MartinHafer "In a Heartbeat" is a very unusual film. Two students from the Ringling College of Arts and Design, Esteban Bravo and Beth David, made this animated short as their final graduation project. That in and of itself is not unusual. However, when the short was released on YouTube, it received 20,000,000 hits in the first five days!! To this date, over 34,000,000 have watched the film. So, considering how popular the film was, as well as the quality of the project, it's odd that it was not nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the Oscar for Best Animated Short. In fact, it wasn't even included as one of the commended films when the animated shorts were shown in the weeks preceding the Oscars. I have no idea why it wasn't chosen...especially in light of how incredibly mediocre the actual nominees were.The story itself is very simple and is told without words. A gay young man (I am guessing about Middle School age) is smitten with a classmate. To illustrate this, Bravo and David used a heart...a literal heart...to show the boy's intense feelings. And, like most intense feelings from teens, he's unable to control the heart...and it literally bursts from the boy's chest and begins chasing after the other boy. What's next? See the film.The bottom line is that this film has spoken to a lot of people and it's very well made...so well made that I am anxious to see more from these bright young graduates.

Irishchatter When I saw this up on Youtube, I honestly thought it was from Pixar because of how it looked and how it behaved towards me as a viewer! I thought the animation was well done and yes I was teary when both boys were holding onto the heart while it was cracking. It just reminds of a broken heart you experienced when you were once in a relationship. Literally, you are lucky if you haven't experienced it yet lol! Anyways this little movie was such a great idea to make. There really isn't enough animated movies that haven't touched on gay relationships. Normally its always the story about the girl and the guy wanting to be together. However I would like to see Beth and Esteban be employed with Pixar so that they make a difference in showing off gay romance in all kids cartoon movies. The film industry needs a serious upgrading like!Well done Beth and Esteban for making this come true and congrats on graduating recently! :)

robinsonaustin-07490 Darn it, internet, why are you always doing this to me? So, I had seen :iconPowerpuffpony1: talk about this short animation, so I decided to watch it myself. About 3 or 4 times to say the least. In a Heartbeat is about a middle school named Sherwin. Sherwin crushes after another middle school boy named Jonathan. I mean, the dude can twirl an apple on his finger for goodness sake. I can totally see why Sherwin developed a huge crush on him. However, he's afraid of revealing his feelings for Jonathon as he feared the possible shaming from the other students, or even worse, Jonathan may not reciprocate his feelings. To make matters worse, his heart leaps out of his chest; no really, it leaps out of his chest, and it goes after Jonathan.So after seeing the short animation, what did I think about it? I completely loved it. Sherwin is simply adorable; he's nervous about his feelings for Jonathan, and he cutely hides whenever he's near him, though some of that can be easily interpreted as stalking. I just really, really found Sherwin a likable character so much so, that I wanted him to succeed. i swear when Sherwin got exposed and his heart was torn in part I was close to tears. I was like "no, this was going swimmingly so far, please don't let this happen!" Or whenever Sherwin and Jonathan were close to lip level, I was practically screaming "kiss him, darn it, kiss him!" Though of course I was screaming internally. Jonathan's heart was also pretty adorable as well, though with him panting like a dog when they were close to Jonathan....yeah, that was a little creepy. As for Jonathan himself, he's fine. I do like how he does reciprocate Sherwin's feelings especially when it seemed as though he was going to reject Sherwin's feelings. However, there isn't really much I can say about Jonathan as he doesn't really have as much character to him as Sherwin does.The animation was beautiful. It boded well with the cutesy feel of the video. For one, the use of lightness and darkness. The light represents danger whereas the dark represents security. In the scene where Sherwin gets outed is in the middle school; immediately, his classmates start to whisper in a sinister tone. And in the shade of the tree, Jonathon and Sherwin began to bond as their hearts symbolically merge into one. I would even say that this animation can rival the likes of Pixar. In addition, there isn't any dialogue in the film. Despite this, you can tell what each character is thinking through their facial expressions. From the first time you see Sherwin smiling longingly at Jonathan from the tree, you can tell right away that he has a crush on him. Or when the two boys are finally in the school building; Sherwin looks at the others in dejection and fear at how they would perceive him, thus causing him to do the drastic and rip his heart in half to escape. Jonathan himself looks at him and the other students in confusion as to what had just transpired, but he also slowly begins to figure it out, and goes to console Sherwin.As much as I loved this animation, one issue that I had with the film is pretty minor, but I consider it bothersome. It's the whole love at first sight trope. Realistically speaking, that kind of affection wouldn't happen, and it gives off the bad impression that anyone could become a couple regardless of whether or not you know enough about the person. But it's a minor nitpick; overall, I absolutely adored In a Heartbeat; it was adorable, the characters are so cute that it makes you want to see them together, the message isn't shoved down your throat, and it uses its animation and facial expressions to convey its story to the watcher. I highly recommend this short animation, not necessarily if you are gay or whatever, but if you're an animation lover.

Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "In a Heartbeat" is a very new (2017) animated short film and the first filmmaking credit for writers and directors Bravo and David. If I see it correctly, this managed almost 3 million views on a single day after its upload on Youtube. It shows though that you don't need to excel on a high level in order to get famous. It probably also helps that no dialogue is in here, so no matter which languages you (don't) speak, you can watch and understand it. The story may seem sweet with a school boy falling in love with his school mate and being scared of how everybody may find out about the crush. Now, I am not even sure if the filmmakers wanted to emphasize homosexuality in here because the situation may have been equally embarrassing for him had his love interest been a girl, but yeah lets just say depicting the other kids subtly as homophobes is not hurting the film's popularity. Sadly it is messages like these about teenagers allegedly growing up as homophobes that really fuel the last remaining bits of homophobia in our utterly tolerant society. I would not even say the filmmakers are necessarily to blame for it as I am not sure to which extent they foresaw the way people would perceive certain moments here. The happy end feels forced to me and not entirely realistic, more on the gooey, for-the-sake-of-it side, but that's just subjective thinking. I found it a fairly kitschy film overall, also with the graphic depiction of the heart and how it broke. Not convinced by anything except the visual side. I am sure this will not stay the only filmmaking credit by the duo who made this and here's hoping they can step things up a bit in the story-telling department. They made a smart decision here because homosexuality in animation is almost non-existent until now and it got many curious about this really short film, but it is nothing more than an extremely fragile foundation for a long career in the industry. Not recommended.