Balloons are given for special occasions, e.g. birthdays or holidays.

Balloons are often used as party décor.

A balloon is an inflatable flexible bag filled with a gas, such as helium, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, oxygen, or air. Modern balloons can be made from materials such as rubber, latex, polychloroprene, or a nylon fabric, while some early balloons were made of dried animal bladders, such as the pig bladder.^[1] Some balloons are used for decorative purposes, while others are used for practical purposes such as meteorology, medical treatment, military defense, or transportation. A balloon's properties, including its low density and low cost, have led to a wide range of applications. The inventor of the rubber balloon, (the most common balloon) was Michael Faraday in 1824, via experiments with various gases.^[2]

Applications[link]

Decoration or entertainment[link]

Decorative arches made of party balloons

Party balloons are mostly made of a natural latex tapped from rubber trees, and can be filled with air, helium, water, or any other suitable liquid or gas. The rubber's elasticity makes the volume adjustable.

Filling the balloon with air can be done with the mouth, a manual or electric inflater (such as a hand pump), or with a source of compressed gas.

When rubber or plastic balloons are filled with helium so that they float, they typically retain their buoyancy for only a day or so, sometimes longer. The enclosed helium atoms escape through small pores in the latex which are larger than the helium atoms. Balloons filled with air usually hold their size and shape much longer, sometimes for up to a week.

Even a perfect rubber balloon eventually loses gas to the outside. The process by which a substance or solute migrates from a region of high concentration, through a barrier or membrane, to a region of lower concentration is called diffusion. The inside of balloons can be treated with a special gel (for instance, the polymer solution sold under the "Hi Float" brand) which coats the inside of the balloon to reduce the helium leakage, thus increasing float time to a week or longer.

Animal-shaped balloons

Beginning in the late 1970s, some more expensive (and longer-lasting) foil balloons made of thin, unstretchable, less permeable metallised films such as Mylar (BoPET) started being produced. These balloons have attractive shiny reflective surfaces and are often printed with colour pictures and patterns for gifts and parties. The most important attribute of metallised nylon for balloons is its light weight, increasing buoyancy and its ability to keep the helium gas from escaping for several weeks. Foil balloons have been criticized for interfering with power lines.^[3][4]

Professional balloon party decorators use electronic equipment to set the exact amount of helium to fill the balloon. For non-floating balloons, air inflaters are used. Professional quality balloons are used, which differ from most retail packet balloons by being larger in size and made from 100% biodegradable latex.

Balloon modelling and balloons in art[link]

Balloon artists are entertainers who twist and tie inflated tubular balloons into sculptures (see balloon modelling). The balloons used for sculpture are made of extra-stretchy rubber so that they can be twisted and tied without bursting. Since the pressure required to inflate a balloon is inversely proportional to the diameter of the balloon^{[citation needed]}, these tiny tubular balloons are extremely hard to inflate initially. A pump is usually used to inflate these balloons.

Decorators may use helium balloons to create balloon sculptures. Usually the round shape of the balloon restricts these to simple arches or walls, but on occasion more ambitious "sculptures" have been attempted. It is also common to use balloons as table decorations for celebratory events. Balloons can sometimes be modeled to form shapes of animals. Table decorations normally appear with three or five balloons on each bouquet. Ribbon is curled and added with a weight to keep the balloons from floating away.

Balloon drops and releases[link]

A decorative use for balloons is in balloon drops. In a balloon drop, a plastic bag or net filled with air-inflated balloons is suspended from a fixed height. Once released, the balloons fall onto their target area below. Balloon drops are commonly performed at New Year's Eve celebrations and at political rallies and conventions, but may also be performed at celebrations, including graduations and weddings.

For decades, people have also celebrated with balloon releases. This practice has been discouraged by the balloon industry, as it has posed problematic for the environment and cities. In recent years, legislation, such as the California Balloon Law, has been enacted to enforce consumers and retailers to tether helium-filled foil (BoPET) balloons with a balloon weight. This ensures that the helium-filled balloons do not float into the atmosphere, which is both potentially injurious to animals, the environment, and power lines.

