Meeting Adam on the Eve of Aussie Domination

February 7, 2010 by Eddie White

[Left to Right: Adam Elliot, James Calvert & Eddie White at the 1998 Atom Awards]

With the announcement of the nominees on Tuesday, Oscar season is well and truly under way. It was great to see some truly diverse animated feature films make it into the mix that challenge people’s view of what stories animation could tell. Australians have traditionally done well at the Oscars and we were really rooting for Adam Elliot’s Mary & Max to get a nod. With his festival successes and Oscar win, Adam really had a lot to do with putting Aussie animation on the map in the 90s and 00s.

When I was a teenager in high school just starting to make short films, I remember seeing Adam’s short ‘Uncle’ for the first time. It was such a unique, hilarious and emotional short and to top it off, made by a fellow Aussie.

Throughout this time when my fellow PRA pioneers James Calvert & Hugh Nguyen and I were making student films in our garage, we would always keep track of Adam’s latest films and awards and drew inspiration from his style of storytelling, not to mention his honest, low-fi and unpretentious way of making an animated film.

In 1998 at the ATOM awards in Melbourne, we met Adam in person. He was young(er), energetic, approachable and an inspiration to talk with (we were 16 at the time).

In 2004, when Adam won the Academy Award for Best Short Animation for his masterpiece Harvie Krumpet we were thrilled – thrilled that an Australian animator had taken the big prize.

Then in the following two years, two more Australians would follow making it to the nomination stage; Sejong Park with Birthday Boy and Anthony Lucas with The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello.

With Warwick Thornton’s inspired Samson & Delilah missing out on a nomination for “Best Foreign Language Film”, Australia’s Oscar hopes this year rest on Luke Doolan’s Miracle Fish in the Best Short Film category. Good luck mate!

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The Cat Piano screening in Adelaide

February 5, 2010 by Hugh Nguyen

For those of you who live in Adelaide with us, you’ll be pleased to know The Cat Piano will be screening at the Mercury Cinema on Saturday 13 February from 7:30pm as part of the touring Flickerfest programme of shorts.

For more info visit:

http://www.mercurycinema.org.au/screenings/FLICKERFEST_2010.html

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Itty Bitty Ditties – latest PRA animation airs tomorrow

January 20, 2010 by Hugh Nguyen

The first episodes of our 1-minute interstitial series, “Itty Bitty Ditties” will be airing tomorrow on children’s channel ABC3 during “Studio 3″ around 7:00am. The series features Brian the Budgie as he travels the world on his Hog, Ernst in search of singing partners for nonsensical duets.

James created and directed the series, which features character design work from illustrator Chris Edser, who we’re huge fans of. The music was composed by longtime PRA collaborator Benjamin Speed with lyrics written by The Beards songwriter Tom Bettany. Tom’s bandmate Joel McMillan provides Brian the Budgie’s vocals.

You can catch the first of the episodes on ABC on the following dates:

  • Thursday 21st January – 7:00am, as part of “Studio 3″
  • Friday 19 Februabry – 6:53am
  • Monday 22 Fenruary – 6:53am
  • Tuesday 23 February – 6:53am

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The Cat Piano wins Flickerfest

January 17, 2010 by Hugh Nguyen

Last night, The Cat Piano won the “Yoram Gross award for Best Animation Short Film” at Flickerfest 2010. Eddie is in British Columbia at the moment, and recorded this acceptance speech for the ceremony.

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Cat Piano Q & A

January 15, 2010 by Hugh Nguyen

Animator Hamish Downie, who is developing a pilot for an animated series emailed us a few questions about the making of The Cat Piano, and making a TV pilot. We’ve answered his questions below and wish him the best of luck on his series.

Hamish Downie: I noticed you have Nick Cave narrating The Cat Piano. On YouTube it seems that many people found it through him. How important is it to have a star? Couldn’t a Shakespearian actor done the job? If having a star is paramount, what was the process like finding the right star? How did you approach them? At what stage of development was the project?

