighting, or lost individuals), to hundreds of millions of years into the future as our species evolves into countless new forms; all of them still behaving the same way. The film concludes in the extreme future, with two creatures (apparently an adult and child subspecies of future human), having a conversation about the meaning of life on a colorful shore.
In 2009, Hertzfeldt noted, "I don't often make the same sort of movie twice in a row. It’s always been whatever's next in my head. From a commercial standpoint I guess I’ve made some pretty inscrutable decisions, like following up 'Rejected' with a sprawling abstract film about human evolution, but it's really just been whichever ideas won't go away at the time. There's always a lot of new things I’d like to try..."
was released in 2006 and was Hertzfeldt's most critically successful piece to date, receiving his strongest reviews. The 17-minute animated short was based on his character "Bill" from his webcomic
"Temporary Anesthetics". The Boston Globe called the film a "masterpiece" with the Boston Phoenix declaring Hertzfeldt a "genius." The short film was a cover story on the Chicago Reader, receiving four stars from critic J.R. Jones. Variety film critic Robert Koehler named Everything Will Be OK one of the "Best Films of 2007."
Everything will be OK is the first chapter of a three-part story about Bill, a young man whose daily routines, perceptions, and dreams are illustrated onscreen through multiple split-screen windows. Bill's seemingly mundane life, narrated in humorous and dramatic anecdotes, gradually grows dark as we learn he may be suffering from a possibly fatal mental disorder.
The film's scenes are often divided into multiple windows of action on the screen at once, against a background of pure black. Animated still photographs are also incorporated inside certain windows, as well as a handful of the colorful special effects and experimental film techniques that Hertzfeldt first utilized in The Meaning of Life. As with all his films, no computers were used in creating the picture; all of the multiple window effects were captured in-camera.
Everything Will Be OK won the Grand Jury Prize for Short Filmmaking at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, the Lawrence Kasdan
Award for Best Narrative Film at the Ann Arbor Film Festival
, the Grand Prize at the London Animation Festival, and 34 other awards.
I am so proud of you
, the second chapter in the story, was released in autumn 2008. Upon its release, Hertzfeldt traveled with I am so proud of you and a selection of his other films to 22 cities on a sold-out American tour (with two stops in the UK and three in Canada). I am so proud of you also played at film festivals throughout 2009 and has to date won 27 awards.
On his website, Hertzfeldt announced the title of the upcoming third and final chapter, It's such a beautiful day.
, titled It's Such a Beautiful Day, has been recently completed and is now screening in select theaters and film festivals.
In October 2009, Hertzfeldt premiered an unannounced, new five minute comedy short entitled Wisdom Teeth at the "Evening with Don Hertzfeldt" screening at the Ottawa Animation Festival. It was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2010 and the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, where it was awarded a Special Jury Mention. In 2010, it appeared as part of a series on the Showtime Network called 'Short Stories'.
According to his blog, Hertzfeldt has been developing a feature length animated project. He has also made references to working on a graphic novel.
for Billy's Balloon
, where he was the youngest director in competition. The same year Billy's Balloon won the Slamdance
Film Festival Grand Jury Award.
In 2000, at the age of 23, Hertzfeldt was nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film
for his fifth short film, Rejected.
Hertzfeldt has had more films play in competition at the Sundance Film Festival
than any other filmmaker, with five: Rejected, The Meaning of Life, Everything Will Be OK, I am so proud of you, and Wisdom Teeth.
In 2001, Hertzfeldt was named by Filmmaker Magazine
as one of the "Top 25 Filmmakers to Watch."
In 2007, Hertzfeldt's Everything Will Be OK
won the Jury Award for Short Filmmaking at the Sundance Film Festival
, a prize rarely given to an animated film.
In 2007, according to the animation industry website Cartoon Brew, Everything Will Be OK advanced to the final round of voting as a contender for an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short, but did not make the ultimate list of five nominees.
In 2007, Hertzfeldt accepted an invitation from the George Eastman House
's motion picture archives to indefinitely store and preserve the historically important original film elements and camera negatives to his collected work.
In 2009, Rejected was the only short film named one of the "Films of the Decade" by Salon.com. In 2010, it was noted as one of the five "most innovative animated films of the past ten years" by The Huffington Post
.
In April 2010, at the age of 33, Hertzfeldt was the youngest filmmaker to ever receive the San Francisco International Film Festival
's "Persistence of Vision" Lifetime Achievement Award, "for his unique contributions to film and animation," and "for challenging the boundaries of his craft." Past recipients of the POV award include Errol Morris
, Guy Maddin
, Jan Švankmajer
, and Faith Hubley
.
Hertzfeldt self-produces and self-distributes his own DVDs. With these sales, fans of his work are literally financing his next films, with no middle men in between.
An exhaustive DVD collection of all of Hertzfeldt's films from 1995 to 2005 was released in 2006. The short films were remastered and restored in high definition from the original film negatives. The DVD was made available only to fans via the Bitter Films website, with the first 750 pre-orderers receiving 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
).
The DVD marked the first time his student films such as Genre
and Lily and Jim
were made widely available to the public - many of these works were only previously found on limited-release VHS collections of animated shorts, long out of print.
