More from MIAF 2015. Leonid Schmelkov’s Hopfrog was the second film of the Kids Program. I’ve yet to understand why this film filled me with intense childish glee the way it did. Unlike Lesley The Pony, nobody goes off the rails in this one though someone does get smacked in the face with a fish.
As promised, I’m posting some of my favourite shorts from MIAF. First out of the gates is Christian Larrave’s Lesley the Pony Has An A+ Day. This was part of the Late Night Bizarre show on Saturday evening.
Good luck getting the damn song out of your head after you watch it.
Welcome to 22 to 28 June 2015.
I’m currently still in Melbourne – MIAF finished up this evening after eight days. I’m heading back home on Wednesday.
I don’t know if I can get used to Melbourne’s chilly weather but I could definitely get used to being part of a film making and movie-going community as supportive and knowledgeable and interesting and generally awesome as the people I’ve met over here. I’ve chatted to everyone from students (too many to mention) to accomplished current filmmakers (indie star Signe Baumane; abstract whizkid Max Hattler; TV series director Matthew Darragh), amazing old timers like Cam Ford from Eric Porter Productions, even diehard fans who have been at every single MIAF so far. I’ve watched god-knows-how-many short movies, a couple of features and had a fairly thorough crash course in the history of Australian animation – some of the folks who were there at the time even put in appearances.
There was a two day conference attached to the festival as well which was dense but extremely informative. It was on Monday and Tuesday but it almost feels like a month ago now.
I watched the first colour feature animated film ever created in Australia which set a strong early precedent for Australians being awesome at playing baddies. The following day I saw an end-of-year company gag reel (called a cod reel) featuring two of the characters in said film disappearing into the bushes for a quickie, complete with cleverly chosen snippets of dialogue. And I got to shake the hand of the unit director responsible and have a good chat about what it was like working at Australia’s premier homegrown animation studio in the early 1970s.
I found out that among fans, computer animation is less heinous than rotoscoping which nobody seems to respect at all. People have heard of Blender but pretty much everyone has a Maya pipeline for 3D animation. Toon Boom is making inroads on Flash in the 2D world but TV Paint has plans of its own. Photoshop and After Effects are widely used too.
As for movies I liked, I’ll link them here as I find them online once I’m back in Perth.
As for other Melbourne-flavoured stuff I’ve been into and up to this week, I’ve been doing a lot of life drawing and sketching in Fed Square between meals and screening sessions. I’ve also made a few trips to the Ian Potter Gallery to swoon over the work of the Australian Impressionists. Particularly Arthur Streeton. Damn that guy was good.
As for Pointy and Gronky.. well.. whenever I tell someone about the film’s premise, it gets them grinning. Better yet, I’ve got a clearer idea of what to work in on this coming rewrite to make it gel together a little bit better than before. Watching so many short films in such a brief space of time has given me an even clearer sense on what to do, what not to do, what I like, what I dislike. Totally worth the slight brainfry.
And after being repeatedly introduced as a film maker, I settled on the following schtick: I’m a film maker trying to be a film finisher. That works. 🙂
I’m thinking in future it would be great to be able to give people a small quoll-figurine-shaped USB key. I’ve got no idea where to begin getting something like that made up, but that’s OK because right now I have nothing to put on such a key anyway. Something to investigate closer to the appropriate time perhaps.
Once I’m back in Perth I’ve still got another week and a half of leave to go before I’m back at the day job, but after MIAF/Melbourne it’s hard to say how much of that time will be spent making the movie, gaming, getting outdoors while everyone else is at work (Perth winters are pretty mild), more self-education, etc. At least a little bit of all of the above sounds reasonable. 🙂
That’s it for now.