Everything Went Down

Michael is a tortured Irishman living with his wife Emma in America. Perpetually down on his luck, he has projected his life’s misfortune onto a stranger, a man who changed his life in a tragic incident nearly thirty years earlier. A shadowy figure he saw for only a fleeting moment. But tonight, through a chance encounter, he believes he’s found the man who ruined his life. And he’s going to make him pay. But does he have the right man?

Using rotoscope animation and the stylized aesthetic of classical airline safety brochures, the short film “Jet Lag” adapts Christopher Schaberg’s acclaimed nonfiction book "Airportness: The Nature of Flight" for the screen. Using the seemingly simple concept of ‘waiting in an airport’, the film explodes notions of not just modern air travel, but everyday life – how we struggle to get along with one another, manage our time, and use the space around us to maximum efficiency. Employing a tongue-in-cheek, almost stream-of-consciousness narration, the film playfully communicates the shifting complex emotions, anxieties, frustrations, and excitement that coincide with air travel. The tedium of waiting, the confusion of boarding, the nervousness of departure, the euphoria and relief of arrival. Beginnings and endings. At the airport.