Good evening!

Following my passion for food, this week, I decided to have a dig into the world of animation inspired by food.

I noticed that animation and food most often cross paths in the field of retail marketing. Although those were very interesting and extremely aesthetic, I still found myself most drawn towards something a little different.

Background:

That is this Academy Award Nominee titled ‘Fresh Guacamole’ by PES. This short is a 1 minute 40 second stop-motion. It is part 2 of a trilogy series created by PES. It is also the shortest ever film to be nominated by an Oscar.

My experience as the audience:

For me, it was like a surprise after surprise. The fact that the real ‘food’ keeps transforming into artificial goods is so smart yet surprising. As soon as a new food is introduced, I’m just anticipating another transformation.

Therefore, I think that this short can be credited for its ability to capture the audiences attention.

The aesthetic style. The use of real handles mixed with various textures such as play-dough and plastic creates a really interesting contrast. There is a sense of pace and real-ness in this piece, yet the artificial foods remind us that this is a form of art.

As much as I appreciate every second of this short, I personally cannot gauge what the story is – or if there is a story with a real meaning behind this short. As someone who watched it for the first time, there doesn’t seem to be a really clear message. However, the fact that each piece of food transform into a good that represents ‘money’ and provides hints of ‘gambling’ (using snooker balls, gambling chips and dice), I presume that this may be a metaphor for food / health and money. I was not entirely sure after my first sitting.

The audio behind the track is really fitting. The use of sounds for cutting vegetables is effective as it lets the audience know what kind of texture the food is. Moreover, it provided really good ASMR.

 

The general idea of transforming food (in a very attractive aesthetic style) into other goods to share a message is really enlightening.

I’ve always assumed that ‘animating food’ means that the food has to have a face to be ‘alive’ but in this piece, it really dawned on me that there are more subtle ways to give a character some life.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did!

Until next week,

Katie

 

References:

PES (2012). Fresh Guacamole by PES | Oscar Nominated Short.

Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNJdJIwCF_Y [Accessed 24 Jan. 2019].