The Story of the Umlaut

Thank-you.

Whoa. Déjà vu.

multiple personalities. my word. what a groundbreaking screenplay.

Callous, insensitive, and ignorant to post this 3 days after a school shooting.

You should be ashamed.

Too much foreshadowing - I knew exactly what was going to happen before I even saw 30 seconds

That was about 9:59 too long.

Predictable, corny, and circumstantially inappropriate.

ted, cindy: you're right. I didn't think about the NIU shootings when I posted this, but I should have. I'm sorry.

i don't think it was insensitive, john. insensitive would be posting this and writing a connection between it and the shootings from the other day. you can't go around walking on egg shells, yunno. of course, my mom was murdered by my step-dad, who then killed himself, so i'm a little emotionally dry these days. but nonetheless, it was a great little short film and i quite enjoyed it! i didn't find it as predictable as others, of course, thinking back there was a lot of foreshadowing, what with all the mental-hospital flashbacks. oh well. good post!

Let's be generous and say each of the 6 deceased in the NIU shooting had 100 close friends and relatives who are devastated by their deaths. Then, oh, let's say 1,000 people from the NIU campus are freshly traumatized by the incident. That makes about 1,600 people who can legitimately claim that this post made them feel bad.

Now, let's try to imagine how many people in the world are freshly affected by deadly car accidents at any given time. 1 million? 2? Does that mean there's even greater impetus to never post anything related to car crashes, or even cars? Of course not.

Let's keep things in perspective here. Lots of different subjects may be unpleasant for lots of people. Most of the time, most people may shudder a little and move on (like I do with any insect-related posts on Neatorama), particularly when there is no media hype surrounding their particular grievance.

That was very well acted. Hope it goes into a film award competition.
Liked the twist at the end too.

Sorry if I was harsh on you, John. It's just really bad timing.

I agree that we can't simply put on the blinkers when it comes to tragedies, but poor timing is just rubbing salt in the wound.

Otherwise, the film itself was okay - not exactly an oscar-winner and a little predictable, but the production values were excellent.

I wasn't personally offended by the film at all, and I understand that it was completely coincidental that it was posted right after the shootings.

Walking on eggshells isn't at all necessary, but given what's happened, I think people are bound to feel some grief when seeing things that remind them of the tragedy. I'm also sorry if I came off harsh. As long as people have reverence for the seriousness of what happened and what most likely will happen in the future, I've got no qualms with films like this, other than personal taste.

I was mostly addressing what I thought of the film. Well made, but awkward and predictable writing, in my opinion. John has every right to post a video like this at any point in time, just like how I have the right to express opinion.

That's all.

@Perceive

"That makes about 1,600 people who can legitimately claim that this post made them feel bad."

I'd forgotten that there were so few people with empathy and compassion in this world. Thank you for reminding me that we're only allowed to feel something if it directly affects us.

If you're not involved in this shooting, and yet a post of a short film that tangentially relates to it upset you so much that the only recourse is to have it censored, what you have isn't empathy, it's hysteria.

And if you think your feelings for strangers somehow entitles you to condemn a perfectly innocent blog post, that's not compassion, that's ego-mania.

So if John waited 5 days would it still insensitive? 10 days? 3 months? I'm curious as to what you think constitutes enough time to make posting this ok. Personally I'm ok with it being posted whenever.

Yeah, the shootings. Lets stop posting anything to do with violence because a school got shot up in the US. Lets completely disregard the hundreds of people dying daily due to violence in Africa and the Middle East. When a school gets shot up in the US everything must stop!!!

You didn't mean any harm, John, and you apologized if this offended anyone. We're all human so don't beat yourself up about it.
You seem like a very sweet and thoughtful person to me.
I give you two thumbs up. :)

Just watched the excellent show "Before the Dinosaurs" on Discovery and was reminded of this thread. Because it's important to remember we are part of this chain of life that began with a severe amount of violence. It reminded me that we are pretty far removed from what we once were, and getting to the zero point is probably a pipe dream. We're always going to have violence and individuals acting out. I love the film because it examines this lingering aspect of our species, and any knee-jerk reaction to the timing of the posting is improper, since something else is bound to happen soon enough.

Sometimes I skip over a Neatorama post if it looks like something that isn't Neat-to-me. I advise similar strategy.

Like Ted and Cindy, I also feel that completely synthetic representations of reality, such as a short film, are completely detrimental to society. Whenever such a film corresponds to an actual event to even a slight degree, I feel compelled to let everyone know that it made me feel bad. Because I am a real person with empathy and emotions please do not ever post things that have even a small bit to do with reality, and in the future please try and keep everything nice and satisfying and happy.

Thank you kindly.

Hysteria, censorship, knee-jerk reaction.

Wow, go ahead and crucify us for our opinions. But you really should have read my (and Cindy's) other comments before you posted.

The film wasn't offensive - I thought it was a little lame. The timing of posting it was poor.

Wow, it was a good short film. And I don't think is completly detrimental. If you can think out of the box beyond the man was only crazy, you can tell more than just two brother, a guy who felt lonely and like many people in the word feel, and other who want to save his brother from doing something crazy. Well that it was I think.

Saludos

This blog is readed by people in every countries.

If you avoid a theme for a dead related to this teme in some place of the world you´ll never post anything.

I had to google niu shootings to heard about them.

Wow... I've just discovered this site searching for my film online. How on earth it ended up here I'll never know... I made the film 'Acid Rain' a few years ago now, when the now overly explored theme was more fresh. Interesting to read all your comments. All the best...MM.