Northern Futures Award Success!

I am very proud to announce that The Astronomer's Sun won it's first award last night at the Northern Futures Awards!

The film was awarded first place by the judges against some stiff competition from other northern film makers, including another couple of shorts co-produced by Screen Yorkshire. You can see the rest of he short list here - http://www.northernfutures.co.uk

Our film was the only animation in the group so it was a great honour to receive the award and get to meet some of the other films creators.

Jess couldn't make it to the awards ceremony but our producer David came along and you can see us both in the pictures below.

Many thanks to the Northern Futures organisers for a great night!



All the shortlisted films had their own screen and some information about the productions beside them.


































Myself and the other nominees sat together on the film table waiting nervously!







David and myself accepting the award off head judge Caroline Cooper Charles









David making his acceptance speech.



















The both of us chatting with Caroline afterwards.

Russian Premiere

The Russian Premiere takes place at OPEN CINEMA, Saint-Petersburg. September, 3 till September, 12.

OPEN CINEMA received more than 1000 works this year. 19 fiction films, 18 animations, 11 documentaries, 16 experimental and 9 music videos will contend festival's First prize in four nominations – amongst them, The Astronomers Sun. 27 shorts, divided into theme programs "Great expectations", "Other lands" and "No anesthesia", have composed OPEN CINEMA's Parallel competition list.

Nomination for a Northern Futures award

The Astronomers Sun has been nominated for a Northern Futures Award 2010 in FILM. In can be seen as part of The Northern Futures Award exhibition between July 28th-Aug 17th at The Civic Hanson Street, Barnsley.

East Asia Premiere

Screening in The Official/Special Program’s Section for Short Films at Chungmuro International Film Festival in Seoul, 2-10 September.

Albuquerque Film Festival, USA

Screening  in Official Selection at the Albuquerque Film Festival, USA, August 25-29.

Review

The Astronomer's Sun
Reviewed By: Andrew Robertson

A stop motion figure enters an observatory, its skeletal dome stuck into the heavens, panels missing from its frame indicating age, neglect, a clear sense of abandonment. Inside there is a mechanism, an orrery fantastical which gleams with mechanisms and markings uncanny. Through a flashback, the eyes of a clockwork teddy bear, we see the orrery engaged, a man inside, with a comet in the sky, the terrified face of a child.

That same child now adult, the same bear hidden in the same chest, the same comet in the sky. With character design that recalls the stylised yet hyper-real figures of Eastern European animation, the ridges and quirks of nature before the rounded edges of Aardman, this is a visually exciting film. Served well by David Aston's sound work, the machinery and the small quantity of voicework, and by Peter Wright's music, it's technically excellent.

Written and directed by Jessica Cope and Simon Cartwright, it conveys a lot simply, and strikingly concludes with an ending that is almost equally maudlin and joyful. With its focus on machines arcane, even magical, this piece is phantasmagorical, recalling perhaps His Dark Materials before Tik Tok of Oz. The trick to short animation is to do just enough, and as the planets and gears of the orrery combine to wondrous effect so too do the elements of The Astronomer's Sun.

Produced by David Bunting and Peter M. Kershaw, Duchy Parade Films Ltd

Rome, Georgia

Catch “The Astronomer's Sun”, at the 2010 Rome International Film Festival on Saturday, September 11, at 11:00 a.m. in the historic DeSoto Theatre in downtown Rome, Georgia, USA.

Australian Premiere

The Astronomers Sun plays in official selection as part of the 59th Melbourne International Film Festival (22 July – 8 August 2010)! It screens as part of a program called Animation Shorts, screening on August 1st at 4.45PM at Greater Union Cinema, Melbourne.

London screening

Another chance to see The Astronomers Sun in London, this time at the Rushes Soho Shorts Festival

Venue: Institute Of Contemporary Arts (The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH)

Screening Dates: 22, 25 Jul 2010

Cost: £9 / £8 Concessions / £7 ICA Members.

Showing for two days only, Rushes: Animation showcases a fantastically eclectic selection of both new and established talent, UK and international, working with a broad range of techniques.

