Stoke your Fires

I visited the 'Stoke Your Fires' moving image festival today with my fellow students. Based in the city of Stoke the festival has been running for three years. It's main focus is animation but this year film and digital media was also included. We were firstly shown 8 films from the awards shortlist, these were as follows:

 

Best Short Animation - Specky Four-Eyes Jean-Claude Rozec, France -

Best Professional Animation - Save our Bacon Peter Baynton, UK

Best Fine Art/Experimental - Birdboy Pedro Rivero & Albert Vazquez, Spain

Best Student Animation - On the Water - Yi Zhao, The Netherlands

Best Short Film Drama - Intercambrio - Antonollo Novoulno, Italy

Best Short Film Documentary - Identity Petrazalkar Juraj Chipik, Slovaki

Best Student Film - Entropy Alexander Thomas, UK

Best 'Made in the Midlands' - Run Anderson West, UK

My favourites film was 'On the Water' by Yi Zhao. This was about the journey through life and propelling oneself forward through its trials and tribulations, ups and downs, the joys, the losses and finally death. It was an emotional animation and in my opinion a powerful way of telling the story about the events that everyone experiences throughout their lifetime.

In the second session of the day a panel of media professionals spoke to us about their careers and projects they're currently working on. Chris Rhodes from 'Hit Entertainment' talked about a new animation series he is producing called 'Mike The Knight'. He told us that much of the CGI animation is now produced outside the UK due to a number of reasons (e.g. tax breaks & budget).Chris also spoke about compliance within childrens programmes and how reviewing content before it is broadcast is an important aspect to his job. The second speaker was called Hans, he is the 'Head of Pipeline' for MPC London. He told us that his team pieces together all of the separate parts that are produced by the different areas of his business, resulting in the final product. Another speaker talked about his role as Producer of a new children's programme called 'Ra Ra The Lion'. 

The final speaker of the day was Gruff Owen. He is a 2d Supervisor from a company called 'Double Negative'. Gruff has worked on many films during his time at 'Double Negative' including some of the Harry Potter and X-Men films. However, today he spoke about the film 'Paul' that has recently been released at the cinema. The main character 'Paul' is completely CGI (apart from a couple of short scenes where a puppet was used). Gruff explained to us in detail how the character was created and the techniques used to bring him to life on the screen. He also told us about the importance of photography and the use of light within the studio, where much of the filming within the vehicle was shot.

Overall it was an interesting day at the festival. Although I felt it would have been most beneficial to the animation students.