Ffresh Talent

I've just answered some questions for Ffresh Festival - the student moving image festival of Wales. We won the Best Animation award at Ffresh last year for We Weren't The First Ones Here and they recently did a lovely write up of the Animation Newport 2011 graduation show here.

I wrote a bit about my work and the animation course at Newport for a profile on their Ffresh Talent page. Check out the profile here.

Švankmajer at the Barbican

I went, very briefly, to London last week to see a veritable hero of mine, Czech film legend Jan Švankmajer. The Barbican held a screening of Švankmajer's first, and perhaps most widely known, feature film Alice followed by a detailed question and answer session hosted by writer Peter Hames. The digitally restored version of Alice was a joy to see on the big screen and was all the more enjoyable when surrounded by an audience of obvious fans of the director.

Alice (1988) Dir. Jan Švankmajer. © First Run Features

Alice has always been a film close to my heart for various reasons. I saw the film at a fairly early age and I remember it having a profound effect on me. I had never seen anything like it, either visually or aurally or as a total filmic experience. On first viewing as a youngster I'm not sure I particularly liked the brutal, visceral world presented, or understood the subtleties of Švankmajer's vision, nonetheless I never forgot the images or the experience of watching the film. One thing I did take away was a seed of motivation; this notion of 'I could do that'; not in an arrogant sense but in the same way that Quentin Blake's lively illustrations are not intimidating to children as they have a familiar purposeful and excited approach. Alice was filmmaking on a more suggestive and non-literal level, a hand-made feel, rough around the edges and yet full of spirit and energy. On watching the film again recently after countless other viewings it struck me just how humorous it is; from the abrupt close-up dialogue of the main character to the movement and physicality of the supporting puppets, the whole film has a real whimsy to it.

The man himself on stage with Peter Hames and translator

Seeing Švankmajer talk in person was brilliant. He was everything you could have wanted him to be; understated, reserved yet animated when talking passionately about his themes and ideals, respectfully casting aside any intellectual allusions often read into his work. He spoke about the restrictions of making films in Czechoslovakia in the eighties, about how the claustrophobic visual style of Alice came about through circumstances and constraints as opposed to any major artistic vision. When he made Alice the Czech authorities ran all of the film studios in the country and none of them were interested in making this film with him. The money to get the project made came from all over; Switzerland, Germany and the UK in the form of Channel 4. The whole thing was made on the sly, behind closed doors in Švankmajer's studio which was an old bake house in Prague.

I was particularly interested to hear about his motivations as a filmmaker and what kept him still making work, what he felt his films were about and why he had a desire to tell these stories and make these statements. He talked about how freedom was the only issue worth still making art about and I remembered a statement I'd read recently in an interview with Peter Greenaway, another director I really admire, in this interview for the Guardian. He spoke about how sex and death were the only things left for him to make work about; the very beginning and the very end. I find it fascinating to hear what continues to motivate filmmakers who have been making work over several decades. Švankmajer made a poignant statement when asked why his work still focuses on the regimes that dominated Czechoslovakia during his time. He said communism and fascism were abscesses on human society and the atrocities committed up until the Velvet Revolution were so terrible that he had to continue making work about these subjects.

A bit of a fuss driving through rush hour traffic in London but worthwhile for an inspiring evening. Check out the other events in the season on the barbican site.

Drawings

Words and Pictures

...and a comic

Exhibition and US screening

Transformation and Revelation Exhibition- Bute Theatre.
Photo: Kirsten McTernan via T&R page

A couple of weeks ago I went to Cardiff to see a massive theatre design exhibition called Transformation & Revelation. Held at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff, the show was a huge amalgamation of work from theatre designers all over the country. On display were costume drawings, set designs, models and artefacts and it proved to be a very inspiring afternoon as I was modelmaking for my graduation film at the time. My good friend Chris Gylee had work on display in the exhibition, here's a picture of his design process as a storyboard. Fun stuff.

Chris Gylee explains his design process through design

Two of my films are being screened at the brand-new NW Animation Festival in Portland, Oregon, USA. The festival is run by animator Sven Bonnichsen and takes place at 5th Avenue Cinema in early June. Sven had come across my work at Stop Motion Montreal festival in Canada and had contacted me to tell me about NW. This is an exciting festival to be a part of as it's in a really great place. Coraline creators Laika are based here and it's up the road from California where other great American animators like Jamie Caliri are working. The films I have showing are The Scientist and The Omnipotence of Dream (2008) and We Weren't The First Ones Here (2010). If you are American, or indeed live in the states, you might consider going along!

Also, Fairground, a theatre company in Bristol I have done a lot of work with have a lovely new website. Check it out here.

Flowers

Don't forget the mothers!

Twins

The siamese twins of the Green Meadows Circuis, Ohio, USA

Tim Allen visit

The prolific animator Tim Allen recently visited Newport to do film surgery sessions and a talk. Tim's credits are as varied as they are extensive, from Disney's The Lion King to Tim Burton's Corpse Bride. He works predominantly in stop-motion and has worked on all sorts from commercials to series and features, most recently as a character animator on Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr Fox.

Tim Allen inspecting a puppet with 3rd year stop-motion students at Newport

Tim joined us for a morning seminar where he went talked through our graduation films and gave excellent feedback on character performance, timing and readability of the images which was really useful at this stage. He had a great approach and genuinely seemed to care about the work and gave a really effective commentary on the films.

Tim discussing LAV (live-action video) with Tim and Merlin Crossingham on screen acting out goats for 'Creature Comforts USA' by Aardman

Later in the day he did a talk to a packed-out auditorium in the new city centre campus in Newport which included talking through various projects in detail; the practicalities of animating, the differences between shorts and features, problem solving, acting and performance. A really inspiring day with a brilliant animator and all round nice guy!

For information and visuals on my graduation film, see the blog here...
www.themanwhowasafraidoffalling.com

Newport Art Gallery Exhibition

We Weren't The First Ones Here was selected to be screened in a 7 week long exhibition of Newport Animation at the Newport Art Gallery. This exhibition marks the arrival of the new city centre campus and the return of the Film School to central Newport. The article below talks about our involvement in the exhibition and our Ffresh win.

Article and photo: South Wales Argus, Wednesday 2nd March 2011

Read the article online here

Buildings

Architecture of the mind: drawings made whilst in a department meeting

Biro, Newport, Feb 2011

Feeling Ffresh

At the closing ceremony for Ffresh Festival in Wales, we won the award for best animation with our collaborative film We Weren't The First Ones Here. The film was made in eight weeks during a project in our second year at Newport Film School. To our surprise we beat graduation film competition but luckily no one lost out; my friend Luiz Lafayette Stockler won the best animation Royal Television Society award and my other friend Ben Cady won best film of the festival.
Big thanks to everyone involved in making the film, the composer Jack Vaughan, the actors Catherine McKinnon, Adam Peck, Edith Woolley and thanks to Ffresh as well as Tom Brown and Dan Gray from Holbrooks who judged the award.
We Weren't The First One's Here can now be viewed on my website here.

Ffresh Animation Winners (from left): Helen Dallat, Kate Braodhurst, Emma-Rose Dade, Joseph Wallace, Ben Cady and Luiz Lafayette Stockler