There’s a delightful short film that’s now available for public viewing, and it features a balloon detective solving crime in a city where helium is the drug of choice.
The short is a noir tale that uses live-action backgrounds with hand-drawn animation of the aforementioned balloon people. Loontown is also touted by its creators as “the Citizen Kane of Balloon Noir Films!” And if the trailer is any indication, I’ll give it to them.
Here’s the synopsis:
When someone pops Mordy the Mouth, balloon detective Muldoon runs into hoppers and gasbags—not to mention one sexy red balloon!—as he tries to solve the mystery of missing helium in Loontown.
The eighteen-minute film comes from a script by Lavie Tidhar, whose previous works include the World Fantasy Award-winning Osama, The Violent Century, Central Station, and By Force Alone. It’s directed by Nir Yaniv and features the voice talent of Digger Mesch as Lt. Muldoon, Anne Wittman as Red, Kenneth Jay as Big, Fred and Goon 1, Nathan Osgood as Flynn, Bill and Goon 2, Russell Wilcox as Tony Bouncy Ball and The Professor, AL Lubel as Mordechai the Mouth, and Katie Snyder as Scarlet and Dispatch.
You can learn more, including seeing the short yourself by going to the link here.