The special features for Bitter Films Volume One: 1995-2005 include: The Animation Show Trilogy cartoons
Lily and Jim deleted dialogues and outtakes
Rejected trivia captions
The Meaning of Life special effects audio commentary
An extensive 140+ page "Archive" section, featuring rare footage from Hertzfeldt's earliest cartoons, original pencil tests, deleted sequences, abandoned footage, and sketch to scene comparisons
Lily and Jim reunion commentary with the original voice actors
Rejected audio commentary
Preview of Everything Will Be OK
The Animation Show interviews with Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt
Ah, L'Amour bonus 2005 soundtrack
16 page retrospective booklet, featuring liner notes by Hertzfeldt
Original animated menus and transitions
Bitter Films' first DVD release was a 2001 limited edition DVD "single" of the popular short Rejected. Everything Will Be OK was similarly released as a DVD "single" in 2007, and I am so proud of you
in September, 2009.
and United Airlines
, which he has declined. He has made various comments over the years about his distaste for corporate America and promises his fans he will never be involved with the commercial world. He has said, "The goal isn’t to try and make as much money as I possibly can, the goal is to try and make good movies."
In a March 2009 blog entry, Hertzfeldt compared filmmaking to his love of hiking and exploring new places: something he does just because he "enjoys doing it and will probably always enjoy doing it." He compared doing commercials to being paid to not go explore the woods, but to walk around someone's house eight hours a day wearing a sandwich board with a picture of a product on it. "Money's not the reason I take walks. It doesn't really factor into it. I take walks because I enjoy doing it. It's something I'd do if I was rich and it's something I'd do if I were poor."
Nevertheless, several international ad campaigns have borrowed heavily from his unique style and bear enough resemblance to Hertzfeldt's work as to be mistaken for it. The most well-known instance of this is a series of 2004-2009 television ads for Kellogg's Pop-Tarts
, which use black and white stick figures, "squiggly" animation, surreal humor, and even an occasional crumpling paper effect, all very similar to Hertzfeldt's style. Despite all these similarities, Hertzfeldt was not involved in any way. In Canada, the not-for-profit corporation Encorp has used a Hertzfeldt-like style of short animation clips on TV and the Internet to promote its "Don't Mess With Karma" campaign to encourage recycling. One of the latest ad campaigns to use an art style similar to Hertzfeldt's is Krystal
fast food restaurant to promote their Blitz Energy Drink.
Rejected
Rejected is an animated short comedy film by Don Hertzfeldt that was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2000. It received 27 awards from film festivals around the world....
and Everything Will Be OK
Everything Will Be OK
Everything Will Be OK is a 2006 animated short film by Don Hertzfeldt. It is the first chapter of a planned three-part story about Bill, the protagonist. Hertzfeldt released the second film in the series, titled I am so proud of you, in 2008....
. His animated films have received over 150 awards and have been presented around the world. Before the age of thirty, his films were already the subject of several career retrospectives. He was the youngest director named in the "They Shoot Pictures, Don't They" list of "The 100 Important Animation Directors" of all time, and in 2010 he received the San Francisco International Film Festival
San Francisco International Film Festival
San Francisco International Film Festival is the oldest continuously running film festival in the Americas. Organized by the San Francisco Film Society, the International is held each spring for two weeks, presenting an average of 150 films from over 50 countries...
's "Persistence of Vision" Lifetime Achievement Award at the age of 33.
The popularity of Hertzfeldt's work is unprecedented in independent animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
and his films are frequently quoted and referenced in pop culture. In 2009, the Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
noted, "If cinephiles think shorts don't generate the same sort of hype and fanbase as feature films, they obviously haven't heard of Don Hertzfeldt."
Hertzfeldt has recently begun a multiple-city theatrical tour in support of his latest short film, the 23 minute It's Such a Beautiful Day, the third and final chapter to his 2006 film Everything Will Be OK
Everything Will Be OK
Everything Will Be OK is a 2006 animated short film by Don Hertzfeldt. It is the first chapter of a planned three-part story about Bill, the protagonist. Hertzfeldt released the second film in the series, titled I am so proud of you, in 2008....
. The 2012 tour dates have not been announced yet. In 2008 and 2009, Hertzfeldt went on a similar 22-city theatrical tour in support of the second chapter in the series, I am so proud of you
I Am So Proud Of You
I Am So Proud Of You is a 2008 animated short film by Don Hertzfeldt. It is the second chapter of a planned three-part story about the character Bill andcontinues the dark and philosophical humor of the first film, Everything Will Be OK....
. "An Evening with Don Hertzfeldt" presented a retrospective of his animated films followed by the regional premiere(s) of the new film and an onstage interview and audience chat with him.
Hertzfeldt lives in Austin, Texas. He spent many years in Santa Barbara, California after attending college there. He keeps a blog on his website that has been continually updated and archived since 1999.
