2025 Student Academy Award Winners Series Part 4: The 12 Inch Pianist

The 12 Inch Pianist, dir. Lucas Ansel

Lucas Ansel's short film is centered around a classic joke involving a bar, a genie with a hearing problem, and a miniature pianist. Ansel, a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, created this as his senior film, drawing inspiration from Simon Rich's short story "Guy Walks Into a Bar," published in The New Yorker in 2013. Rich took the well-worn and somewhat crude gag and extended it into the world just beyond the titular punchline, and explores these characters' histories, insecurities, and emotions. Ansel's film wonderfully adapts that story to the screen, retaining the humor of the phallic joke while carrying over the pathos of the short story, all within an incredibly well-realized and animated environment.

The short opens with a top-down camera tilt before pushing through to the front of the bar, then whip-panning to the pianist in the corner. The focus shifts and pulls mimic live-action camerawork while highlighting the multiple layers of detail in the set. Stop-motion characters seamlessly integrate with the 3D-modeled environment, making the line between the two media nearly indistinguishable. The way in which the camera navigates the bar makes it feel like a live-action set rather than a diorama. And with the ambient sounds and Foley artistry of bottles clinking, muffled barroom chatter, the result is both immersive and cinematic.

Narratively, the film builds to the expected punchline, but what follows in its wake is where the film subverts those expectations. A long, pregnant pause turns the joke from an ending into a beginning. In that silence, we imagine what these characters might actually be thinking. The bartender's bravado slips, the pianist's existence gains a fragile weight, and the story pivots toward themes of self-acceptance and empathy. It remains cleverly funny, but it also carries a certain heartfelt honesty.

Ansel's direction demonstrates great strength in adaptation, staying close to the source material while also making strong directorial choices in the transition to screen. The long, pregnant pause after the bartender's punchline is one such choice, giving the film room to breathe and drawing attention to its thematic potential. Even the closing credits are handled with exceptional creativity. Rather than a standard text crawl, they unfold within the barroom environment itself, animated with the same care as the rest of the film, panning across bulletin boards and picture frames that highlight the talented crew. That extra effort and care speak to a creative voice with immense passion for the medium and the craft to match.

Review by: Kevin Ward