We are delighted to announce that The Astronomers Sun picked up it's 17th award this month at the New Mexico Women in Film, TV and Media Festival for Best Editing! Now while our co-writer/director Jessica Cope is a woman through and through, our editors, Adam Kirk and Dave Long both happen to be men, which shows just how progressive this festival really is!! The importance of the editing process in an animated film is often overlooked, so I'm thrilled that Adam and Dave has been given this recognition for their dedicated and inspired work on the film.
The 17th award marks a milestone for us and our partners at Screen Yorkshire.
Sally Joynson, Chief Executive of Screen Yorkshire says, ‘’We’re delighted to congratulate the team behind ‘The Astronomer’s Sun’, with this 17th award, making it one of the two most successful short films ever funded by Screen Yorkshire. It’s a phenomenal achievement for the filmmakers, but comes as no surprise as it truly is a stunning animation and a fantastic example of the home-grown filmmaking talent that hails from Yorkshire’’.
Camilla Deakin, Executive Producer at Lupus Films for Channel 4 said, "From its inception it was clear that Directors Jessica Cope and Simon Cartright had a singularity of vision which translated very powerfully on to the screen and resulted in a moving and mysterious film.’
It is in the editing process that a filmmakers vision is tested, refined, and boiled down and no more so than on The Astronomers Sun. We brought senior drama editor, Dave Long in early on in the scriptwriting stage, to create the animatics for the film. As a drama editor, Dave was able to bring his huge experience of cutting drama and offer practical help to Simon and Jess who were wrestling with in the script in those early days. These animatics in effect replaced the scripts our our primary tool in refining the story, which of course has no dialogue. These animatics were sent to our script consultant and executive producers in the 3 incarnations of the film we created with storyboards, temp music and effects, before being green-lit for production.
From there, Adam Kirk, took over the reigns, first in the capacity of assistant editor, but quickly rising to editor steering the film through production and into post for broadcast and festival exhibition worldwide. Not only did Adam contribute enormously to the visual storytelling of the film, he was also responsible for the stunning HD prints for cinema and web. Originally commissioned in SD, back when SD was the standard delivery format, Adam championed HD for us, and created a production pipeline to do just that. Thanks to Adam, The Astronomers Sun was one of the first short films to be mastered in the latest cinema format, DCP. Adam is now an in-house editor at Reef Television in London.To discover more about the process of editing "The Astronomers Sun", you can read this fascinating interview with Adam Kirk.
