By Jeanne Tan / 21-10-2010

The world's smallest and shortest film - lasting one second - can be viewed not only on youtube (or in the link below) but on a lenticular stamp created for the Dutch post.

The stamp is a unique collaboration between advertising agency KesselsKramer, director Anton Corbijn and Dutch actress Carice van Houten. It features Van Houten pictured in front of a typical Dutch windmill on a polder landscape, the scene of which is a nod to a Dutch children's stamp from 1951. Depending on the angle from which the stamp is viewed, an animation appears where Van Houten bites down on a man's middle finger.

The stamp is made using lenticular printing, whereby a series of sequential images are superimposed enabling the picture to seemingly transform by changing the angle from which it is viewed. "A postage stamp offers a very small surface area to work with, therefore it's even more challenging to be creative with that surface. Simultaneously we wanted to optimize the technical possibilities that the medium of a postage stamp offers," says Pieter Leendertse from KesselsKramer. Corbijn shot 120 frames of film of which 30 are used: the finger biting was a playful, spontaneous interaction that made it to the final cut.

And whose finger is it you might be asking? None other than of Corbijn himself.

The film was launched at the recent Dutch film festival in Utrecht.
TNT have produced the stamps in an edition of 350,000.

Click on the images to enlarge

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