Hugh Nguyen: We wanted Nick Cave to do the narration mainly because we felt his voice and body of work lent themselves really well to the dark story we wanted to tell. It’s film noir so there’s lots of depravity, told in beat poetry which was the language of a tortured and disenfranchised counter culture. Nick Cave was perfect. There’s no doubt that many of his fans discovered the film on YouTube from their interest in his work. One of the powerful aspects about the Internet is its referential power in helping people connect easily with their interests – Nick Cave fans will stumble on a short film he narrated online, and in doing so bring it to the attention to more of his fans. But this also applies to people interested in other aspects of the film. Early on when we made the film available on YouTube and Vimeo, traffic came from “furries” sites, and animation and design focused sites.

We approached Nick Cave through our Producer Jessica Brentnall, who was able to contact him through his agent in the UK. At that stage, we had locked down much of the style of the film and the final look of the characters, as well as developed the storyboards. We put together a pitch document to Nick with the poem, artwork, and the directors’ vision of the project and why we felt he was an ideal narrator for the film.

HD: A lot of the big films film the actors as they record their voices. Did you do this? How important is this?

HN: We didn’t in this case but wish we had! It’s useful reference for the actors to use when putting the performance into the characters but not essential. It is used a lot more in feature animation than television animation. In can be useful when recording dialogue, where vocal performance has to match the animation, however as our film was narrated (the Poet never “speaks”), it wasn’t as necessary.

HD: Do the actors need a storyboard when they record their voices? Or is the script enough?

HN: All voice actors are different, but I think it helps to make as much of that stuff available to them should they find it useful. A storyboard and animatic were ready by the time Nick Cave recorded the narration but I think a few colour drawings of the character were enough to gauge the style.

HD: Why did you decide to go through a funding body? What are the advantages over self-financing? How did you find the right funding body?

HN: Initially, The Cat Piano was a self-financed passion project between the two directors of the film. This has advantages in giving you complete freedom but at the expense of key resources like time and personnel. As a self-financed project, the team were working on it in their spare time after hours and on weekends, which slowed down the film when their work schedules got busier. From reading an early blog post on the production of The Cat Piano, the film was initially anticipated to be finished by early December 2007. It wasn’t completed until over 12 months later!

Eventually, there was growing interest in our studio’s work and we felt that The Cat Piano was exactly what we needed in showing the world the style of animation we wanted to make, and so we sought funding to finish the film earlier.

We actually had 2 investors on the project: the Bigpond Adelaide Film Festival (BAFF) and the South Australian Film Corporation.  BAFF is an interesting festival in that it invests cash into a slate of film projects. However, this meant that the film had to be completed in time to premiere at the festival. The timing of BAFF was also good in that it allowed us to have the film ready for many of the festivals we entered the film into. BAFF and SAFC had both previously invested in two of our previous short films, and so they were the perfect partners to have on board.

How much of The Cat Piano used CAD? Why did you decide on 2D hand-drawn animation rather than 3D? I read that Hayao Miyazaki believes that there should only be about 10% computer graphics on any of his works. What are your thoughts on this?

The interesting thing about animation is in spite of all the technological innovation that has occurred, good animation hasn’t necessarily become less labour intensive! Computers can now be used to wide range of animation styles. We hope that through our work, people see that “CGI” and “CAD” doesn’t have to be “3D”. We had animators drawing frame-by-frame animation using Wacom tablets directly into Photoshop. So although everything was “computer aided”, we used wholly traditional techniques. Computers are just tools like pencils and brushes. Good animation will always come from the wielder of the tools. The use of the tools should be used to the extent that they are required to achieve the look the director is going for. Sometimes that’s 10%, other times in 100%.

If you were making a short as a showcase for funding a larger project, such as a TV Series, how important do you think the quality of the animation is? Should the story hold all the weight, or should the animation be as polished as the intended TV Series?

We used to pitch TV series concepts a few years ago and developed pitch documents and pilots with the same level of polish as the intended series. The feedback we consistently got was that our visuals were fantastic but the development of the story and characters weren’t as strong. We just didn’t have the experience that TV producing veterans had of developing a series and putting it together into a “Bible” (we have currently optioned one of our TV series concepts to someone who does!).