At many events, the balloons may contain prizes, and party-goers can pop the balloons to retrieve the items inside.

Balloon publicity[link]

Pig balloon at the Lexington Barbecue Festival

Balloons are used for publicity at major events. Screen printing processes can be used to print designs and company logos onto the balloons. In January 2008, the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York organized a display of 4,200 red balloons outside the United Nations Headquarters.^[5]

Water balloons[link]

Water balloons are thin, small rubber balloons filled with liquid, usually water, instead of a gas, and intended to be easily broken. They are usually used by children, who throw them at each other, trying to get each other wet, as a game, competition, or practical joke. By forcing water out the open end of a water balloon, it is possible to use it as a makeshift water gun.

Balloon rockets[link]

Balloons are often deliberately released, creating a so-called balloon rocket or rocket balloon. Rocket balloons work because the elastic balloons contract on the air within them, and so when the mouth of the balloon is left open, the gas within the balloon shoots out, and, due to Newton's third law of motion, the balloon is propelled forward. This is the same way that a rocket works.^[6]

Flying machines[link]

Hot air balloons, San Diego, California

Flying above the Ancient City during the Ferrara Balloons Festival, Italy

Large balloons filled with hot air or buoyant gas (often hydrogen or helium) have been used as flying machines since the 18th century. The earliest flights were made with hot air balloons using air heated with a flame, or hydrogen; later, helium was used. Unlike an airship, a balloon travels with the wind.

Medicine[link]

Angioplasty is a surgical procedure in which very small balloons are inserted into blocked or partially blocked blood vessels near the heart. Once in place, the balloon is inflated to clear or compress arterial plaque, and to stretch the walls of the vessel, thus preventing myocardial infarction. A small stent can be inserted at the angioplasty site to keep the vessel open after the balloon's removal.^[7]

Balloon catheters are catheters that have balloons at their tip to keep them from slipping out. For example, the balloon of a Foley catheter is inflated when the catheter is inserted into the urinary bladder and secures its position.^[8]

Safety and environmental concerns[link]

There has been some environmental concern over metallised nylon balloons, as they do not biodegrade or shred as rubber balloons do. Release of these types of balloons into the atmosphere is considered harmful to the environment. This type of balloon can also conduct electricity on its surface and released foil balloons can become entangled in power lines and cause power outages.^[9]

Released balloons can land anywhere, including on nature reserves or other areas where they pose a serious hazard to animals through ingestion or entanglement. Because of the harm to wildlife and the effect of litter on the environment, some jurisdictions even legislate to control mass balloon releases. Legislation proposed in Maryland, US, was named after Inky, a pygmy sperm whale who needed six operations after swallowing debris, the largest piece of which was a mylar balloon.^[10][11] To date, there is no documentary evidence to suggest that the death of any sea mammal has been attributed to foil balloons as a sole cause.^[12] In the United Kingdom, foil balloons sold at major theme parks and zoos have balloon weights attached to help prevent accidental release into the environment.^[13]

Anthony Andrady says that releases of latex balloons that descend into the sea pose a serious ingestion and/or entanglement hazard to marine animals because balloons exposed floating in seawater deteriorate much more slowly than those exposed in air.^[14] Balloon manufacturers will often state that a latex balloon is perfectly safe to release into the environment as it is made from a natural substance and will biodegrade over time. However a latex balloon can take up to a year to degrade if it lands in the sea and during this time it is possible for a marine animal to ingest the balloon and die from slow starvation if its digestive system is blocked.

