Filmmaker Jordan Michael Blake has participated in many shorts alongside his collective, The American Standard Film Company, that have become festival darlings. But Paradise Man (ii), which follows a literally blank-faced character who uses a hole-in-one in a game of golf as a metaphor for his own detrimental perfectionism, marks the first time that Blake finds himself presenting his own work in person at Sundance Film Festival. It’s a particularly fitting honor, as his latest short takes his trademark introspection to a whole new level and uses stock footage in a very unexpected way.

ScreenRant interviewed Blake, who shared his excitement to be part of Sundance’s dance card in the Animated Short Film Program. The director explained that, “It’s really just satisfying when you had a goal — maybe too specific a goal for the better part of my whole twenties — and to feel validated in all of the work that I did for all of those years.” He previously edited and produced the 2021 entry The Touch of the Master’s Hand, but the pandemic prevented his presence — making Paradise Man (ii)‘s inclusion all the more special.

While Paradise Man (ii) is technically an animated short, the unique reliance on gifs of blank-faced stock footage characters makes it stand out from its peers while serving as emphasis for the movie’s themes about idenтιтy. Throughout the interview, Blake was charmingly self-effacing about his animation abilities (or lack thereof), but his creative workaround foreshadows what is sure to be a fruitful career in storytelling.

Paradise Man (ii) Derived From A Long Day’s Journey Into Golf

“Golf became the metaphor for how perfectionist I had become.”

ScreenRant: I read that Paradise Man (ii) originated on a cross-country road trip that you took. Can you expand on that? How did you go from that trip to the opening scene’s golf musings?

Jordan Michael Blake: That’s a good question. Basically during the pandemic, I bought a truck, and I started driving all around basically because I was sad. I felt like it was a good time for me to be alone, and by driving around in the truck instead of sitting in my apartment, I was choosing to be alone in nature.

I was just going through a lot of personal trauma and trying to figure out how to be a person again, and I think the central question of how to be a person again was how to find love in movies again. Golf became the metaphor for how perfectionist I had become about making my own movies, to the point that I wasn’t having any fun anymore. It was making the movies less good because I wasn’t having fun with it.

ScreenRant: Speaking of perfectionism in golf, have you ever made a hole-in-one?

Jordan Michael Blake: No, I haven’t. I met my best friend from middle school at golf camp, and he still likes golf a lot, so it’s a nod towards him.

It’s a very direct metaphor where there’s one thing that you’re supposed to do, and it’s so impossible to do, which I thought was fertile ground for exploring. It’s about trying to reach a goal that is unreasonable.

Paradise Man (ii) Marks An Animation Evolution For Jordan Michael Blake

“I wanted to make a movie about somebody whose idenтιтy was blank.”

ScreenRant: I really loved how Paradise Man and Paradise Mom are blank-faced stock personas with no defining characteristics, and I noticed that that was also the character for the Delta Airline Safety Video. What draws you to that portrayal?

Jordan Michael Blake: The Delta video was just tossed off when I was doing this fake film festival called the Taco Bell Film Festival. We had a fake sponsor, which was Delta Airlines, and nobody had made any movie about Delta when we had all these movies about Taco Bell. So, I made that as an intro for the festival; a fake presenting sponsor video.

After I finished that, I realized that there are tons of gifs of that blank-faced guy on the internet that you can license off of stock image websites. In Delta, he’s just a picture, but when I saw that there were actual gifs, I was like, “Maybe I can actually tell a completely unique story through those gifs.” My wheels started turning on that.

ScreenRant: How do you go from stock footage and gifs to the full short film?

Jordan Michael Blake: I created a template that the movie exists inside with the hypnotic grain and color treatment, so it looks like an old newspaper. That way, when I take the stock image and drop it in there, it immediately has some life to it.

I knew the story that I wanted to tell, so I would just hunt thousands of stock animations to find little things that I could turn into the beats that I wanted, just basically zooming those stock images in and out to create the effect of camera movement that tells stories through film grammar.

ScreenRant: I found it interesting that the healthcare workers were individualized characters. Why are they distinct from Paradise Man and Paradise Mom?

Jordan Michael Blake: That’s a really good question. The bad answer is that without them looking like hospital workers, then you wouldn’t know that they were. It’s just very quick and easy.

But I think that it also reflects that we are inside of this guy’s internal space, so he’s not seeing his own idenтιтy. He’s so linked with his mom that he’s not really seeing her idenтιтy either. He sees her wheelchair, as that’s not really part of what they share together, and he sees her hospital gown, but I wanted to make a movie about somebody whose idenтιтy was blank. That was what was exciting about that character to start with.

Paradise Man (ii) Could Evolve Into A Series – Or Even A Feature Film – After Sundance

“If I could break through and figure out how to do that, I’d be really excited.”

ScreenRant: We open on episode 1 and at the end, there is a little “next week” section, which was hilarious. When is next week, though? Are we going to get Paradise Man (iii) and (iv)?

Jordan Michael Blake: I find that the next week always follows this week. [Laughs] I would love to make more of these things, so we’ll see what happens. If I did get to make more, it would be the same thing where I pick a silly subject like golf or something inane, and then I try to delve as deep into it as possible to find what comes out of it when I squeeze it that hard.

ScreenRant: You’ve been working on shorts for a while now. What do you find has been the biggest evolution for you in your filmmaking, or the biggest challenge that you’ve faced thus far?

Jordan Michael Blake: Oh, that’s a very good question. I think I started out making live-action movies from when I was 10 onwards. I’ve always loved animation, but I just don’t know how to draw. During the pandemic, I started working with this crew called Racer Trash, and we would re-edit feature films into basically Vaporwave versions of themselves, and that was probably my biggest evolution; just realizing how fun it can be to repurpose something that already exists, and also how much you can still tell your own story through that.

But I think maybe, actually, the truer answer is that I used to feel like I needed to make movies about the things that I was confused about. I still do that, but now, especially with this film, I am making movies about things that I was confused about and now have some understanding about. I think that’s nice. The movie gives some kind of an answer, and it might not be the right answer, but it gives something. As opposed to just being like, “Isn’t all this s–t totally crazy?”

ScreenRant: I was going through the American Standard Film Company site and looking at the shorts there. What is it like being part of that collective, and how does it work?

Jordan Michael Blake: God, it’s the best. Yeah. I’ve been making movies with these friends since I was in some cases 19 years old, so it’s the greatest thing ever. You hear everybody’s voice in your head with every choice that you make, and I think it makes the movie better.

You have had such a long working relationship that you know when you do something, that so-and-so’s going to think that idea is stupid. Or you know that this friend will laugh at this joke, and we help each other in so many ways.

But the most important thing a lot of the time for me is just being around their creativity for 10 years. It shapes my taste, basically.

ScreenRant: Are you looking to expand on projects and make a full-length film, or do you have a particular affinity for shorts?

Jordan Michael Blake: We’ve made a lot of shorts. [Laughs] Yeah, we’d love to make a feature. This project is definitely set up in a nice way to be a series, but my secret is really that I would be so excited if I got to make a feature version of this movie, and it was somehow still engaging enough for that amount of time. If I could break through and figure out how to do that, I’d be really excited.

And I’m working on that right now, so I have a lot of ideas. It would probably involve developing the animation style quite a bit.