The Anachronism @ 60k

Since it’s online release in April, my short film The Anachronism has been viewed by 60,000 viewers in 100 countries around the world. Even without subtitles, the film has inspired blog posts in a number of languages, including Japanese, Russian, Polish, French and German. Which blows my mind! Thanks for all the love, intertron.

Here are some choice reactions from the (english-language) blogosphere:

“A Beautiful Steampunk Vision comes to life” - QUIET EARTH

“The Anachronism is more than worth the 15 minutes you need to set aside to watch it.” - GIZMODO

“We want to live in this Robot Squid Submarine” - IO9 (Also check out the I09 gallery of stills from The Anachronism.)

“As haunting as it is beautiful.” - THE DAILY GUMBOOT

“Very wonderfully designed.” - MAKING THE MOVIE

“The latest full-blooded Scientific Romance in a long line. That it stars children leads one to implicate it favourably with other children’s films of emotional, philosophical and aesthetic heft, such as The Adventures of Mark Twain and the works of Karel Zeman and Hayao Miyazaki.” -VOYAGES EXTRAORDINAIRE

“The only thing wrong with it is that it isn’t longer. … I’ll just give you one warning: this is a filmmaker who, unlike many others, knows how to let a mystery rest undisturbed. Yes, the film leaves you curious as heck, but in the end, I think that’s a much better place to be than stuck with an ultimately disappointing/implausible overexplanation that drains the film of its atmosphere. So I’m torn. I’m love to see this expanded into a full-length feature film. …and yet I think it’s perfect as it is. Let’s hope that either way, we see a lot more from Long.” -BIOEPHEMERA

“A well told little tale, with a surprisingly sinister ending. What it really comes down to is this: mechanical squid. Like you’re going to pass that by.” - COILHOUSE

The Anachronism catches a wave

On Monday one of my favourite daily online reads, the sci-fi culture blog io9, published a post showcasing the recently-released trailer for my short film The Anachronism. Thousands of Steampunks and assorted onlookers around the globe checked us out on YouTube.  It’s been fascinating to chart the ripple we’ve sent out into the data cloud.

I love tracking the way one person’s speculation about the details of the plot gets picked up in comment threads and quickly mutates into faux-spoilers. All I’ll say for now is that there is some misinformation out there about the direction the story takes! What people are correct in speculating about is that The Anachronism short film is just the first seed of a larger Steampunk storyworld that my collaborator Dusty Hagerüd and I will be revealing over the course of the coming year, starting with the online release of the film on April 16th.

The projects will be released independently under a Creative Commons license, and we’ll be creating a distribution environment that encourages our audience to share and interact with our storytelling in several ways.