UNSATISFYING from PARALLEL STUDIO on Vimeo.
You’re craving a soda and have just spent the last five minutes scouring through every pocket of your backpack and looking around on the floor for any lost nickels you can find. Finally, you manage to collect $1.25 and with exhausted joy you place the coins into the vending machine one by one. You press the magic combination that will finally quench your thirst, you see the swirl of the machine twist to release the can, and...the can gets stuck.
This horrible yet universal feeling of disappointment is ever-present in Unsatisfying, a short film by Parallel Studio. The video has no storyline, no plot, no meaning, nothing except an excellently animated compilation dedicated to capturing that feeling we all dread so. The subtle disappointment, frustration, and utter sense of futility you feel when you aren’t able to grab the teddy bear with the claw, or a file won’t finish downloading, or a nail bends as you hit it with a hammer.
Faithful to the quest of encapsulating this particular feeling, Parallel Studio is having an animation contest that is open to the public. The call is for animations of the moments that, as the studio explains, are “so painful to live and even to watch.”
Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.