New York Premiere

You can see The Astronomer's Sun this summer in New York as part of the Animation Summer Block Party 2010.

ABP received 518 entries but are playing only 90 films The Astronomer's Sun is one of them.

Official selection success in Edinburgh

We are proud to be screening in the official selection of the Edinburgh International Film Festival!

The Astronomers Sun plays in the McLaren Animation 1 programme on the following dates:

Thursday 17 June 15:00 Filmhouse 3 (McLaren Animation 1)

Saturday 19 June 11:45 Filmhouse 3 (McLaren Animation 1)

Official website launced!

Thanks to our editor Adam Kirk, we now have an official website! http://www.astronomerssun.com/
It's crammed full of information about the film and the people who made it, a gallery and information of festival screenings. It also boasts a trailer and a podcast with myself and the directors! To whet your appetite, here's the trailer.... enjoy!

North American and Canadian Premieres

Fans in the USA and Canada will have a change to see THE ASTRONOMER'S SUN over the coming weeks. Our North American premiere is at the 36th Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF, May 20-June 13) as an official selection during SIFF's Short Film Weekend (May 21-23, 2010). The Seattle International Film Festival is the largest and most well-attended film festival in the United States with 150,000 attendees expected in 2010. SIFF screens a wide selection of the best new international features and documentaries over the 25-day festival, presenting more than 400 films from over 50 countries. Check out their great programme!
The Canadian Premiere for is at the CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival between 1-6 June. WSFF is the premier venue for the exhibition and promotion of short film in North America and one of the leading short film festivals in the world.

The East European Premiere took place at the 6th edition of BucharEST International Film Festival in ROMANIA.  (20th and 25th April 2010). If you see the film, drop us a line! We’d love to hear from you.

Awards Night!!!

Those of you who have followed the Astronomer's Sun will know that we were nominated in the public choice category of British Animation Awards and last Thursday was awards night!

So Jess drove us down with her good friend Donna in tow for moral support. We made it down in one piece despite the car losing power half way! After a quick change (2hr 30 mins for Jess) we headed off to the South Bank.

The public choice category was announced last so we were down to our last nerve by the time it came around. Unfortunately though it wasn't to be. The prize went to Smith & Foulkes for their CG comedy This Way Up (Nexus Productions). It's a very well told tale and the visuals are slick, so we didn't feel too bad to lose out to it. However, before they announced them as winners they gave a special mention to the Astronomer's Sun as the votes were so close!! There are a lot of films in the public choice so to be within the top 4 or so is a massive achievement for us to rank so highly.

After the ceremony came the after party and thats were things get hazy. So I'll let the pictures do the talking.




Here's me with Nick Park!!!








Here's Jess with Pick Nark!!! He was exceedingly lovely and very patient of our drunken ramblings!









The award given for Best European Feature went to The Secret of Kells. It was a drawing by one of the greatest living animators, Glen Keane! After the party we ran into its producer, Paul Young. I asked if I could have a look at the image up close and he was in no state to say no!









Here's Jess with an assortment of BAA survivors. The rest of the pictures are a little too messy to post I'm afraid!





The awards were great but the real fun came on our way back from London when the breaks lost most of their power on the motorway! Jess managed to get us into a service station and we waited two hours in the hot sun for help. After the breakdown guy wrapped some tape around a hole in a pipe we were back on our way. Seems all our problems can be fixed with tape!

A message from Barry J C Purves

Master animation director, Barry Purves, got in touch with us after seeing "The Astronomers Sun" in AnimFest animation festival in Athens last month. He liked the film much he has written this extraordinary write-up:

This exquisitely crafted and sensitive film manages to raise some profound and surprisingly emotional ideas, all in a few oblique, beautiful and economic minutes. Animation at its' mysterious and haunting best.

Barry Purves, who was a mentor on another 4mations Digital Short last year, is one of the worlds great puppet animation masters and inspires all of us. His new book "Basics Animation: Stop-Motion" hits the bookshops this week and includes a picture from - "The Astronomers Sun"! Co-director Jessica Cope's, graduation film, The Owl House, is also featured inside! We couldn't me more honoured and more excited to be featured in such distinguished company!