Early life
Hertzfeldt was born in Fremont, CaliforniaFremont, California
Fremont is a city in Alameda County, California. It was incorporated on January 23, 1956, from the merger of five smaller communities: Centerville, Niles, Irvington, Mission San Jose, and Warm Springs...
where he attended local schools and drew homemade comic books. At 15, he began to teach himself animation with a small video camera. Two of Hertzfeldt's teenage VHS cartoons can be seen on the "Bitter Films: Volume 1" DVD collection.
From a 2001 interview, Don says: "I watched films relentlessly growing up, and was fascinated by visual effects. My family used to make outings to animation festivals in San Francisco every year, so credit my parents for that. I ended up seeing all of those classic [independent] cartoons throughout my teenage years. But animation production for me sort of just happened as a by-product. I've been drawing things and writing things all my life, and animating my stories was always cheaper to do and looked more interesting than low budget live action."
Hertzfeldt has never held any job other than creating his animated films, not even in his youth. His earliest video animations found film festival exposure, and in film school at the University of California, Santa Barbara
University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...
he was able to find international distribution for each of his 16mm student films.
Technique
Hertzfeldt's work commonly features hand-drawn stick figures, in stories of black humorBlack comedy
A black comedy, or dark comedy, is a comic work that employs black humor or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is problematic; it has been argued that it corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor; and that, as humor has been defined since Freud as a comedic act that anesthetizes...
, surrealism, and tragicomedy
Tragicomedy
Tragicomedy is fictional work that blends aspects of the genres of tragedy and comedy. In English literature, from Shakespeare's time to the nineteenth century, tragicomedy referred to a serious play with either a happy ending or enough jokes throughout the play to lighten the mood.-Classical...
. Some films contain deeper existential
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
and philosophical themes while others are more straightforwardly slapstick
Slapstick
Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated violence and activities which may exceed the boundaries of common sense.- Origins :The phrase comes from the batacchio or bataccio — called the 'slap stick' in English — a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in Commedia dell'arte...
and absurdist. His animation is created traditionally with pen and paper, often with minimal digital aid. Hertzfeldt uses antique 16mm or 35mm film cameras to photograph his drawings and very often employs old-fashioned special effect
Special effect
The illusions used in the film, television, theatre, or entertainment industries to simulate the imagined events in a story are traditionally called special effects ....
techniques such as multiple exposure
Multiple exposure
In photography, a multiple exposure is the superimposition of two or more individual exposures to create a single photograph. The exposure values may or may not be identical to each other.-Overview:...
s, in-camera mattes, and experimental photography (significantly used in works such as Everything Will Be OK
Everything Will Be OK
Everything Will Be OK is a 2006 animated short film by Don Hertzfeldt. It is the first chapter of a planned three-part story about Bill, the protagonist. Hertzfeldt released the second film in the series, titled I am so proud of you, in 2008....
and I am so proud of you
I Am So Proud Of You
I Am So Proud Of You is a 2008 animated short film by Don Hertzfeldt. It is the second chapter of a planned three-part story about the character Bill andcontinues the dark and philosophical humor of the first film, Everything Will Be OK....
). While some of these techniques are as established as an occasional stop-motion animation sequence (as in Intermission in the Third Dimension) or a universe of moving stars created by back-lit pin holes (The Meaning of Life
The Meaning of Life (animated film)
The Meaning of Life is a 35mm animated short film, written and directed by Don Hertzfeldt in 2005. The epic twelve minute film is the end result of almost four years of production and tens of thousands of drawings, single-handedly animated and photographed by Hertzfeldt.Like all of Hertzfeldt's...
), other effects are new innovations on classical methods, as seen with the rippling and blurring paper landscapes of Rejected
Rejected
Rejected is an animated short comedy film by Don Hertzfeldt that was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2000. It received 27 awards from film festivals around the world....
or the in-camera compositing of multiple, split-screen windows of action in the Everything Will Be OK
Everything Will Be OK
Everything Will Be OK is a 2006 animated short film by Don Hertzfeldt. It is the first chapter of a planned three-part story about Bill, the protagonist. Hertzfeldt released the second film in the series, titled I am so proud of you, in 2008....
films.
Since 1999, Hertzfeldt has photographed all his films on a 35mm Richardson animation camera stand, believed to be the same camera that photographed many of the early Peanuts
Peanuts
Peanuts is a syndicated daily and Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000, continuing in reruns afterward...
cartoons in the 1960s and 1970s. Built in the late 1940s, it is reportedly one of the last remaining functioning cameras of its kind left in America (if not the world), and Hertzfeldt finds it to be a crucial element in the creation of his films and their unique visuals.
Discussing film and digital technology with The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Hertzfeldt noted:
It's not unusual for Hertzfeldt to single-handedly write, direct, produce, animate, photograph, edit, perform voices, record and mix sound, and/or compose music for one of his films, at times requiring years to complete a single short. The animation alone for one of his films may often require tens of thousands of drawings.
Hertzfeldt frequently scores his pictures with classical music and opera. The music of Tchaikovsky, Bizet, Smetana
Smetana
Smetana is a Slavic loanword in English for a dairy product that is produced by souring heavy cream. Smetana is from Central and Eastern Europe, sometimes perceived to be specifically of Russian origin. It is a soured cream product like crème fraîche , but nowadays mainly sold with 15% to 30%...