NABAS (National Association of Balloon Artists and Suppliers), a non-profitable organisation that represents the UK balloon industry sets out best practice guidelines to promote balloon safety.^[15] NABAS is currently taking on board ISO 14001 to ensure that environmental standards are laid down for the whole UK balloon industry, and to heighten awareness of environmental issues related to balloons. As part of this programme, NABAS has begun discussions with TerraCycle to formulate a feasibility programme for upcycling foil balloons into other products

Physics[link]

Air pressure[link]

Contemporary illustration of the first flight by Professor Jacques Charles, December 1, 1783

Once inflated with regular, atmospheric air, the air inside the balloon will have a greater air pressure than the original atmospheric air pressure.^[16]

Air pressure, technically, is a measurement of the amount of collisions against a surface at any time. In the case of balloon, it's supposed to measure how many particles at any in any given time space collide with the wall of the balloon and bounce off. However, since this is near impossible to measure, air pressure seems to be easier described as density. The similarity comes from the idea that when there are more molecules in the same space, more of them will be heading towards a collision course with the wall.

The first concept of air pressure within a balloon that is necessary to know is that air pressures "try" to even out. With all the bouncing against the balloon wall (both interior and exterior) there will be a certain amount of expansion/contraction. As air pressure itself is a description of the total forces against an object, each of these forces, on the outside of the balloon, causes the balloon to contract a tiny bit, while the inside forces cause the balloon to expand. With this knowledge, one would immediately assume the a balloon with high air pressure inside would expand based on the high amount of internal forces, and vice versa.

This would make the inside and outside air pressures equal.

However, balloons have a certain elasticity to them that some needs to be taken into account. When you stretch a balloon, you are filling it with potential energy. When you let it go, the potential energy is turned into kinetic energy and the balloon snaps back into its original position (though perhaps a little stretched out).

When you fill up a balloon with air, the balloon is being stretched. While the balloon is constantly releasing kinetic energy in an attempt to contract, it is also being pushed back out by the constant bouncing of the internal air molecules.

Basically, the internal air has to exert force not only to counteract the external air to keep the air pressures "even", but it also has to counteract the natural contraction of the balloon. Therefore, it requires more air pressure (more force) than the air outside the balloon wall.^[17]

See also[link]

• Aerobot
• Balloon-carried light effect
• Foam balloon
• Pig Balloon
• Pneumatic bladder
• Radiosonde
• Rockoon
• Speech balloon
• Two-balloon experiment

Notes[link]

Further reading[link]

"Reader's Digest: Stories Behind Everyday Things"; New York: Reader's Digest, 1980.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Balloons

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Balloon.

• Stratospheric balloons, history and present Historical recopilation project on the use of stratospheric balloons in the scientific research, the military field and the aerospace activity
• National trade association for the UK balloon industry
• Balloon and Party Industry alliance for the UK and European Balloon and Party industry
• National trade association for the Australasian balloon industry

Don Hertzfeldt
Don Hertzfeldt at his animation desk, during production of "The Meaning of Life"
Born	(1976-08-01) August 1, 1976 (age 35) Fremont, California
Nationality	American
Field	Independent film, Animation
Training	University of California, Santa Barbara
Works	Billy's Balloon, Rejected, Everything Will Be OK
Influenced by	Stanley Kubrick, Monty Python, David Lynch, Edward Gorey, Buster Keaton
Awards	2001 Academy Award nominee 1998 Palme d'Or nominee: Cannes Film Festival 2007 Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking: Sundance Film Festival winner of over 150 other film festival awards

Don Hertzfeldt (born August 1, 1976) is the creator of many short animated films, including Everything Will Be OK and the Academy-Award nominated Rejected. His animated films have received over 150 awards and have been presented around the world. Before the age of thirty, his films were already the subject of several career retrospectives. He was the youngest director named in the "They Shoot Pictures, Don't They" list of "The 100 Important Animation Directors" of all time,^[1] and in 2010 he received the San Francisco International Film Festival's "Persistence of Vision" Lifetime Achievement Award at the age of 33.

