Demo Reel.

Demo Reel from Ruah Edelstein on Vimeo.

'Do you have a demo reel? Send me your demo reel! Demo reel, demo reel, demo reel... !' - I heard a lot of that in the last few years. I also heard from an artist and a filmmaker I am looking up to since childhood, that chopping up films into a demo reel is an unbelievable act for him, and I felt how opposed he was to the idea of chopping films into a reel. Films, that are so carefully thought of in terms of story, color script, and the overall feel of it.  And so, after years of making films I made a demo reel. Thinking of it as a collage of different works put together in a two-minutes piece to show what I do.  

The Making Of. "Of Stars & People"

This is a storyboard for "Of Stars & People" in a free, unofficial style. It is one of the beginning stages before animation steppes into the process of making a short film. This is one of my most favorite stages, where visuals are coming out for the first time to being without any restrictions, a very intuitive and spontaneous process to allow all sorts of visualizing ideas to come up. At this point the storyboarding process has to be as loose as possible to avoid any restrictions, yet with an eye on staying a minimalist, while touching up only the keys of the story. Then, in the process of making the film, I am keeping the storyboard close to working area at all times. Some of the initial ideas may be changed or followed closely, I show it to friends and colleagues, think about it over and over again. 

Of Stars & People

At last online! This is a new episode of Oah & Harlam series I was working on this year. At fist glance the stories about two weirdoes Oah and Harlam may appear as senseless. But when there is an overflow of senselessness, then appears deep philosophy. 


These stories are not just shorts that I wrote, they are a worldview, answers to some questions of reality, grotesque simplicity of which seems to be surreal. In this series bits of life situations, thoughts, and actions are applied to animation, music, and a spoken word. I think there is a need to write fairytales for grownups, to write almost impossible stories in order to talk about important things in life.


The original music scored by Yoon Lee, involves a rare use of instruments such as kalimba and kayagum. 

Summary

Titled after an eponymous work by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, this film is a collaborative project. A musician, Yoon Lee, used audio signals from varying instruments and tone generators to vibrate a plastic membrane over a speaker. Acrylic powder on the membrane formed shapes, as long as the sound was passing through. The process was captured with a down-shooting camera in stop-motion manner. And I took care of charcoal drawn animation, live action, and montage for this film. As to the music, Pärt works in minimalist style that employs self-made compositional techniques. His compositions depict simple harmonies, reminiscent of ringing bells. Exceedingly stable, yet fragile. 

Dusted from 2008...