, Beethoven, Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
, and Wagner have all appeared in his films. On occasion, Hertzfeldt has also scored portions of his films himself, with a guitar or keyboard.
Popularity and influence
Adult Swim
Adult Swim is an adult-oriented Cable network that shares channel space with Cartoon Network from 9:00 pm until 6:00 am ET/PT in the United States, and broadcasts in countries such as Australia and New Zealand...
style animated comedy. In 2008, Comedy Central
Comedy Central
Comedy Central is an American cable television and satellite television channel that carries comedy programming, both original and syndicated....
noted his work as having "influenced an entire generation of filmmakers."
His more recent films, such as The Meaning of Life, Everything Will Be OK, and I am so Proud of You, expanded upon his signature style of dark humor to explore deeper themes of existentialism and life and death philosophy. Critics have favorably compared these shorts to the work of Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
and David Lynch
David Lynch
David Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...
, respectively. Everything Will Be OK was described as "probably the best work he’s done in his very incredible and consistently amazing young career."
Hertzfeldt's films are regularly found in film festivals around the world, touring animation programs like the Animation Show
The Animation Show
The Animation Show is a touring festival of animated short films that was first held in fall 2003. It was created by award-winning animators Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt....
, and on DVD collections. The cartoons are also featured occasionally on television: MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
, Bravo, Via X, Sundance Channel, IFC, Showtime, and the Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network is a name of television channels worldwide created by Turner Broadcasting which used to primarily show animated programming. The channel began broadcasting on October 1, 1992 in the United States....
being a few channels that have carried his work internationally.
The popularity of Hertzfeldt's shorts has led to many Internet bootleg
Bootleg recording
A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. The process of making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging...
s, bringing his work to an audience of millions. Though he's unhappy with the poor quality most of these online videos offer (as well as the frequent re-editing of them), he says he is not interested in "harassing fans." In the FAQ of his website, Hertzfeldt simply notes that movies are not meant to be seen on the Internet: "If you've only seen a film downgraded on the Internet or some strange miniature device, in many ways you haven't really seen it yet. YouTube is great for home videos of your cat falling off the roof but it is not really the proper setting for "cinema"... Movies are meant to be seen in the dark, hopefully with an audience, and with your undivided attention - this last one is non-negotiable." Recently however, Hertzfeldt has allowed "official" versions of The Meaning of Life and Everything will be OK to appear online in high quality on sites like MUBI and YouTube. Wisdom Teeth also debuted online after being acquired by Showtime.
Hertzfeldt prefers to not sell any of his animation artwork. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, his website Bitter Films annually auctioned off artwork instead to raise thousands of dollars for local Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara is the county seat of Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Situated on an east-west trending section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States, the city lies between the steeply-rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean...
charities. Other original drawings have 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.
Student films, 1995-1998
Hertzfeldt made four 16mm animated student films while majoring in film at the University of California, Santa BarbaraUniversity of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...
.
Ah, L'Amour
Ah, L'Amour
Ah, L'Amour is Don Hertzfeldt's first 16mm student animated short film, completed at the age of 18 at UC Santa Barbara. Though produced for a beginning film class, the short had a very long life at animation festivals, launching Hertzfeldt into cult status at a young age. In 1998, the short won...
and Genre
Genre (animated film)
Genre is a 1996 Live-action/animated short film by animator Don Hertzfeldt, his second student film, preceded by Ah, L'Amour .The 16mm short combines traditional animation, pixilation, and stop-motion animation to present a cartoon rabbit careening through a variety of rapidly changing film genres...
were produced at the ages of 18 and 19. Ah, L'Amour would win the HBO Comedy Arts Festival Grand Prize for "World's Funniest Cartoon."
His first dialogue short, Lily and Jim
Lily and Jim
Lily and Jim is a 16mm animated short film by Don Hertzfeldt. It is Hertzfeldt's third student film from UC Santa Barbara, for which he single-handedly animated over 10,000 drawings. In the film, an awkward blind date between a hopeless couple goes from very bad to much worse...
, was released in 1997, and tells the story of a disastrous blind date, rife with awkward conversations. Its partially improvised vocal performances helped the short win twenty five awards, including the Grand Prize at the New Orleans Film Festival.
His last student cartoon, Billy's Balloon
Billy's Balloon
Billy's Balloon is a 16mm animated short by Don Hertzfeldt. It was his 4th and final student film at UC Santa Barbara. Similar to his other cartoons, he utilizes a minimalist stick-figure technique....
, is about an inexplicable attack on small children by malevolent balloons. It was nominated for the Short Film Palme d'Or at the1999 Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
, and won the Grand Jury Award at the 1999 Slamdance Film Festival
Slamdance Film Festival
As a year-round organization, Slamdance serves as a showcase for the discovery of new and emerging talent in the film industry; it is also the only major film festival fully programmed by filmmakers. Slamdance counts among its alumni many notable writers and directors who first gained notice at the...
. In total it won thirty three awards.
The popularity of each student short at film and animation festivals - and eventually around the world from screening on MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
and other networks - helped fund the next one, and eventually financed the production of his first film after college.