In 2012, Hertzfeldt was ranked # 16 in an animation industry and historian survey of the "Top 100 Most Influential People in Animation." ^[2]

The popularity of Hertzfeldt's work is unprecedented in independent animation and his films are frequently quoted and referenced in pop culture.^[3] In 2009, the Sundance Film Festival noted, "If cinephiles think shorts don't generate the same sort of hype and fanbase as feature films, they obviously haven't heard of Don Hertzfeldt."^[4]

Hertzfeldt has recently begun a 30-city theatrical tour in support of his latest short film, the 23 minute It's Such a Beautiful Day, the third and final chapter to his 2006 film Everything Will Be OK. In 2008 and 2009, Hertzfeldt went on a similar 22-city theatrical tour in support of the second chapter in the series, I am so proud of you. "An Evening with Don Hertzfeldt" presented a retrospective of his animated films followed by the regional premiere(s) of the new film and an onstage interview and audience chat with him.^[5]

Hertzfeldt lives in Austin, Texas. He spent many years in Santa Barbara, California after attending college there. He keeps a blog on his website that has been continually updated and archived since 1999.

Early life[link]

Hertzfeldt was born in Fremont, California where he attended local schools and drew homemade comic books. At 15, he began to teach himself animation with a small video camera.^[6] Two of Hertzfeldt's teenage VHS cartoons can be seen on the "Bitter Films: Volume 1" DVD collection.

From a 2001 interview, Don says: "I watched films relentlessly growing up, and was fascinated by visual effects. My family used to make outings to animation festivals in San Francisco every year, so credit my parents for that. I ended up seeing all of those classic [independent] cartoons throughout my teenage years. But animation production for me sort of just happened as a by-product. I've been drawing things and writing things all my life, and animating my stories was always cheaper to do and looked more interesting than low budget live action."^[7]

Hertzfeldt has never held any job other than creating his animated films, not even in his youth.^[8] His earliest video animations found film festival exposure, and in film school at the University of California, Santa Barbara he was able to find international distribution for each of his 16mm student films.

Technique[link]

Hertzfeldt's work commonly features hand-drawn stick figures, in stories of black humor, surrealism, and tragicomedy. Some films contain deeper existential and philosophical themes while others are more straightforwardly slapstick and absurdist. His animation is created traditionally with pen and paper, often with minimal digital aid. Hertzfeldt uses antique 16mm or 35mm film cameras to photograph his drawings and very often employs old-fashioned special effect techniques such as multiple exposures, in-camera mattes, and experimental photography (significantly used in works such as Everything Will Be OK and I am so proud of you). While some of these techniques are as established as an occasional stop-motion animation sequence (as in Intermission in the Third Dimension) or a universe of moving stars created by back-lit pin holes (The Meaning of Life), other effects are new innovations on classical methods, as seen with the rippling and blurring paper landscapes of Rejected or the in-camera compositing of multiple, split-screen windows of action in the Everything Will Be OK films.^[9][10][11]

Since 1999, Hertzfeldt has photographed all his films on a 35mm Richardson animation camera stand, believed to be the same camera that photographed many of the early Peanuts cartoons in the 1960s and 1970s.^[12] Built in the late 1940s, it is reportedly one of the last remaining functioning cameras of its kind left in America (if not the world), and Hertzfeldt finds it to be a crucial element in the creation of his films and their unique visuals.^[13]

Discussing film and digital technology with The New York Times, Hertzfeldt noted:

I don't know why these things are always framed as a big dumb cage match: Hand-drawn versus computers, film versus digital. We have over 100 years now of amazing film technology to play with, I don't understand why any artists would want to throw any of their tools out of the box. Many people assume that because I shoot on film and animate on paper I must be doing things the hard way, when in fact my last four movies would have been visually impossible to produce digitally. The only thing that matters is what actually winds up on the big screen, not how you got it there. You could make a cartoon in crayons about a red square that falls in unrequited love with a blue circle, and there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house if you know how to tell a story.^[14]

It's not unusual for Hertzfeldt to single-handedly write, direct, produce, animate, photograph, edit, perform voices, record and mix sound, and/or compose music for one of his films, at times requiring years to complete a single short. The animation alone for one of his films may often require tens of thousands of drawings.

