The Making Of Longbird

Wladislaw Aleksandravich Feltov was working on a film featuring Long Bird. His studio was destroyed by fire. His film was never finished. However, Will Anderson wants to complete the story of Long Bird. There are just two obstacles; Feltov didn't exist, and Long Bird isn't cooperating.

This is part "found footage", not quite "mockumentary", complicated by the simultaneous animated presence of Long Bird.

Voiced by Vitalij Sicinava, Long Bird is droll, taciturn, at best unhelpful. 'Will Anderson' is losing his mind with him. It's good, entertaining, verging at times on the self-indulgent. A cunning doppelganger of a popular video website features a link to one of the collaborator's music videos. The absence of 'Likes' speaks to a modern existential dread, but Long Bird is more about the struggle between creator and created.

It's a struggle that Long Bird seems to be winning. Neatly constructed, with some excellent animation work from Tobias Feltus, it amuses and surprises. Long Bird's design is neat, so too artifacts of the relevant eras - GDS cigarettes and scratched black and white, fruit-based computing and digital photography. Atzi Muramatsu's score manages to be noticeable and useful without seeming invasive or laboured. That's not always true of the film itself, occasionally seeming to have been captivated by its own cleverness. It's good, funny, with clever angles and textures and tricks on display. Perhaps its biggest weakness is in the nature of its plot - Long Bird runs away with itself, and not perhaps in the way its creator(s) intended.