Tuesday 15th - Thursday 17th November 2016
Another year has already come around to welcome the
Manchester Animation festival to HOME again. It was a fantastic experience and
I am even more pleased to say that I was fortunate enough to volunteer this
year at the event. However I had to balance my timetable with the Manimation
festival which was on the Thursday, so I couldn’t volunteer for the full three
days unfortunately.
DAY 1
This was a very busy day for myself as I was a runner for
the team, ensuring everything was running as smoothly as I could help it.
Finding missing tickets and acting as ground control as the lobbies became
bustling crowds. I took the time on my break to view the short shorts which
were a collection of up to two minute films created by artists and studios for
the festival. These shorts were extremely entertaining to name some including:
‘More Stuff’ by Blue-Zoo, ‘Tabook’ by Dario Van Vree and ‘Full ANL’ by Aardamn
Nathan Love.After that I was busy again with moving easels out of the
event space after the life drawing session.
Once that job had been done I was
fortunate enough to attend the Aardman Fellowship award where Peter Lord and
David Sproxton spoke about their years of Aardman as it was the company’s 40th
anniversary. Afterwards I had my Art of Aardamn booked signed by both of them
and spoke briefly to Mr Sproxton; thank you very much again if you are reading
this.A fantastic start to a brilliant festival.
DAY 2
Starting the second day with the screening of short films,
these were films created by artists which lasted around six minutes. These
films did feel rather long; personally I felt that these films were too ‘artsy’
and were trying too hard. I much preferred the short and snappy short shorts.After that I helped at the ‘Blue Zoo HooDoo’. This was a talk
by the producer and director of the ‘experience’ HooDoo. This was a virtual
reality short where the audience are placed in the middle of the story and
interact with the characters with interesting results. This was a very
interesting talk as they spoke about the process of creating HooDoo and the
problems with creating a virtual reality short.
After that I was timetabled for the Skwigly Screening,
Skwigly is an animators’ newsletter/ magazine. This was a screening of artists
work. I enjoyed some of the work within this screening, however there were more
that were too abstract or too ‘artsy’ again much like the short films. Of
course all of the work was well made and I can appreciate the work put into
them; as artists we will always be subjected to opinion and bias, I am not a
fan of the final product of all artists’ work.Shortly after that I participated in the Skwigly Quiz, this
was a quiz hosted by the company Skiwgly which offered great prizes ranging
from a statue of Gromit signed by Nick Park, animation books, DVDs and much
more. We had to answer a series of questions relating to the Stop Motion
industry and naming characters from beloved animated series and films. Unfortunately,
our team ‘Dreamworks Teamworks’ (not responsible for the name) was one of the
last teams. We chose our prizes, I won a badge which I am pleased with.Back to volunteering, I worked at the ‘Making of Ethel and
Ernest’ talk. This was a talk by Steve (director of the event) with the animation
director and producers of the film ‘Ethel and Ernest’. This was a fantastic
talk as they discussed the process of creating such a film, working alongside
the author and ensuring the style is consistent.
Finishing the day with a screening of ‘Ethel and Ernest’ in
one of HOME’s many cinemas. I found this film very enjoyable and moving. It was
well made in writing, screenplay and style by how I felt so involved with a
family and was taken on this journey through time, growing to love these characters.
DAY 3
I did not volunteer for the final day of MAF because I was
volunteering for ‘Manimation’, a separate animation festival. However at the
end of the day I was fortunate to attend the award ceremony at MAF. This was
hosted by Barry Purves, who was very funny and presented the awards brilliantly.
There were many awards given to artists for their work for their commissioned
films, short films etc. Finally, the volunteers were awarded their prizes and received
a thank you for their work throughout their time at festival.
Conclusion
The Manchester Animation Festival has been overall a fantastic
experience, I feel that I have learnt so much over such a short time, meeting
new people and my understanding of the industry. Inspired by artists’ work and
thinking about my own, and asking myself how can I do that? I am definitely
looking forward to next year’s festival.
x
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