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Clouds - An Experimental Short Film

Liam Vaughan

Warning for flashing lights

After a devastating breakup with his girlfriend, a man’s obsession with clouds takes over leading him to decide that he himself wants to become a cloud.

Featuring music from Triangulation: https://soundcloud.com/triangulationnn

Clouds takes viewers through the journey of a broken man, using cloud watching as a form of escapism to get his mind off of a breakup. While cloud watching works at first, his ex-girlfriend still manages to sneak into his thoughts sending him into a downward spiral. As his ex-girlfriend infests his thoughts, the man’s mental stability begins unraveling at increasing speeds. In a last-ditch effort to get away from all his thoughts, the man decides he wants to become a cloud. What follows this decision is a spiritual journey represented through transcendental visuals that are unexplainable in words. While escapism is an important and valid method of dealing with something such as a breakup, Clouds displays the dangers of letting it consume you. It can be easy to lose yourself through escapism, but Clouds shows why it’s important to keep yourself grounded in reality to some degree.

This short film was made mostly out of my fear of creating an experimental short film. A lot of my work is absolutely experimental but there’s a certain stigma that all experimental films are deep and meaningful. I was scared that with another film, it would be viewed as lesser or worse than the other experimental films alongside it just because it wasn’t about deeper aspects of life. With Clouds, I look to just take all the deep and meaningful aspects of a stereotypical experimental film and turn them to the max. I don’t want this to look like I’m making fun of deep experimental films, I adore any form of film or other media that is used to show a deeper meaning. Clouds just acts as a commentary on that stereotype.