birdwatching!
Duration: 7 min
Format: 2D animation/mixed media, 16:9
Themes: Comedy, Nature, Surrealism
Status: In development
Target: Adults, Young adults
Through an old man's binoculars, a bird faces a bad mushroom trip, ending in an existential crisis. When the man absurdly dies, the bird takes his place, bird-watching. Observing nature, It realizes that being a small insignificant bird in the vast randomness of the universe is okay, after all.
Director's note
If you look down into the tiny and extremely tiny, the universe seems even larger and even stranger compared to outer space. Everything is connected. There is no me, no you; there is only "us".
We're huge biology nerds. We spend most of our time looking out for weird critters, from bugs to mushrooms, and we got obsessed by the intertwined world of nature.
This movie is inspired by books like Merlin Sheldrake's "Entangled Life," an eye-opening opera about how fungi are the core mechanisms of nature, and Ed Yong's "I Contain Multitudes," which explains how literally everything is made up of microbes and how they can be precious partners to us.
When you're feeling lost in the big world and need some perspective, just think about how the little things in your body took a long time to make you who you are. Mix in some meme humor, and that's how 'Birdwatching!' came to life. It's a quirky short film about the tiny world of fungi, a goofy bird, and an old guy.