Keep posted for details of where you can see The Astronomers Sun play across the world.

National Media Museum displays film set

We are very excited to announce the launch of a yearlong exhibition of the set from The Astronomer’s Sun at the National Media Museum. The set, which opened in time for the British Animation Awards, takes pride of place in the Animation Gallery, in the old Animator In Residence booth. Being the birthplace of many classic short films financed by the prestigious and long running Channel 4 scheme, there is no more fitting place to exhibit this new 4mations Digital Shorts film set, supporting new and emerging animators than the National Media Museum.


Above: Deb Singleton, Director of the Bradford Animation Festival with Simon Cartwright holding part of the set with Bjorn from the Media Museum.

Athens AnimFest

Visitors to Athens AnimFest got a chance to see “The Astronomers Sun” play in competition in full High Definition detail this week. Keep an eye out on the blog to hear about where you can see the film near where you live.

World Premiere with The British Animation Awards!

It’s finally here. The world premiere of “The Astronomers Sun”! We are very excited to launch the film at the British Animation Awards UK tour this month, where the film has been nominated for a Public Choice award for Best Short Film!

From the 8th to the 27th of February, you can catch the Public Choice screenings at a cinema near you, and vote for your favourite from a fantastic range of animated films made over the past few years. Three programmes containing a mix of animated shorts, music videos and commercials are screening at 27 venues across the UK. The Astronomers Sun plays in programme 3.

The British Animation Awards (BAA) covers all aspects of the UK animation scene, from student work to commercials, children's entertainment, short and experimental art films, music videos, new technologies.

We’d love to hear comments from people who catch to film on the blog. We are travelling to as many of the venues as we can, so if you see us, say hi!

Channel 4 preview screening 15 Jan 2010

Editor Adam Kirk outside the mighty 4.

Mentor Sara Mullock, Director Si Cartwright, Director John Williams

Director Jess Cope talking to Producer David Bunting

Hand drawn special effects

Lots of job sharing occurs in the making of short films, so it feels in the spirit of things that as well as co-producing “The Astronomers Sun”, I also got stuck into the film making like everyone else.

After providing the screams for Henry, ‘the screaming producer’ seems to have stuck as my job title! However what people might not know is I am a drawn effects animator by trade. Back in 2001, I animated effects for another 4mations short film, the multi-award winning “How to Cope with Death”, directed by Ignacio Ferreras at Tandem Films. So I was proud to lend my expertise to “The Astronomers Sun”, climactic effects showstopper.

As a stop motion film, we were all keen that to ensure that the effects reflected the ethos and style of the hand crafted world. Digital effects tend to jar and look out of place in stop motion films. For “The Astronomers Sun”, we used a combination of effects elements, optical, miniature, drawn and digital, with many shots combining several techniques to achieve the final look.

The majority of the drawn animation elements I produced were used for the transformation sequence. Henry was filmed with an LED light in his chest and shot using a Vaseline filter which gave a wonderful rich glow. I added hand drawn sparks and vaporous smoke.

Before and after: TOP: The original stop motion footage, complete with an LED light and Vaseline filter, and ABOVE, the final composited image with hand drawn smoke and light particles.

One of over 700 tonal charcoal drawings made of the main smoke pass, all animated on 1’s.

The sparks and smaller smoke elements were animated with a wacom tablet straight into ToonBoom Animate Pro, which sped up the production work flow as well as making it possible to create incredibly rich painterly shots. The drawn smoke elements then went to Kevin Herbison who created mattes for the smoke interacting with Henry and other objects in the scene. Finally, all of these elements were exported and sent to Zoe Matzko in London for compositing in After Effects. What’s exciting in tackling drawn visual effects now is how much modern compositing has transformed the toolkit of possibilities of open to drawn effects artists. Zoe took all of these various layers and made them work together like one beautiful and seamless photograph.