Hertzfeldt frequently scores his pictures with classical music and opera. The music of Tchaikovsky, Bizet, Smetana, Beethoven, Richard Strauss, and Wagner have all appeared in his films. On occasion, Hertzfeldt has also scored portions of his films himself, with a guitar or keyboard.

Popularity and influence[link]

A line around the block for An Evening with Don Hertzfeldt

Hertzfeldt's early films have been credited with being a prominent influence on surrealism and absurdism in animation in the 2000s, as well as influencing Adult Swim style animated comedy.^[15] In 2008, Comedy Central noted his work as having "influenced an entire generation of filmmakers."^[16]

His more recent films, such as The Meaning of Life, Everything Will Be OK, and I am so Proud of You, expanded upon his signature style of dark humor to explore deeper themes of existentialism and life and death philosophy. Critics have favorably compared these shorts to the work of Stanley Kubrick^[17] and David Lynch,^[18] respectively. Everything Will Be OK was described as "probably the best work he's done in his very incredible and consistently amazing young career."^[19]

Hertzfeldt's films are regularly found in film festivals around the world, touring animation programs like the Animation Show, and on DVD collections. The cartoons are also featured occasionally on television: MTV, Bravo, Via X, Sundance Channel, IFC, Showtime, and the Cartoon Network being a few channels that have carried his work internationally.

The popularity of Hertzfeldt's shorts has led to many Internet bootlegs, bringing his work to an audience of millions. Though he's unhappy with the poor quality most of these online videos offer (as well as the frequent re-editing of them), he says he is not interested in "harassing fans." In the FAQ of his website, Hertzfeldt simply notes that movies are not meant to be seen on the Internet: "If you've only seen a film downgraded on the Internet or some strange miniature device, in many ways you haven't really seen it yet. YouTube is great for home videos of your cat falling off the roof but it is not really the proper setting for "cinema"... Movies are meant to be seen in the dark, hopefully with an audience, and with your undivided attention - this last one is non-negotiable."^[20] Recently however, Hertzfeldt has allowed "official" versions of The Meaning of Life and Everything will be OK to appear online in high quality on sites like MUBI and YouTube. Wisdom Teeth also debuted online after being acquired by Showtime.

Hertzfeldt prefers to not sell any of his animation artwork. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, his website Bitter Films annually auctioned off artwork instead to raise thousands of dollars for local Santa Barbara charities. Other original drawings have been occasionally given away through the Bitter Films online store through special promotions. Because Hertzfeldt also rarely does signings, his artwork is very rare for animation collectors or casual fans to own.

Student films, 1995-1998[link]

Hertzfeldt made four 16mm animated student films while majoring in film at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Ah, L'Amour and Genre were produced at the ages of 18 and 19. Ah, L'Amour would win the HBO Comedy Arts Festival Grand Prize for "World's Funniest Cartoon." ^[21]

His first dialogue short, Lily and Jim, was released in 1997, and tells the story of a disastrous blind date, rife with awkward conversations. Its partially improvised vocal performances helped the short win twenty five awards, including the Grand Prize at the New Orleans Film Festival.^[22]

His last student cartoon, Billy's Balloon, is about an inexplicable attack on small children by malevolent balloons. It was nominated for the Short Film Palme d'Or at the1999 Cannes Film Festival, and won the Grand Jury Award at the 1999 Slamdance Film Festival. In total it won thirty three awards.^[23]

The popularity of each student short at film and animation festivals - and eventually around the world from screening on MTV and other networks - helped fund the next one, and eventually financed the production of his first film after college.

