My guests today are McKinley and Mackenzie Benson, and their Oscar-qualified animated short film TWO SHIPS.

McKinley Benson is a filmmaker and alumnus of the Savannah College of Art and Design, graduating summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Film and Television. He is a director, producer, and writer responsible for dozens of narrative shorts, television pilots, and documentaries, screening at Oscar-qualifying festivals around the world and garnering three Emmy awards.

In 2017, McKinley co-founded the independent production studio Room 330, dedicated to high-quality, storyteller-driven projects. Over the course of his career, he has had the pleasure of working with companies such as Netflix, Amazon Studios, The Walt Disney Studios, Paramount, and XYZ Films.

Two Ships marks McKinley’s first animated film, which he is grateful to be producing in partnership with the Oscar-nominated production cooperative COLA Animation.

Mackenzie Benson is a photographer and alumnus of the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Photography.

She is currently working as a freelance photographer, retoucher, and color specialist. Her portfolio combines soft, ethereal tones with bold contrasts, capturing the unique character of her subjects in both color and black and white.

This sensibility extends to the visual style of Two Ships, which marks Mackenzie’s first venture into filmmaking and animation.

Ladies and gentlemen, TWO SHIPS is an intimate, slice-of-life tale following Mason and Sam - a couple madly in love but divided by space and time. Sam works a typical day job, while Mason works overnights. They live together but lead vastly separate lives, rarely crossing paths - like two ships passing in the night.

However, in their few spare moments at home, while the other partner is still sleeping, Sam and Mason manage to find ways to connect and show affection, even during their difficult circumstances. In doing so, their love seems to transcend space and time, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy.

TWO SHIPS celebrates the beauty of the mundane and chronicles the challenges of navigating an ‘opposite shift’ relationship - one that is not often depicted in cinema.

This is the type of animated short that not only wins awards, but it could very well go all the way to Oscar night.

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