Rejected
Soon after graduating from film school, Hertzfeldt purchased his own 35mm rostrum camera, and made his next animated short, RejectedRejected
Rejected is an animated short comedy film by Don Hertzfeldt that was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2000. It received 27 awards from film festivals around the world....
. Released in theaters in 2000, the short won dozens of awards, was nominated for an Oscar, and is an enduring cult classic that is frequently quoted and referenced in pop culture. Fans of the cartoon have been known to wear costumes, re-enact their favorite scenes in fan film
Fan film
A fan film is a film or video inspired by a film, television program, comic book or a similar source, created by fans rather than by the source's copyright holders or creators. Fan filmmakers have traditionally been amateurs, but some of the more notable films have actually been produced by...
s, and some have had tattoo
Tattoo
A tattoo is made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment. Tattoos on humans are a type of body modification, and tattoos on other animals are most commonly used for identification purposes...
s made of their favorite characters. Public screenings of the short sometimes become a "Rocky Horror Picture Show-esque feedback loop" of fans reciting favorite lines back at the screen. The short's enduring popularity has led the film to be described as "this generation's A Hard Day's Night
A Hard Day's Night (film)
A Hard Day's Night is a 1964 British black-and-white comedy film directed by Richard Lester and starring The Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—during the height of Beatlemania. It was written by Alun Owen and originally released by United Artists...
".
The film presents itself as a reel of rejected commercial work by a fictional version of Don Hertzfeldt. The commissioned animated vignettes grow more and more abstract and inappropriate as the animator suffers a mental breakdown, until they literally fall apart.
Although the film is of course fictional and Hertzfeldt has never done commercial work, he did receive many offers to do television commercials after Billy's Balloon
Billy's Balloon
Billy's Balloon is a 16mm animated short by Don Hertzfeldt. It was his 4th and final student film at UC Santa Barbara. Similar to his other cartoons, he utilizes a minimalist stick-figure technique....
garnered international attention and acclaim. Hertzfeldt is an artist with anti-corporate leanings and in appearances has often told the humorous story of how he was tempted to produce the worst possible cartoons he could come up with for the companies, make off with their money, and see if they would actually make it to air. Eventually this became the germ for Rejecteds theme of a collection of cartoons so bad they were rejected by advertising agencies, leading to their creator's breakdown.
The Animation Show In 2003, Hertzfeldt created The Animation Show
The Animation Show
The Animation Show is a touring festival of animated short films that was first held in fall 2003. It was created by award-winning animators Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt....
with Beavis and Butt-head
Beavis and Butt-Head
Beavis and Butt-head is an American animated television series created by Mike Judge. The series originated from Frog Baseball, a 1992 short film by Judge. After seeing the short, MTV signed Judge to develop the concept. Beavis and Butt-head originally aired from March 8, 1993 to November 28, 1997...
creator Mike Judge
Mike Judge
Michael Craig Judge is an American animator, film director, writer and voice actor, best known as the creator and star of the animated television series Beavis and Butt-head , King of the Hill , and The Goode Family .He also wrote, directed and in some instances produced the films Beavis and...
. It was a biennial North American touring festival that brought independent animated short films to more movie theaters than any distributor in history. The programs were personally curated by Hertzfeldt and Judge. A second Animation Show edition toured throughout 2005, featuring Hertzfeldt's short film The Meaning of Life and new films by animators like Peter Cornwell and Georges Schwizgebel
Georges Schwizgebel
Georges Schwizgebel is a Swiss animation film director whose paint-on-glass-animated 2004 film L'Homme sans ombre won various awards....
. The third season of The Animation Show began its nationwide release in January 2007, featuring new work by animators Joanna Quinn
Joanna Quinn
Joanna Quinn is an English film director and animator. She was born in Birmingham. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Famous Fred in 1998....
and Bill Plympton
Bill Plympton
William "Bill" Calvin Plympton is an American animator, former cartoonist, director, screenwriter and producer best known for his 1987 Academy Award-nominated animated short Your Face. and his series of shorts Guard Dog, Guide Dog, Hot Dog and Horn Dog.- Biography :Bill Plympton was born in...
, as well as Hertzfeldt's own Everything Will Be OK.
A stated goal of The Animation Show was to regularly "free the work of these independent artists from the dungeons of Internet exhibition," and bring them into proper movie theaters where most of the short films were meant to be seen. The Animation Show has meanwhile launched a supplemental DVD series of animated short films, with content that often varies from the annual theatrical programs. These DVDs are distributed by MTV.
In a March 2008 entry in his blog, Hertzfeldt announced he had decided to leave The Animation Show, after having programmed (and contributing films to) three tours. A fourth season of the program was released in theaters in summer 2008, with no involvement from him.
The Meaning of Life Almost four years in the making, Hertzfeldt's twelve minute The Meaning of Life
The Meaning of Life (animated film)
The Meaning of Life is a 35mm animated short film, written and directed by Don Hertzfeldt in 2005. The epic twelve minute film is the end result of almost four years of production and tens of thousands of drawings, single-handedly animated and photographed by Hertzfeldt.Like all of Hertzfeldt's...
premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
and toured film and animation festivals in 2005-06. Though its abstract nature puzzled some critics, it received almost universally positive reviews. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called the film "the closest thing on film yet to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...
