Do you ever feel like you’re adrift on a sea of corporate branding, intrusive advertising and omnipresent logos? Advertising has become so ubiquitous that we’re now seeing high schools and Little League teams sporting the logos of companies big and small. French animation collective H5 took on the disturbingly ever-present corporate branding phenomenon in this short called “Logorama.” Warning to sensitive readers: the film contains a lot of profanity along with some violence and a little cartoon nudity.
Logorama from Marc Altshuler – Human Music on Vimeo.
The film features an alternate-reality Los Angeles where absolutely everything – people, buildings, cars – is made up of logos. The directors could have simply shown us 15 minutes of animated logos and we would have still been impressed, but they instead take us through an epic crime story with a surprising ending. Part of the fun is watching it over and over and spotting new things every single time. The film is positively stuffed with brands, mascots and logos that will make you alternately laugh and cringe.
H5, the studio behind the project, consists of François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy and Ludovic Houplain. Their exceptionally well-produced short was introduced at Cannes in 2009 and opened the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. It also took home a 2010 Academy Award in the category of animated short. It’s not hard to see why the film has won such popularity and admiration: it is a biting satire on the brand-obsessed modern America with a fair amount of humor thrown in.
