Suburban Plight is, for what it is, very good. It is a short film shot, directed, edited, and VFXed by one guy over the span of two years. It suffers from being too long, but it also shows a good eye and friggin’ dedication to the game. I will post a long ranting quote from him in a second, but first I would like to say that I agree with his gripe somewhat. It is difficult to make movies with small, or in this case, non-existent crews, and it can be seriously demoralizing. But I applaud him for finishing this one, it looks like it was a herculean task and he did pretty damn well all things considered. Somebody should join this kid on his next project, because he does know what he is doing. Here is his somewhat whiny rant about this:

When the editor, the producer, the cameraman and the animator is the same person, no two tasks can be worked on at once. Making a movie with such a substantial crew takes a lot longer than it should. And if one person is in charge of doing everything, something is bound to end up being weak. I mean, a guy who’s skilled in composing shots may not be able to rig a 3D model, and a guy who’s great at mixing sound effects may not be so good at directing actors. But I didn’t want this movie to be weak in any particular area. I wanted the animation to be equally as solid as the camerawork, and the story to be equally as solid as the compositing. Although that didn’t quite happen, I think it’s a good thing to strive for. This might explain why this movie took me so long to make. I began working on this movie in 2004. Two years later, after almost 4 hours of footage was shot, and months and months of work, we’re left with a 5-minute short film. Was it worth it? I still haven’t decided.

Several of the films on his site have the time to create listed as “way too long…”, I guess my only advice would be to take on smaller, faster projects if the length of the ones he’s doing is demoralizing him so much. Making movies is supposed to be (and is) fun, so if its not, make different movies man. I’m not saying he’s taking on more than he can handle, but I am saying he seems displeased with his time:output ratio, so I guess a change would be good, yes?