."
In the film, the evolution of the human race is traced from prehistory (mankind as blob forms), through today (mankind as teeming crowds of selfish, fighting, or lost individuals), to hundreds of millions of years into the future as our species evolves into countless new forms; all of them still behaving the same way. The film concludes in the extreme future, with two creatures (apparently an adult and child subspecies of future human), having a conversation about the meaning of life on a colorful shore.
In 2009, Hertzfeldt noted, "I don't often make the same sort of movie twice in a row. It’s always been whatever's next in my head. From a commercial standpoint I guess I’ve made some pretty inscrutable decisions, like following up 'Rejected' with a sprawling abstract film about human evolution, but it's really just been whichever ideas won't go away at the time. There's always a lot of new things I’d like to try..."
The Everything will be OK films
Everything Will Be OKEverything Will Be OK
Everything Will Be OK is a 2006 animated short film by Don Hertzfeldt. It is the first chapter of a planned three-part story about Bill, the protagonist. Hertzfeldt released the second film in the series, titled I am so proud of you, in 2008....
was released in 2006 and was Hertzfeldt's most critically successful piece to date, receiving his strongest reviews. The 17-minute animated short was based on his character "Bill" from his webcomic
Webcomic
Webcomics, online comics, or Internet comics are comics published on a website. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers or often in self-published books....
"Temporary Anesthetics". The Boston Globe called the film a "masterpiece" with the Boston Phoenix declaring Hertzfeldt a "genius." The short film was a cover story on the Chicago Reader, receiving four stars from critic J.R. Jones. Variety film critic Robert Koehler named Everything Will Be OK one of the "Best Films of 2007."
Everything will be OK is the first chapter of a three-part story about Bill, a young man whose daily routines, perceptions, and dreams are illustrated onscreen through multiple split-screen windows. Bill's seemingly mundane life, narrated in humorous and dramatic anecdotes, gradually grows dark as we learn he may be suffering from a possibly fatal mental disorder.
The film's scenes are often divided into multiple windows of action on the screen at once, against a background of pure black. Animated still photographs are also incorporated inside certain windows, as well as a handful of the colorful special effects and experimental film techniques that Hertzfeldt first utilized in The Meaning of Life. As with all his films, no computers were used in creating the picture; all of the multiple window effects were captured in-camera.
Everything Will Be OK won the Grand Jury Prize for Short Filmmaking at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, the Lawrence Kasdan
Lawrence Kasdan
Lawrence Edward "Larry" Kasdan is an American film producer, director and screenwriter.-Life and career:Kasdan was born in Miami, Florida, the son of Sylvia Sarah , an employment counselor, and Clarence Norman Kasdan, who managed retail electronics stores.His Brother is the writer/producer Mark...
Award for Best Narrative Film at the Ann Arbor Film Festival
Ann Arbor Film Festival
The Ann Arbor Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Ann Arbor in the U.S. state of Michigan. Established in 1963, it is the third-oldest film festival in North America ; and the oldest experimental film festival...
, the Grand Prize at the London Animation Festival, and 34 other awards.
I am so proud of you
I Am So Proud Of You
I Am So Proud Of You is a 2008 animated short film by Don Hertzfeldt. It is the second chapter of a planned three-part story about the character Bill andcontinues the dark and philosophical humor of the first film, Everything Will Be OK....
, the second chapter in the story, was released in autumn 2008. Upon its release, Hertzfeldt traveled with I am so proud of you and a selection of his other films to 22 cities on a sold-out American tour (with two stops in the UK and three in Canada). I am so proud of you also played at film festivals throughout 2009 and has to date won 27 awards.
On his website, Hertzfeldt announced the title of the upcoming third and final chapter, It's such a beautiful day.
Current work
Chapter 3 of Everything Will Be OKEverything Will Be OK
Everything Will Be OK is a 2006 animated short film by Don Hertzfeldt. It is the first chapter of a planned three-part story about Bill, the protagonist. Hertzfeldt released the second film in the series, titled I am so proud of you, in 2008....
, titled It's Such a Beautiful Day, has been recently completed and is now screening in select theaters and film festivals.
In October 2009, Hertzfeldt premiered an unannounced, new five minute comedy short entitled Wisdom Teeth at the "Evening with Don Hertzfeldt" screening at the Ottawa Animation Festival. It was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2010 and the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, where it was awarded a Special Jury Mention. In 2010, it appeared as part of a series on the Showtime Network called 'Short Stories'.
According to his blog, Hertzfeldt has been developing a feature length animated project. He has also made references to working on a graphic novel.
Awards and honors
In 1999, at the age of 22, Hertzfeldt was nominated for the Short Film Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film FestivalCannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
for Billy's Balloon
Billy's Balloon
Billy's Balloon is a 16mm animated short by Don Hertzfeldt. It was his 4th and final student film at UC Santa Barbara. Similar to his other cartoons, he utilizes a minimalist stick-figure technique....