Independent animation, 2000-2009[link]

[edit] Rejected

Soon after graduating from film school, Hertzfeldt purchased his own 35mm rostrum camera, and made his next animated short, Rejected. Released in theaters in 2000, the short won dozens of awards, was nominated for an Oscar, and is an enduring cult classic that is frequently quoted and referenced in pop culture.^[24] Fans of the cartoon have been known to wear costumes, re-enact their favorite scenes in fan films, and some have had tattoos made of their favorite characters.^[25] Public screenings of the short sometimes become a "Rocky Horror Picture Show-esque feedback loop" of fans reciting favorite lines back at the screen.^[26] The short's enduring popularity has led the film to be described as "this generation's A Hard Day's Night".^[27]

The film presents itself as a reel of rejected commercial work by a fictional version of Don Hertzfeldt. The commissioned animated vignettes grow more and more abstract and inappropriate as the animator suffers a mental breakdown, until they literally fall apart.

Although the film is of course fictional and Hertzfeldt has never done commercial work, he did receive many offers to do television commercials after Billy's Balloon garnered international attention and acclaim. Hertzfeldt is an artist with anti-corporate leanings and in appearances has often told the humorous story of how he was tempted to produce the worst possible cartoons he could come up with for the companies, make off with their money, and see if they would actually make it to air. Eventually this became the germ for Rejected's theme of a collection of cartoons so bad they were rejected by advertising agencies, leading to their creator's breakdown.

[edit] The Animation Show

In 2003, Hertzfeldt created The Animation Show with Beavis and Butt-head creator Mike Judge. It was a biennial North American touring festival that brought independent animated short films to more movie theaters than any distributor in history. The programs were personally curated by Hertzfeldt and Judge. A second Animation Show edition toured throughout 2005, featuring Hertzfeldt's short film The Meaning of Life and new films by animators like Peter Cornwell and Georges Schwizgebel. The third season of The Animation Show began its nationwide release in January 2007, featuring new work by animators Joanna Quinn and Bill Plympton, as well as Hertzfeldt's own Everything Will Be OK.

A stated goal of The Animation Show was to regularly "free the work of these independent artists from the dungeons of Internet exhibition", and bring them into proper movie theaters where most of the short films were meant to be seen. The Animation Show has meanwhile launched a supplemental DVD series of animated short films, with content that often varies from the annual theatrical programs. These DVDs are distributed by MTV.

In a March 2008 entry in his blog, Hertzfeldt announced he had decided to leave The Animation Show, after having programmed (and contributing films to) three tours. A fourth season of the program was released in theaters in summer 2008, with no involvement from him.^[28]

[edit] The Meaning of Life

Almost four years in the making, Hertzfeldt's twelve minute The Meaning of Life premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and toured film and animation festivals in 2005-06. Though its abstract nature puzzled some critics, it received almost universally positive reviews. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called the film "the closest thing on film yet to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey."^[29]

In the film, the evolution of the human race is traced from prehistory (mankind as blob forms), through today (mankind as teeming crowds of selfish, fighting, or lost individuals), to hundreds of millions of years into the future as our species evolves into countless new forms; all of them still behaving the same way. The film concludes in the extreme future, with two creatures (apparently an adult and child subspecies of future human), having a conversation about the meaning of life on a colorful shore.

In 2009, Hertzfeldt noted, "I don't often make the same sort of movie twice in a row. It's always been whatever's next in my head. From a commercial standpoint I guess I’ve made some pretty inscrutable decisions, like following up 'Rejected' with a sprawling abstract film about human evolution, but it's really just been whichever ideas won't go away at the time. There's always a lot of new things I’d like to try..."^[30]

[edit] The Everything will be OK films

Everything Will Be OK was released in 2006 and was Hertzfeldt's most critically successful piece to date, receiving his strongest reviews. The 17-minute animated short was based on his character "Bill" from his webcomic "Temporary Anesthetics".^[31] The Boston Globe called the film a "masterpiece" with the Boston Phoenix declaring Hertzfeldt a "genius."^[32] The short film was a cover story on the Chicago Reader, receiving four stars from critic J.R. Jones. Variety film critic Robert Koehler named Everything Will Be OK one of the "Best Films of 2007." ^[33]

Everything will be OK is the first chapter of a three-part story about Bill, a young man whose daily routines, perceptions, and dreams are illustrated onscreen through multiple split-screen windows. Bill's seemingly mundane life, narrated in humorous and dramatic anecdotes, gradually grows dark as we learn he may be suffering from a possibly fatal mental disorder.

