As a media partner for 2025’s Portland Festival of Cinema, Animation & Technology, the Filmmaker Mixer Podcast extended review opportunities to the Official Selections who were made by Portland-based filmmakers.
HOW TO UNEARTH: CREATURES FROM THE DEPTH OF YOUR MIND screens during the Midnight at 8pm
Friday, August 8, 2025 8:00 PM PDT
The Empirical Theate
FOR TICKETS VISIT THIS NON-AFFILIATE LINK BELOW:
https://tickets.omsi.edu/events/01977fca-24ff-9865-2cf8-15a92a3fc40d
Dedicated to “Gingerlee, Gigi, Geeg, Gee the dog,” How to Unearth: Creatures from the Depth of Your Mind, in many ways is more than mockumentary, it could also serve as a primer for how to get out of art block. Hilariously executed with live action, animation and puppetry, this corporate-like training video for artists will serve many well for unlocking creativity and not just the floating dog head creatures living in your mind’s eye.
Darren Pasemko, directed, stars, and co-wrote this animated short with Marc Ripper. I would be surprised if these two have not been friends since grade school. The level of creativity that went into making this short just feels like it could only be executed by people who get each other on a molecular level. Which to me-is the kind of connection that one can only have with a BFF since kindergarten- okay maybe since at least 4th grade.*
What I found most surprising was how it seemed like the filmmakers were reading my mind as I watched their tutorial on how to unearth creatures from the depth of your mind. At one point, I was thinking “this is very meta” and the next thing I know -the title card for Step 7 “Make a Meta Mockumentary about Unearthing Creatures.”
At the sixish minute mark- we get the requested outro that is a narrated beautifully by DeMorge Brown. The final product is easily the corporate training video that many art-blocked artists would pay big bucks to watch, provided there was a money back guarantee.
How to Unearth: Creatures from the Depth of Your Mind is to artists the same thing that Smokey and the Bandit is to the south, according to Billy Bob Thornton: a documentary, as paraphrased from an actual documentary about Smokey and the Bandit. Though called a mockumentary by the filmmakers- it is too meta for audiences not to be inspired by its many tips!
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For more information about the filmmakers visit their youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@doodofsweetness
*I am humbled to report that the writing duo behind this short met in 2012. They did not meet in grade school. 🙂↕️