Azúl

From the coast of southern France comes Azúl, a great short film created at animation school Supinfocom. The short features an adventure treated with a comedic approach, which soon enough turns into a mystery for the viewer. Azúl plays a lot with context, showing characters and objects out of their expected medium, which in some cases creates a comedic effect and in others surprise, hooking the viewer into the film.

Staged in an island in the middle of the sea, scale is used to great effect. The world created in Azúl is vast and rich, framed with wide, extreme wide and overhead shots. Contrasts in scale are employed to help build these elements, as well as to create surprise, such as the shot of the ship sliding over another ship’s deck.

Sound is used for describing the landscapes as well as for expressing some of the characters (the robot, for comedic effect, and the blue ocean spirit, which is alluded to in combination with a change of color in the image). Sound is also used for transmitting scale (5m14) and as an element for creating contrasts in the timeline.

The wonderful aesthetic shows great attention to image composition, a blend of 2D and 3D elements, painterly landscapes and prominent warm colors to help build the atmosphere of the island. Azúl is certainly an ambitious short film, as the amount of work dedicated to aesthetics, characters, objects and environments shows.

The three characters that walk through the jungle split the narrative when one of them falls (2m38), and editing starts being used to alternate between the two narrative lines. After an action sequence takes place, they all meet again towards the end, finding the boat and placing everything back comfortably into the party context, where everything once again makes sense.