Creative Skillset have joined up with us to run our Animation Industry Event and we’ve got all manner of topics being covered, by special guests from a wide range of very different areas. Each of them are ready to impart their knowledge and answer your questions in four carefully chosen panel sessions. For anyone working in the industry, thinking of working in the industry or just plain curious these four sessions are indispensable.
Animation is associated with the surreal and fantastic, but also has a long and distinguished history in documentary, from Winsor McKay’s 1918 12-minute-long film The Sinking of the Lusitania, to Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir exactly 90 years later. Persuasive, illustrative and able to get over abstract details in attractive and compelling ways, animation is still being used to document someone’s version of the truth, from propaganda to imagined visualisation of the microscopic or unseen in medical and architectural visualisation.
How do animation documentary makers describe their practice, and what is special about the medium? Can the use of animation in documentaries always be justified? Is the agenda about accessibility, or dumbing down?
Chaired by Saint John Walker, Creative Skillset.
Other LIAF Animation Industry Events include: ‘To finity and beyond: The future of animation in the UK’; ‘In a world….: the art of animated film titles‘ and ‘Sound in the Frame‘
Speakers
Samantha Moore, independent film maker, Animator, Senior Lecturer in Animation at University of Wolverhampton
Samantha Moore’s animated docs include; ‘Success with Sweet Peas’ (2003), ‘doubled up’ (2004) for Channel 4 television and Arts Council England and ‘The Beloved Ones’ for the UK Film Council and Screen WM. In 2010 she made ‘An Eyeful of Sound’, for the Wellcome Trust, about synaesthesia. It won an award “for Scientific Merit” from the journal Nature at the Imagine Science Film Festival in New York, the Best Animation/Experimental film award at the Scinema Science Film Festival in Australia and a Diploma for Documentary at the Flip Animation Festival UK. This year she finished ‘Shadow Stories’ for Shrewsbury Art Gallery and Museum. Samantha teaches animation at the University of Wolverhampton and is studying for a PhD by practice at the University of Loughborough. Her PhD subject is about representing internal brain states through animated non-fiction, and she is currently making work about prosopagnosia (face-blindness) and phantom limb syndrome.
Patrick Jenkins, Artist, Animator, Film Director at Patrick Jenkins Studio
Patrick Jenkins is an award-winning artist, animator and documentary filmmaker. His recent film ‘Sorceress’ (2012) was shown in competition at this year’s LIAF, the Melbourne International Animation Festival, Melbourne, Australia, and BE FILM (The Underground Film Festival), New York, U.S.A. His previous film ‘Tara’s Dream’ won both Second Prize and Best Animation Prize at the 2010 Toronto Urban Film Festival. His film ‘Amoeba’ won first prize at the 2010 Toronto Animated Image Society Showcase. His film ‘Inner View’ (2009), an animated homage to the art of Canadian artist Kazuo Nakamura was an Official Selection of Animafest, in Zagreb, Croatia in 2010. His film ‘Labyrinth’ (2008), a surreal detective story, won 1st place in the Independent, 6 to 30 Minutes Category, at the 2009 KAFI Festival and 3rd Prize for animation at the 2010 Be Film Festival in New York City and was included in the dvd the Highlights of LIAF 2009. His documentaries, ‘Of Lines And Men: The Animation Of Jonathan Amitay’ and ‘Death Is In Trouble Now: The Sculptures Of Mark Adair’ premiered on BRAVO! Television in October 2007. His film ‘The Skateboarder’ premiered at the 2005 Montreal World Film Festival and was shown at the 2005 Ottawa International Animation Festival and the prestigious 2006 Annecy Animation Festival in Annecy, France. His documentary film ‘RALPH: Coffee, Jazz and Poetry, The Poetry of Ralph Alfonso’ premiered at the 2001 Montreal World Film Festival and was broadcast on CBC Television’s Canadian Reflections and BRAVO! Television.
www.interlog.com/~pjenkins/televisionwork.html
Tim Webb, senior tutor at Royal College of Art
Tim Webb was born in Shropshire in 1960. On leaving school secondary school he completed a 5-year apprenticeship in Dental Technology before returning to full time art education in 1982. On completion of an Art foundation course in Shrewsbury, Webb gained a First Class BA in animation at The West Surrey College of Art (now University for the Creatve Arts – Farnham). From 1986, Webb has been working in animation. His graduation film was an animated documentary/diatribe about the politics of smoking. The film was influenced by Peter Taylor’s book ‘The Smoke Ring’ (1984). This film helped in gaining his big break. ‘A is For Autism’, was commissioned by Clare Kitson for a season of programmes on disability, screened in1992. The film continues to be shown in many festivals and resulted in Tim’s first offer as visiting tutoring work at Farham. This evolved into work in many other BA courses and eventually Webb took up his current post as Senior Tutor at the Royal College of Art in 1996.
Jonathan Hodgson, Animation Director, Sherbet, Programme Leader BA (Hons) Animation, Middlesex University
Jonathan Hodgson is a BAFTA winning animator based in London. He directed the animation for Franny Armstrong’s feature length climate change documentary ‘Age of Stupid’, which had a worldwide cinema release in 2009. Educated at Liverpool School of Art and Royal College of Art, he worked as a freelance animation director at many London animation studios before setting up Sherbet with producer Jonathan Bairstow in 1996. His early 2D animation was quite experimental and largely based on observation and personal experience. Most of his more recent work has been in the area of documentary animation. He has won numerous international awards, directed dozens of television commercials and created motion graphics for several television series. In addition, he was an art director on the children’s animated series Charlie and Lola. He combines filmmaking with teaching and somehow finds time to be the Programme Leader for BA Animation at Middlesex University. His most recent film ‘Wonderland: The Trouble with Love and Sex’ is the first full-length animated documentary on British television and was broadcast on BBC2 and BBC HD on 11th May 2011.