Okay, after last week’s roundup of sci-fi shorts, we decided to make this a regular thing. There are literally hundreds of decent ones out there, the trick is wading through the depths of YouTube to find them. We easily watched ten really terrible shorts to find three good ones! You’re welcome. As we dug in last week, we were wondering why there were so many flicks by CGBros  – if it were a production team, they’d be the most prolific creators of short-format VFX films in the history of film. It turns out they’re “curators” of the genre, but with a specific focus on CGI-driven visual effects pieces. We’ll focus on them in a future roundup, but we thought it would be more interesting to mix and match shorts with emphasis on live action this time around. So the key thing linking this week’s roundup is the concept of teasing. All three of these have an element of it, and two of them for a very specific reason. We’ll let the films speak for themselves from here.

Know of more work worth featuring? If so, drop your shorts in the comments.

Merv – A Post Apocalyptic Sci Fi Short

Merv likes his routine. Will a new face in the wasteland mess it up? A depiction not far removed from today’s male, to be honest. Maybe post-post apocalypse life has some hope.

Code 8

Falling a little more into the realm of the predictable (but still not downright dystropian), Code 8 has enough substance, production finesse, and reliable acting to save itself. It doesn’t hit a note of resolution at the end, but with good reason. A reason we won’t spoil ahead of time.

The Gift

The slick CGI of The Gift is a great example of how rapidly visual effects evolve. If this film were made today, it would be impossible to separate the CGI from the live action. This short was made in 2010 though, for the Phillips Cinema Parallel Lines series by RSA Films.