Embers & Dust

Little kids imaginations often go far and beyond reality. They are able to create worlds that cease to exist in our lifetime and their world building surpasses that of which an adult is able to handle logically. What “Embers & Dust” does, is remind us what it was like to be a little kid and run wild with our imaginations. It’s clever in using a well known event, that being Orson Welles psyching out the entire nation with a radio broadcast of H.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds”, and running wild with it by setting the story around a family during that time period of the broadcast. The short film at times has fun with tricking us into believing one story over the other and it’s just a fun adventure throughout the entire piece.

I love – let me repeat that again – LOVE, how this uses the famous radio broadcast as a centerpiece that really moves the story forward. It adds a whole new originality to the overall piece and makes it really stick out and worth watching. What happens is the main character, the kid, goes out into the woods to explore while his parents are at home listening to the broadcast. The kid encounters something in the woods that would either have people running away right from the get-go or being stuck in place in awe at how beautiful and visceral the encounter can be. That’s all I’m going to say about the narrative because it’s wonderful how transfixed we get into the story and our mind wanders. The whole thing is an allegory for imagination and it’s spectacular.

This is shot in a way that really draws the audience in. The images it puts forth really sets the tone and the atmosphere of the 1930’s when the broadcast had happened. From the production design, to the lighting, and to the setting, these little details grabbed my attention and I was hooked from the beginning to the end.

What I love the most about this short film is how the filmmakers include a creature that’s a different take than what we’ve seen before regarding H.G. Wells’ story. The detail and the design of the creature is pretty layered and there’s a sense of wonderment as we witness the boy and it interact; kind of. It looks real for the most part and the camerawork really does compliment it in a way that brings it to life, physically.

I am recommending this based off of the fact I got lost in the story and couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. The ending ends on a really great note that brought me back to reality and really made me wish being a kid. To this day I miss how crazy the imagination could be and essentially the sky was the limit. This short film is creative and it’s fun. I can’t appreciate the originality of it enough and how it captures what it was like to be a kid and imagine things as well as being a parent and hearing the broadcast causing paranoia and possible hysteria. I. Loved. This.