Eye-opening alternatives: 9 great short films crafted by Bay Area filmmakers – SF Chronicle Datebook

The short film “Man’s Best Friend” is a strange dark comedy about a man who loves his dog just a little too much. Photo: Timothy Plain Short films are how many great filmmakers get their start in Hollywood, and yet they are often curiously hard to find. A few streaming services, like the new indie-focused IVOX+, put short films front and center with the rest of their offerings, but in general interested viewers have to dig deep to find the good ones online. To help with your search, here are works from nine filmmakers from or associated with the Bay Area currently available to stream: ‘Writer’s Block’ (2016) Before you can make a movie, there has to be a script. Writing it is much tougher than you think. Hayward native Tim Morrill takes on illustrating that challenge in “Writer’s Block.” The film revolves around a struggling writer (Vincent Gabrielson) struggling to meet a deadline from a cinema-minded gangster who wants a new film in the vein of “Battlestar Galactica” meets “Juice” by the morning. Unfortunately, he’s plagued by writer’s block and a bro-tastic, hard-partying, half-naked roommate (Aaron Bollwinkel) until he’s reduced to writing ideas in the bathroom with shaving cream…
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