If you look at the short animated clips that were used to pitch Family Guy, King of the Hill, they didn’t match the quality of animation that their first episodes had. The Tracy Ullman shorts that evolved into The Simpsons weren’t as polished as the first half-hour episodes either.

What’s important is to show how the ingredients – the characters, situations, story and humour will all work together to make something worth committing the money to make and market 26 x 22 minutes of animation. The “Family Guy” pilot does this quite well, but by then MacFarlane had made and pitched a couple of Larry pilots which would have helped him to nail the visual style and formula.

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My Favourite animated short films of the decade 2000-2009

January 5, 2010 by Eddie White

As 2009 came to a close I started thinking what a great decade the 2000’s were for the animated short film. With DVD’s and the internet really becoming widespread, the animated short subject was able to bloom and spread around the globe, when in the past it had been merely restricted to festival screenings, hard to find VHS compilations (often in various hard to play formats) and the occasional TV screening late at night. The 2000’s were a very special decade for me as an animation filmmaker. I was able to watch the growth of the medium and its various techniques and genres while making four short films with my studio. I thought about the shorts that I had seen that had inspired, delighted, intrigued and moved me in some way and have compiled a list of my top 10 animated shorts of the decade.

1. REJECTED – Dir: Don Herzfeldt (USA) 2000

I was first introduced to the work of Don Herzfeldt when I saw a touring ‘Spike & Mike’ Sick & Twisted festival and was instantly a fan. This film is a low-fi masterpiece that always brings tears of laughter to the eyes of anyone who watches it. Mr Herzfeldt has since become a cult hero on the internet and among young animation lovers.  I love everything about the film. The comic timing, the random and absurd scenes and clever structure. The film was even nominated for an Oscar. It just goes to show that in a world full of flashy CG effects, sometimes simple is better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3bVgCRixcU

2. HARVIE KRUMPET – Dir. Adam Elliot  (Australia) 2003

Adam Elliot’s epic clayography is an obvious stand-out as one of the best animated shorts of the decade. It was not a short-short film and hence had to be very good to stand-out from the rest and fit into festival’s programming. Festivals loved it, audiences loved it, I loved it. It was so incredibly inspiring to see a fellow Australian making a real impact on the world of animation. His storytelling style and idiosyncratic touches are everything I want in an animated film. A true triumph of a film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouyVS6HOFeo

3. SKHIZEIN – Dir. Jeremy Clapin (France) 2008

When I first saw this film at a screening in Annecy 2008, I knew I was watching something special. Never had I witnessed a film that had the perfect cocktail of a clever and originally offbeat screenplay on par with that of a feature and stylistic rebellion and boldness. I watched in sheer delight and intrigue as the film played out and when it finished I just wanted to share the film with everyone I knew (I since have). A perfect ’short’ in many ways. A great film for students of animation to study.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_pSAM4xx1Q

4. OVER TIME – Dir: Oury Atlan, Thibault Berland, Damien Ferrie (France) 2004

This is the most amazing student film I have ever seen, full stop. It is so much better than many of it’s ‘professional’ counterparts. The haunting beauty of this film is so rare in short films, particularly created by 3D animation which can often be clunky, cold and sterile. It is such a simple idea that is executed with poeticism and a soft touch. Dazzles me every time I watch it.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5dh7_over-time_shortfilms

5. Wolf Daddy – Dir: Hyung Yun Chang (South Korea) 2006

This film was such a fresh breath of air to me when I first saw it in Korea in 2006. It was odd, beautiful and hilarious all in the same breath. While it had touches of an anime aesthetic, it really felt like an absurdist korean genius was behind it. Having met the director and seen his subsequent films I wasn’t wrong. Mr Chang has become one of my most favourite animated filmmakers in the world today. He is by no means a household name in animation circles, and his films rarely get into Annecy etc but like many cult things, he is a secret that I am glad I have and will continue to being privy to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STfjzX8qkiw

