Finally getting round to writing up my BAF (Bradford Animation Festival) experience!
I only got to go for 2 days, thanks to stupid cancelled trains, but I still saw loads of great things.
My first day was Thursday where I went straight into a Student Film's screening, highlights being Buy Buy Baby, a 1920s style animation set in the New York stock exchange, felt very much like a Pixar short, it was really well done. My next favourite was Bite of the Tail (trailer below) it was a bit odd plot wise but the animation style was great, I especially liked the detail with the posters on the wall of the Doctors surgery.
The most stand out film for me though was DRWAL, a story of a lumberjack and his son who live in a cabin in the woods, when the father cuts down a creepy looking tree he becomes possessed. It was a really haunting, tragic tale that was beautifully executed. I liked the strong use of contrast and lighting throughout, especially with the whites of the eyes.
Next up was the Short shorts screening, which I didn't like as much but there were a few stand out films with Pythagasaurus, an Aardman short which was hilarious, Fat Cat which was done in a really nice technique of wax on glass and Nightingales in December which was a surreal story that had incredibly detailed artwork.
Then I was straight into a talk by Vanessa Boyce from Double Negative, where she talked about the VFX used in the remake of Total Recall, i'm not really a 3D kinda person but I still found this talk really interesting Through a series of time lapse videos we were shown the whole process of how they made the entire city in the film from scratch (the director didn't want to use a pre existing cityscape) and also how the car scenes that were shot on a real location were merged together with the CG environment and the difficulties with making it look realistic. I think when I watch Total Recall I will be looking at it in a different light now!
Next up was Music videos and Commercials, which was nice as it was not very complicated and by this point in the day my head was starting to feel like exploding from an animation overload! I enjoyed Easy Way Out by Goyte, with the live action combined with some stop motion animation. It reminded me of Coldplay's Strawberry Swing video.
I have great respect for the next video by The Spinto Band called Living Things, all done on paper with just a marker pen, this was so simple and it was cool to just see really stripped down animation with no need for colour or any digital rendering.
The adverts they showed I didn't really like, apart from this one done for Bing, I hadn't seen it before and thought the plot was amazing, really funny.
Next was my favourite talk of the whole festival with Rob Morgan, I had never seen any of his work before but was intrigued when looking through the BAF catalogue to see his film called The Cat with Hands, (see it pays to be a crazy cat lady sometimes!) The films were mega creepy but I loved them, they had set the talk up so Rob Morgan would talk about his process behind each film straight after we had watched it, which was a great way to see the thinking and techniques behind each film whilst it was fresh in your brain.
My favourite film was by far The Cat with Hands, and I liked seeing the animation pilot as well as the finished film, as it was good to see how the plot developed from the original idea. I also thought the addition of live action really helped with the creepiness of the tale. I have given my friends nightmares from making them watch this film!
I also liked the thinking behind Bobby Yeah! originally intending for it to be a short 2 minute YouTube film for fun, it developed into a 23 minute epic, there was no storyboarding or planning, just total freedom and randomness. Rob Morgan just had total freedom with his subconscious, which for that reason alone I thought it was brilliant.
You should never push the red button!
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