, where he was the youngest director in competition. The same year Billy's Balloon won the Slamdance
Slamdance
Slamdance may refer to:* Mosh, a form of dance associated with punk rock and other musical genres* Slamdance Film Festival, an annual event featuring the work of independent filmmakers...
Film Festival Grand Jury Award.
In 2000, at the age of 23, Hertzfeldt was nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film
Academy Award for Animated Short Film
The Academy Award for Animated Short Film is an award which has been given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as part of the Academy Awards every year since the 5th Academy Awards, covering the year 1931-32, to the present....
for his fifth short film, Rejected.
Hertzfeldt has had more films play in competition at the Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
than any other filmmaker, with five: Rejected, The Meaning of Life, Everything Will Be OK, I am so proud of you, and Wisdom Teeth.
In 2001, Hertzfeldt was named by Filmmaker Magazine
Filmmaker Magazine
Filmmaker is a quarterly publication magazine covering issues relating to independent film. The magazine was founded in 1992 by Karol Martesko-Fenster, Scott Macaulay and Holly Willis...
as one of the "Top 25 Filmmakers to Watch."
In 2007, Hertzfeldt's Everything Will Be OK
Everything Will Be OK
Everything Will Be OK is a 2006 animated short film by Don Hertzfeldt. It is the first chapter of a planned three-part story about Bill, the protagonist. Hertzfeldt released the second film in the series, titled I am so proud of you, in 2008....
won the Jury Award for Short Filmmaking at the Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
, a prize rarely given to an animated film.
In 2007, according to the animation industry website Cartoon Brew, Everything Will Be OK advanced to the final round of voting as a contender for an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short, but did not make the ultimate list of five nominees.
In 2007, Hertzfeldt accepted an invitation from the George Eastman House
George Eastman House
The George Eastman House is the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in Rochester, New York, USA. World-renowned for its photograph and motion picture archives, the museum is also a leader in film preservation and...
's motion picture archives to indefinitely store and preserve the historically important original film elements and camera negatives to his collected work.
In 2009, Rejected was the only short film named one of the "Films of the Decade" by Salon.com. In 2010, it was noted as one of the five "most innovative animated films of the past ten years" by The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...
.
In April 2010, at the age of 33, Hertzfeldt was the youngest filmmaker to ever receive the San Francisco International Film Festival
San Francisco International Film Festival
San Francisco International Film Festival is the oldest continuously running film festival in the Americas. Organized by the San Francisco Film Society, the International is held each spring for two weeks, presenting an average of 150 films from over 50 countries...
's "Persistence of Vision" Lifetime Achievement Award, "for his unique contributions to film and animation," and "for challenging the boundaries of his craft." Past recipients of the POV award include Errol Morris
Errol Morris
Errol Mark Morris is an American director. In 2003, The Guardian put him seventh in its list of the world's 40 best directors. Also in 2003, his film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.-Early life and...
, Guy Maddin
Guy Maddin
Guy Maddin, OM is a Canadian screenwriter, director, cinematographer and film editor of both features and short films from Winnipeg, Manitoba...
, Jan Švankmajer
Jan Švankmajer
Jan Švankmajer is a Czech filmmaker and artist whose work spans several media. He is a self-labeled surrealist known for his surreal animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists such as Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, the Brothers Quay, and many others.- Life and career :Jan...
, and Faith Hubley
Faith Hubley
Faith Hubley was an animator, known for her experimental work both in collaboration with her husband John Hubley, and on her own following her husband's death.-Biography:...
.
DVD releases
An exhaustive DVD collection of all of Hertzfeldt's films from 1995 to 2005 was released in 2006. The short films were remastered and restored in high definition from the original film negatives. The DVD was made available only to fans via the Bitter Films website, with the first 750 pre-orderers receiving 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
Post-it note
A Post-it note is a piece of stationery with a re-adherable strip of adhesive on the back, designed for temporarily attaching notes to documents and other surfaces. Although now available in a wide range of colours, shapes, and sizes, Post-it notes are most commonly a square, canary yellow in colour...
).
The DVD marked the first time his student films such as Genre
Genre (animated film)
Genre is a 1996 Live-action/animated short film by animator Don Hertzfeldt, his second student film, preceded by Ah, L'Amour .The 16mm short combines traditional animation, pixilation, and stop-motion animation to present a cartoon rabbit careening through a variety of rapidly changing film genres...
and Lily and Jim
Lily and Jim
Lily and Jim is a 16mm animated short film by Don Hertzfeldt. It is Hertzfeldt's third student film from UC Santa Barbara, for which he single-handedly animated over 10,000 drawings. In the film, an awkward blind date between a hopeless couple goes from very bad to much worse...
were made widely available to the public - many of these works were only previously found on limited-release VHS collections of animated shorts, long out of print.
The special features for Bitter Films Volume One: 1995-2005 include:
- The documentary,
Bitter Films' first DVD release was a 2001 limited edition DVD "single" of the popular short Rejected. Everything Will Be OK was similarly released as a DVD "single" in 2007, and I am so proud of you
I Am So Proud Of You
I Am So Proud Of You is a 2008 animated short film by Don Hertzfeldt. It is the second chapter of a planned three-part story about the character Bill andcontinues the dark and philosophical humor of the first film, Everything Will Be OK....
in September, 2009.
