Manimation Festival 2015

Manimation Festival:

19th November 2015

(Volunteer Edition)

Introduction

This was another animation festival that was taking place at HOME (in Manchester) on the final day of the Manchester Animation Festival. This was a separate yet similar event because this festival was more business orientated as this festival is aimed at professionals to be able to talk with other professionals.  I chose to volunteer for this event because I thought it would be a great opportunity to gain experience and possibly be able to speak with some professionals within the animation industry.

(Image of Manimation logo)

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Day Plan:

Events:

I started early in the morning for the volunteers to be briefed on what will happen throughout the day and be prepare before the festival(s) start. We had lanyards and t-shirts given to use to wear and the tasks we were assigned were fairly simple because we just mainly had to be friendly and helpful to all guests during the festival.

Firstly I attended a couple of talks where I had to help around the room to clear it up for the next talk and to help any people if they needed it. I would also hand out microphones to anyone who wanted to ask questions at the end of a talk.

After that there were one to ones where people had the opportunity to speak with industry professionals one to one. During this we were given sheets with a particular professional's name and a list of people who wanted to speak with that person. Our job was to rotate the people around so everyone could speak with the professional within the time given; ten minutes. I had the pleasure to help Lucy Pryke (CBBC) with her one to ones where I rotated the people around the list and times.

Within this time I was able to speak with a lady from the CBBC who worked closely with the Scream Street competition and I was lucky enough to speak with her about my entry. Unfortunately I was not a winner of that competition however I gained amazing feedback which I can build from and progress. Despite the negative outcome I feel that I can learn from the negatives and build upon the positives and I have already spoken about my Scream Street entry in other post on this blog.

I was also lucky enough to speak with Marc Silk briefly who is an experienced and talented voice actor. I spoke with him about the Star Wars convention in December in Manchester and he told me about another Star Wars event that was happening in Nottingham. I would have spoken with him longer, however I needed to attend to the jobs I was doing at the time (one to one rotations) but I still enjoyed our small talk. He also gave me a couple of his hand outs.

After that we had finished volunteering and the event was coming to a close, there was one more talk and there was finally a social with drinks. The talk was with Giles Ridge a producer of the new TV series: Thunderbirds Are Go. Within this talk he spoke about the process of creating an episode for Thunderbirds Are GO and how much work is put into it. I found this talk very informative and interesting as I am a fan of the original thunderbirds series and I like the path the new series is taking.

Conclusion

I feel that this again was an amazing experience; however this time it was a busier one because I have duties and responsibilities throughout the day. I feel that this is important experience for both work experience and to attend events such as these to speak with industry professionals to gain a better understanding of the industry by the professionals themselves rather than through a speaker or screen.