6. KJFG #5 – Dir: Alexei Alekseev (Russia/Hungary) 2008

Short, simple and hilariously funny and impeccably timed is how I’d describe this film. I think anyone who doesn’t at least chuckle when they watch this is either not human or they take themselves way too seriously. This little short cut through all the pretentious, high-art, wanky shorts that flood many of the festivals and was a joy to watch with an audience who reveled in its simple humour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-vSS5S3VqU

7. A Coffee Vending Machine & His Sword – Dir: Hyung Yun Chang (South Korea) 2008

After seeing Wolf Daddy in 2006, I waited eagerly to see what Mr. Chang would deliver next. I wasn’t disappointed. This substantially lengthy short had everything; action, romance, warrior zebras and talking coffee vending machines. It was like Miyazaki on acid, or speed or both. Whatever Mr. Chang is taking, I want some if it will help me make films at nuts as this. A must see for anyone who appreciates the bizarrely beautiful in life.

Here’s the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZRQIUUDRgw&feature=related

8. WESTERN SPAGHETTI  – PES (USA) 2009

PES emerged in the 2000’s as a post-modern punk Jan Svankmajer surrealist who used the internet as his theatre. Probably one of the most amazingly different animators to appear in some time. This film was a viral hit and you can see why. From the minute its starts you are completely captivated and astounded by what happens next.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBjLW5_dGAM

9. Father & Daughter – Michael Dudok de Wit (Holland/UK) 2000

Such a work of art this film. Always emotionally powerful and visually simple yet sumptuous. This is a film by someone who clearly knows how to make an animated film. The music is amazing too. No wonder it won the Academy Award.

http://www.trilulilu.ro/Cosmarulperfect/d27a07ba629f61?video_google_com=

10. The Man in The Blue Gordini (L’Homme A La Gordini) -  Dir: Jean-Christophe Lie (France) 2009

I didn’t realise how cool this film was until a few minutes in when it got warmed up and I realised just how clever the story was. On top of that it was told with no words and an awesome, funky soundtrack paired with a vibrant retro-70s look. I have only seen this film once but the fact that I am desperate to seek it out and  watch it again is a sign that it had something special.

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More awards for The Cat Piano

December 16, 2009 by Hugh Nguyen

They just keep stacking up!

Last month The Cat Piano won an Autodesk Award for Best Animation at the 2009 IF (inside Film) Awards, and last Saturday won the Bronze Shorts Award at the Shorts Film Festival! Thankyou to the film aficionados, festivals and judges who have supported our film!

Posted in IF Awards, Video Posts | 1 Comment »

The Cat Piano wins AFI Award

December 14, 2009 by Hugh Nguyen

After being nominated twice before at Australian Film’s night-of-nights, we finally took home the AFI Award for Best Animated Short for The Cat Piano. This caps off a stellar year for The Cat Piano in Australia, which has also won best animation at the IF Awards, Dendy Awards (Sydney Film festival) and Melbourne Internation Film Festival & Adelaide Film Festival.

[Co-Director Ari Gibson and Producer Jessica Brentnall with the Award]

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We’re hiring

November 12, 2009 by Hugh Nguyen

We are currently looking for two full time positions Lead Artist and 3D Generalist. Have a look at the positions requirements if you are interested.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Ted Hope on The Cat Piano

November 2, 2009 by Hugh Nguyen

Oddly, a few months after posting an interview with Ted Hope where he talked about low budget filmmaking, Ted returned the favour by doing a nice post on The Cat Piano. Turns out he’s a big Nick Cave fan. An SAFC staffer heard him talk about The Cat Piano at a presentation he did at a New York conference. Here’s what he had to say on his blog:

Film noir, Nick Cave, absurd inventions, tales of others’ heartbreak, animation, clever company names, these are some of my favorite things. Okay I am not crazy about cats and smoky bars, or really happy endings when you get right down to it, but for this I am quite happy to make an exception.

With THE CAT PIANO, I just added “watching a lot more from The People’s Republic of Animation” to my ever expanding “To Do List”.

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