Sci-Fi Shorts: In The 3rd Letter, Insurance Is A Matter Of Life And Death
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With technology having advanced to the point where even amateur filmmakers can bring their ambitious stories to life, the bar for science fiction shorts is ever being raised. Normally our recurring Sci-Fi Shorts feature focuses on a single short film, but today we’ve got three cool creations from the same person: Polish filmmaker Grzegorz Jonkajtys.
First up, up top, is the longest of the three short films. The 3rd Letter envisions a future where the climate has deteriorated to the degree that mankind is forced to rely on…well, let, let’s just call them “extreme measures.” In The 3rd Letter, access to healthcare is literally a daily matter of life and death, so what happens when one man is faced with the prospect of losing his “insurance?” Find out above.
Next up is Legacy. We’ve imagined what first contact would be like with extraterrestrials for decades, more or less from the moment we started to wonder if there might be life out there beyond our tiny blue-and-green marble. Legacy is the brief story of one such first contact, with a lone alien explorer responding to a signal from Earth, hoping to add a human to its collection.
Finally, we’ve got Ark, set in a future where a terrible virus has wiped out much of our species. The survivors boarded enormous ships and set out to sea, hoping to find land that’s uninhabited, and thus theoretically free of the virus. It’s a nice example of how you can tell some stories entirely through visuals, without a single line of dialogue. I also love the skewed, slightly creepy design of the humans, as it helps give the short an unsettling quality. And suffice to say, things in Ark aren’t necessarily as they seem.
In addition to crafting these cool shorts, Jonkajtys has worked as a visual effects artist and lead animator on movies such as Sin City, Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Mist, Terminator Salvation, and Pacific Rim. You can check out more of his work on his official website.
