When I saw Henry Jacob's film "Click Marker Hypothesis" at the San Francisco International Film Festival, I was impressed by the quality of his productions as well his intelligent expression of why people are attracted to one another. I have had an opportunity to see some of his other films, and they cover a wide range: comedy, drama, animation, music videos, intellectual puns; and short, efficient films. I was also impressed with a film he did about a troubled student who no one takes seriously and blows up his high school.

He also has other interests - he couldn't decide whether to1) study math or film or 2) to attend NYU or USC film school. He decided to study film and attend NYU.

We've already introduced Henry to Phil Van who is in the Graduate Filmmaking Program at USC. Phil is helping Henry on his current film, “How to Kill a Muse.” Hopefully the two will collaborate on films while they both attend NYU.

The Record:
Tin Foil Men – USA, 1998, VHS, 30 sec.
3pm – USA, 1999, mini-DV, color, 3min.
Street Furniture – USA, 1999, mini-DV, 3min.
Plastic Army Men vs. The Giant Red Gummy Bears that Do Nothing (except throw jelly beans)- USA, 2000, mini-DV, 1min.
11 – USA, 2000, mini-DV, 3min.
Bridge Shuffle, 2001, mini-DV, 3min.
Untitled – USA, 2001, mini-DV, 3min.
Carrot on a String – USA, 2001, mini-DV, 3min.
Click Marker Hypothesis – USA, 2002, mini-DV, 10min
Deadalus – USA, 2002, mini-DV, 3min.
Cold Coffee – USA, 2002, mini-DV, 13min.
Homecoming in 180 Seconds – USA, 2002, mini-DV, 3min.
The Spark – USA, 2003, mini-DV, 15min.
Students of Palo Alto – USA, 2004, mini-DV, 13min.
Adventures of Spot – USA, 2004, min-DV, 90sec.
Frontier Psychiatrist – USA, 2004, mini-DV, 4min.

View Films (requires Quick Time player)
The Adventures of Spot - A simple, playful animation demonstrating what you can do with a limited set of tools and a lot of creativity and humor.

Frontier Psychiatrist - A music video.(Warning - a 24mb file requires broadband.)

View Scripts
How to kill a muse (pdf) (html)

Henry Jacobs - Off to NYU Film School

Henry with one of his experiments.

Statement
My first video camera was given to me during eighth grade. I used it to make several short segments that shall never see the light of day. One of the first movies I did involved hitting tin foil men with a hammer and other forms of foil men torture. Hence the name of my production “company” is Tin Foil Men Productions.

Fortunately my style eventually grew more sophisticated as the result of two things. A quality high school education, and the digital revolution. I got my digital camera in 9th grade allowing me to do insanely complicated things such as not using all the footage that I shoot. Since 8th grade I’ve probably written somewhere around 15 scripts, and made approximately 10 movies (not counting the many more that I’ve simply served as a technical advisor/editor).

If anybody know who I am before reading this, it’s probably because of one of two things. The Gunndance Film Festival is something created way back in 2002. It’s been an annual event ever since, and the next showing will be on May 11th and 12th, so mark your calendars. I also did a short movie last year called Carrot on a String that got into the Cinequest Film Festival. It got more press than I expected, largely because a minor made it, and apparently minors aren’t invited to enter Cinequest.

I’d invite you to read my scripts and add some comments. Frankly my parents are really bad at giving useful feedback (I’m not going to change the plot).

Film Descriptions
Homecoming in180 Seconds, was done in 2003 during my Junior year at Gunn High School. I was appointed by the student executive council to be the videographer for that year. Homecoming at Gunn High School is a very big deal. All the classes compete at brunch and lunch. And just in case the Senior’s don’t hate the Juniors enough, a scoreboard is posted to raise the tension. Unfortunately raw video of this event is pretty boring, so why not use some wacky editing. For those film-buffs out there, you might have recognized this video as a rip-off of the trailer for Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange”. (Did I say “rip-off”? I meant to say “homage”.)

The Adventures of Spot was done in March 2004 alongside the help of David Taylor. David and I have worked together before in animation. Our first one was called “The Adventures of Hiro”. Both of these were done with little more than pencils paper, watercolor and a scanner. I’d hesitate to elaborate much more on this movie, because I think if your going to sacrifice any time on a download, this is the way to go, and I don’t want some boring summary discouraging you from doing so. I hope the highbrow humor in this intellectual opus serves you well.

Frontier Psychiatrist was made in May 2004 with Jon Baugh and Dan Wohl. With the possible exception of “The Spark” (which is too long to post), “Frontier Psychiatrist” is the movie that gets the most outspoken approval. It’s simply a music video for the hit song by “Avalanche”. Most of the imagery is intended to convey a feeling of insanity and is inspired in some way by the lyrics. I basically wrote the script as a list of segments of the lyrics, and than tried to schizophrenically relate each segment to an image. I wouldn’t know, but apparently it feels like LSD (P.S. don’t do drugs). I’d like to boast that virtually the entire movie was shot in a day.

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