View on commercialism
Hertzfeldt has been offered numerous lucrative commercial deals, including ad campaigns for Cingular WirelessCingular Wireless
AT&T Mobility LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T that provides wireless services to 100.7 million subscribers in the United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands...
and United Airlines
United Airlines
United Air Lines, Inc., is the world's largest airline with 86,852 employees United Air Lines, Inc., is the world's largest airline with 86,852 employees United Air Lines, Inc., is the world's largest airline with 86,852 employees (which includes the entire holding company United Continental...
, which he has declined. He has made various comments over the years about his distaste for corporate America and promises his fans he will never be involved with the commercial world. He has said, "The goal isn’t to try and make as much money as I possibly can, the goal is to try and make good movies."
In a March 2009 blog entry, Hertzfeldt compared filmmaking to his love of hiking and exploring new places: something he does just because he "enjoys doing it and will probably always enjoy doing it." He compared doing commercials to being paid to not go explore the woods, but to walk around someone's house eight hours a day wearing a sandwich board with a picture of a product on it. "Money's not the reason I take walks. It doesn't really factor into it. I take walks because I enjoy doing it. It's something I'd do if I was rich and it's something I'd do if I were poor."
Nevertheless, several international ad campaigns have borrowed heavily from his unique style and bear enough resemblance to Hertzfeldt's work as to be mistaken for it. The most well-known instance of this is a series of 2004-2009 television ads for Kellogg's Pop-Tarts
Pop-Tarts
Pop-Tarts is a brand of rectangular, pre-baked toaster pastries made by the Kellogg Company. Pop-Tarts have a sugary filling sealed inside two layers of rectangular, thin pastry crust. Some varieties are frosted. Although sold pre-cooked, they are designed to be warmed inside a toaster or...
, which use black and white stick figures, "squiggly" animation, surreal humor, and even an occasional crumpling paper effect, all very similar to Hertzfeldt's style. Despite all these similarities, Hertzfeldt was not involved in any way. In Canada, the not-for-profit corporation Encorp has used a Hertzfeldt-like style of short animation clips on TV and the Internet to promote its "Don't Mess With Karma" campaign to encourage recycling. One of the latest ad campaigns to use an art style similar to Hertzfeldt's is Krystal
Krystal
Krystal may refer to:*Krystal , one of the oldest fast-food chains in the United States, founded in 1932-People:*Krystal Steal, an American porn star*Krystal Harris, an American pop singer*Krystal Meyers, a Christian rock musician...
fast food restaurant to promote their Blitz Energy Drink.
Filmography
- Ah, L'AmourAh, L'AmourAh, L'Amour is Don Hertzfeldt's first 16mm student animated short film, completed at the age of 18 at UC Santa Barbara. Though produced for a beginning film class, the short had a very long life at animation festivals, launching Hertzfeldt into cult status at a young age. In 1998, the short won...
(1995) - GenreGenre (animated film)Genre is a 1996 Live-action/animated short film by animator Don Hertzfeldt, his second student film, preceded by Ah, L'Amour .The 16mm short combines traditional animation, pixilation, and stop-motion animation to present a cartoon rabbit careening through a variety of rapidly changing film genres...
(1996) - Lily and JimLily and JimLily and Jim is a 16mm animated short film by Don Hertzfeldt. It is Hertzfeldt's third student film from UC Santa Barbara, for which he single-handedly animated over 10,000 drawings. In the film, an awkward blind date between a hopeless couple goes from very bad to much worse...
(1997) - Billy's BalloonBilly's BalloonBilly's Balloon is a 16mm animated short by Don Hertzfeldt. It was his 4th and final student film at UC Santa Barbara. Similar to his other cartoons, he utilizes a minimalist stick-figure technique....
(1998) - RejectedRejectedRejected is an animated short comedy film by Don Hertzfeldt that was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2000. It received 27 awards from film festivals around the world....
(2000) - Welcome to the Show/Intermission in the Third Dimension/The End of the ShowThe Animation ShowThe Animation Show is a touring festival of animated short films that was first held in fall 2003. It was created by award-winning animators Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt....
(2003) (cartoons created to book-end the first "Animation Show") - The Meaning of LifeThe Meaning of Life (animated film)The Meaning of Life is a 35mm animated short film, written and directed by Don Hertzfeldt in 2005. The epic twelve minute film is the end result of almost four years of production and tens of thousands of drawings, single-handedly animated and photographed by Hertzfeldt.Like all of Hertzfeldt's...
(2005) - Everything Will Be OKEverything Will Be OKEverything Will Be OK is a 2006 animated short film by Don Hertzfeldt. It is the first chapter of a planned three-part story about Bill, the protagonist. Hertzfeldt released the second film in the series, titled I am so proud of you, in 2008....
(2006) - I am so proud of youI Am So Proud Of YouI Am So Proud Of You is a 2008 animated short film by Don Hertzfeldt. It is the second chapter of a planned three-part story about the character Bill andcontinues the dark and philosophical humor of the first film, Everything Will Be OK....
(2008) - Wisdom Teeth (2010)
- It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012)