The film's scenes are often divided into multiple windows of action on the screen at once, against a background of pure black. Animated still photographs are also incorporated inside certain windows, as well as a handful of the colorful special effects and experimental film techniques that Hertzfeldt first utilized in The Meaning of Life. As with all his films, no computers were used in creating the picture; all of the multiple window effects were captured in-camera.

Everything Will Be OK won the Grand Jury Prize for Short Filmmaking at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, the Lawrence Kasdan Award for Best Narrative Film at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Grand Prize at the London Animation Festival, and 34 other awards.

I am so proud of you, the second chapter in the story, was released in autumn 2008. Upon its release, Hertzfeldt traveled with I am so proud of you and a selection of his other films to 22 cities on a sold-out American tour (with two stops in the UK and three in Canada). I am so proud of you also played at film festivals throughout 2009 and has to date won 27 awards.^[34]

The third and final chapter, It's such a beautiful day, premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Hertzfeldt is currently traveling with It's such a beautiful day on another American theatrical tour of his work.

Current work[link]

Chapter 3 of Everything Will Be OK, titled It's Such a Beautiful Day, has been recently completed and is now screening in select theaters and film festivals.

In October 2009, Hertzfeldt premiered an unannounced, new five minute comedy short entitled Wisdom Teeth at the "Evening with Don Hertzfeldt" screening at the Ottawa Animation Festival. It was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2010 and the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, where it was awarded a Special Jury Mention.^[28] In 2010, it appeared as part of a series on the Showtime Network called 'Short Stories.'

According to his blog, Hertzfeldt has been developing a feature length animated project. He has also made references to working on a graphic novel.^[28]

Awards and honors[link]

Hertzfeldt has had more films play in competition at the Sundance Film Festival than any other filmmaker, with six: Rejected, The Meaning of Life, Everything Will Be OK, I am so proud of you, Wisdom Teeth, and It's Such a Beautiful Day.

In 1999, at the age of 22, Hertzfeldt was nominated for the Short Film Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Billy's Balloon, where he was the youngest director in competition. The same year Billy's Balloon won the Slamdance Film Festival Grand Jury Award.

In 2000, at the age of 23, Hertzfeldt was nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film for his fifth short film, Rejected.

In 2001, Hertzfeldt was named by Filmmaker Magazine as one of the "Top 25 Filmmakers to Watch."

In 2007, Hertzfeldt's Everything Will Be OK won the Jury Award for Short Filmmaking at the Sundance Film Festival, a prize rarely given to an animated film.^[35]

In 2007, according to the animation industry website Cartoon Brew, Everything Will Be OK advanced to the final round of voting as a contender for an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short, but did not make the ultimate list of five nominees.

In 2007, Hertzfeldt accepted an invitation from the George Eastman House's motion picture archives to indefinitely store and preserve the historically important original film elements and camera negatives to his collected work.

In 2009, Rejected was the only short film named one of the "Films of the Decade" by Salon.com.^[36] In 2010, it was noted as one of the five "most innovative animated films of the past ten years" by The Huffington Post.^[37]

In April 2010, at the age of 33, Hertzfeldt was the youngest filmmaker to ever receive the San Francisco International Film Festival's "Persistence of Vision" Lifetime Achievement Award, "for his unique contributions to film and animation", and "for challenging the boundaries of his craft."^[38] Past recipients of the POV award include Errol Morris, Guy Maddin, Jan Švankmajer, and Faith Hubley.

