Exeter Animation Festival 2013 Review
Exeter animation festival has three goals: to excite and inspire young people; to encourage and foster talent and to showcase high quality animation.
What separates it from most of the UK festivals is their desire to involve the local community, and to introduce people who have not seen animation beyond the mainstream to a world of animation as an art form and means of communication.
No one who has been around the industry for any amount of time could deny that there is currently a record amount of interest in animation as a career, or that there isn’t enough information out there for young people who are interested but don’t know the next steps to take. Exeter Animation Festival seeks to remedy this, with a year round program of workshops for schools and people in the South West, information about further education and career paths into the animation industry, competitions for animators, showcases of a wider range of films than they’d usually be exposed to and exhibitions to entertain and inform the public.
This year round event culminates with the 2 week festival in the February Half Term, with days devoted specifically to events relevant to young people, careers, games, comics etc.
But this isn’t to say that the festival only caters for the young’uns. There is also a wide range of speakers on a variety of subjects; from starting an animation studio to working in visual effects – although the festival’s community appeal does mean that occasionally you wind up listening to Phil Davies talk about Producing Peppa Pig with an audience of 4 year olds who scream excitedly every time a photo of the eponymous character is shown.
Hi-lights this year included Double Negative, Mind Candy and Tristan Oliver (cinematographer) speaking with passion about their various fields.
Over the two days Skwigly was able to attend the festival, we learnt that filming James Bond wearing gloves in a scene where the plot depends on his gun only firing when it recognises his fingerprints, is a kinda expensive mistake. We learnt that they have a slide at Moshi Monsters Towers and the staff were all given iPad minis for Christmas. And we learnt what a cinematographer actually does!
Winners:
Graduate New Talent: Iria Lopez for JAMON
Graduate New Talent Technical Excellence: Claire Lamond for ALL THAT GLISTERS
Independent Talent Award: Will Rose for “The Goat Herder and his Lots and Lots and Lots of Goats”
Technical Excellence: Peter Parr for Summer Dream
(not available online)