From time to time, we cover side projects on the site from ad folks who like to do things with their creative skills outside of the office. I’ve written about a number of short films myself, but “The Pixel Painter,” an 8:28 documentary about Hal Lasko, a 97 year-old man who has vision problems and uses Microsoft Paint to create impressive pixelated works of art, is definitively the best short movie I’ve covered for AgencySpy. You should watch it.
Most side-job short films that make it on the site are clever but lacking any sort of gravity. “The Pixel Painter” fills plenty of gravitational force into eight and a half minutes and sets up an interesting comparison between the new and the old, specifically when it comes to the intersection of art and technology. Most of us look at MS Paint as an outdated program built during the dinosaur age of computers, but Hal Lasko has used it to create legitimate works of art. One could even say Lasko is obsessed with MS Paint, and the documentary focuses in on his passion, something viewers may not typically associate with nonagenarians.
The movie was directed by Josh Bogdan (senior copywriter at Bay Area shop Muhtayzik Hoffer) and Ryan Lasko (Hal’s grandson).
Credits after the jump.
Director: Josh Bogdan (joshbogdan.com)
Director: Ryan Lasko
Editor/Writer: Josh Bogdan
Director of Photography: Topaz Adizes (topazadizes.com)
Original Music: Jarrod Pedone
Original Music: Tyler Brown