In 2012, Hertzfeldt received the Ted M.Larson memorial award from the Fargo Film Festival, for his contributions to film culture.^[39]

DVD releases[link]

Hertzfeldt self-produces and self-distributes his own DVDs. With these sales, fans of his work are literally financing his next films, with no middle men in between.^[32]

An exhaustive DVD collection of all of Hertzfeldt's films from 1995 to 2005 was released in 2006. The short films were remastered and restored in high definition from the original film negatives. The DVD was made available only to fans via the Bitter Films website, with the first 750 pre-orderers receiving an "exclusive mystery gift" (either a 35mm clipping from Rejected that was autographed by Don, or a unique drawing by Don on a post-it note).

The DVD marked the first time his student films such as Genre and Lily and Jim were made widely available to the public - many of these works were only previously found on limited-release VHS collections of animated shorts, long out of print.

The special features for Bitter Films Volume One: 1995-2005 include:

• The documentary, Watching Grass Grow: Animating 'The Meaning of Life'
• The Animation Show Trilogy cartoons
• Lily and Jim deleted dialogues and outtakes
• Rejected trivia captions
• The Meaning of Life special effects audio commentary
• An extensive 140+ page "Archive" section, featuring rare footage from Hertzfeldt's earliest cartoons, original pencil tests, deleted sequences, abandoned footage, and sketch to scene comparisons
• Lily and Jim reunion commentary with the original voice actors
• Rejected audio commentary
• Preview of Everything Will Be OK
• The Animation Show interviews with Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt
• Ah, L'Amour bonus 2005 soundtrack
• 16 page retrospective booklet, featuring liner notes by Hertzfeldt
• Original animated menus and transitions

Bitter Films' first DVD release was a 2001 limited edition DVD "single" of the popular short Rejected. Everything Will Be OK was similarly released as a DVD "single" in 2007, and I am so proud of you in September, 2009.

View on commercialism[link]

Hertzfeldt has been offered numerous lucrative commercial deals, including ad campaigns for Cingular Wireless and United Airlines, which he has declined. He has made various comments over the years about his distaste for corporate America and promises his fans he will never be involved with the commercial world.^[20] He has said, "The goal isn’t to try and make as much money as I possibly can, the goal is to try and make good movies."

In a March 2009 blog entry, Hertzfeldt compared filmmaking to his love of hiking and exploring new places: something he does just because he "enjoys doing it and will probably always enjoy doing it." He compared doing commercials to being paid to not go explore the woods, but to walk around someone's house eight hours a day wearing a sandwich board with a picture of a product on it. "Money's not the reason I take walks. It doesn't really factor into it. I take walks because I enjoy doing it. It's something I'd do if I was rich and it's something I'd do if I were poor." ^[40]

Nevertheless, several international ad campaigns have borrowed heavily from his unique style and bear enough resemblance to Hertzfeldt's work as to be mistaken for it. The most well-known instance of this is a series of 2004–2009 television ads for Kellogg's Pop-Tarts, which use black and white stick figures, "squiggly" animation, surreal humor, and even an occasional crumpling paper effect, all very similar to Hertzfeldt's style. Despite all these similarities, Hertzfeldt was not involved in any way.^[41] In Canada, the not-for-profit corporation Encorp has used a Hertzfeldt-like style of short animation clips on TV and the Internet to promote its "Don't Mess With Karma" campaign to encourage recycling.^[42] One of the latest ad campaigns to use an art style similar to Hertzfeldt's is Krystal fast food restaurant to promote their Blitz Energy Drink.^[43]

Filmography[link]

• Ah, L'Amour (1995)
• Genre (1996)
• Lily and Jim (1997)
• Billy's Balloon (1998)
• Rejected (2000)
• Welcome to the Show/Intermission in the Third Dimension/The End of the Show (2003) (cartoons created to book-end the first "Animation Show")
• The Meaning of Life (2005)
• Everything Will Be OK (2006)
• I am so proud of you (2008)
• Wisdom Teeth (2010)
• It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Bitter Films Home Page
• Don Hertzfeldt at the Internet Movie Database
• American Film Institute 2009 interview