This year’s Bang! Festival at Broadway is going to be a good one - we’re already looking forward to it… Spread over 3 days, and celebrating it’s 10th birthday, we just can’t wait!
We’re sorry to say our blog has been quiet lately. We’ve been super busy working on loads of exciting projects that we really want to write about, but we just haven’t had time! We’re hoping to catch up with things a bit now by adding a jumble of projects, old and new…
Apologies to our two readers (us) for the lack of any updates for geological ages - we’ve been excruciatingly busy with so many projects. What this will mean though, is lots more photos and videos to add very soon.
Speaking of which:
We’ve been trying to use blogs as a way to document projects and get schools to share and talk about what they’re doing. You can see how the experiment unfolds at the Creswell Roots site and Fountaindale Art Blog.
It’s a lot of work trying to keep everything updated, but it has been good to get things up online right away - hopefully the schools will take things further and we can take a rest!
Don’t miss Bang! This weekend - 28th and 29th November - a festival bursting with loads of different films from all over the place… Young and old, local and national - film makers, film fans and friends will be gathered at Broadway Cinema on Saturday and Sunday - 28th and 29th of November.
Ok, we didn’t post the above in time for the film festival but… We had another wonderful weekend at Bang! these last 2 days. There’s such a good atmosphere at this event - everyone is there to support each other. Metric tonnes of local talent, the young peoples screening was grand as usual, and the animation section was a standout for us again - incredible quality. There’s just a real feeling of… Energy! We always come away inspired! And embarressed into working harder!
We had a few things showing: Put It Out, by pupils at the Bolsover school, Clean Up Your Act, made with Ambleside Primary and Leila’s film about Timmy McCoy - a really special one for us as we met Leila at the last Bang! in April…
Thanks Max, Donna, Adam, and everyone else for supporting us…
We are often asked to work creatively with curriculum subjects. Recently Newtons Walk pupils were learning about the Victorians, and we were excited to bring their lessons to life with animation!
Ideas of the past became real - thoughts of hot air balloons, Victorian explorers, steam engines and crazy inventions were captured in an animated film, when pupils used drawing, collage, colour, light and shadow to make an old fashioned looking film about what went on 100 years ago!
Our regular work in Newtons Walk PRU is organised by QUAD.
Just a quick note about something new that happened for us before the summer.
During the last Bang! film festival we were introduced to Leila, a student at a local school, and a talented artist. She was very forward thinking in organizing her own work placement, and one of the festival organizers pointed us out, thinking we’d be able to help. We thought it was a great idea! Something we hadn’t tried before which seemed like it could be an interesting challenge.
So after submitting to an interview for the school, it was agreed that Leila would work with us for 3 days on one of our projects.
Well, we just wanted to say what a positive experience it was for us! Leila was incredibly helpful, thoughtful and typically unfazed by a bellowing primary school class with earsplitting home-made musical instruments. A consummate professional.
It’s certainly something we’d like to do again, so if anyone is reading this (anyone???) - schools, pupils, parents - and is looking for (what we hope would be) an interesting work placement then we would love to help if we can.
A while ago we were asked to make a film for young people (linked to The Big Spring Clean), that could help to highlight the problems that litter can cause. Residents in Aspley, Nottingham, had been talking about their concerns of rubbish on the streets, this is the result…
When Paul and Laura in Children’s Services first got in touch, we quickly decided that the film would need to balance a strong positive message about litter with lots of fun and excitement. Who wants to watch a film that lectures them about dropping litter and getting a fine?!
So, a story took shape - inspired by a fairy tale - that would include local members of Streetscene (the good folks who try their best to keep our streets looking tidy even if we don’t), Community Protection Officers, working alongside young people to combat evil animated litter characters! The whole thing is supposed to be about the community working together.
The next step was getting stuck in with the Eco Team at Ambleside Primary school, to make the film - it was brilliant fun. The four days that we spent with them were incredibly busy, crammed full of loads of activities; to draw and design backgrounds for the scenes, teach them about the basics of stop motion animation, get the rubbish and it’s facial expressions moving, and to record sound effects and character voices.
This, combined with one day of filming the live-action stuff with all the humans in, gave us a huge amount of editing to do! Slowly, one by one, we have built up the layers of the film - the backgrounds first, which we overlaid with the live-action sequences, followed by the animated rubbish and it’s expressions, and lastly the sound, voices and music too. Phew! (It’s also our first experiment with filming in high definition, see it in HD here.)
It’s hard for us to watch the film now - we’ve seen it so many times, and we still see things we’d like to change - could it be faster or brighter? We wish that we could have got some people from other ethnic backgrounds in there too, that’s what Nottingham is like, a real mix. Still, we’re really proud of what everyone did and how hard they worked.
Please share this film, we hope you’ll enjoy it and that it might make you laugh, but litter on our streets is pretty serious, it’s smelly, ugly, inconsiderate… Just not good at all! Can you clean up your act?
Thanks to Ambleside Primary School, Mr Forshaw, and last years’ Eco Team, also to the actors - Anthony, Bianca, Kara, Jake, Phil, Craig and Ian, and to those behind the scenes - Lee-Anne, Laura and Paul.
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