Recently in competition Category

The finished films from the WAM! BAM! competition can now be seen online.

Here's the winning film 'Kokarokadoo' plus 'Spermicide', 'Bee Titlated', 'Life Cycle of Bertram Beetle' and 'Crouching Tiger, Squatting Gorilla'

The animation is well underway with five teams in the game.   The team comprising Gareth Lockett, Lisa Evans and Lindsay Fleay have de-camped to the Interzone Office, while four teams remain at the FTI Animation Centre.

Two are working in flash, one in stop motion and and the other in motion capture 3D.    It's a busy hub of activity as models are made, sets are built, sensors are calibrated, sounds are recorded and stylus furiously draw over Wacom tablets.

The second annual Wam! Bam! competition is underway and this year there are five teams of animators competing.   The challenge is to create a short animation in just 49 hours.   it would be 48 hours but daylight savings ends on Sunday morning, so everyone gets an extra hour.

Each team is given three randoms words as a source of inspiration.   Tonight the teams have been brainstorming ideas and begun planning production.   Some teams are doing stop motion, others flash animation, some 3D animaiton and one group is set up for motion capture.

We'll be posting some regular updates over the weekend.   You can also read updates on the FTI Twitter account.

  

Scottish Screen have released a new helpful handbook 'You've Got It Made', the inside word on what to do once you've finshed your film.   Yes, it's a free guide to short film distribution.    

Last year we hosted an online discussion on this topic, you can check out the posts here.

As the hours drag on, the questions starts to be asked, "We we finish on time?", as we past the half way point teams began to reaccess their ambitions.   

Lisa Evans in 'The Damned' Team provided a great moment of comic releif as her 3D character had continual problems keeping his pants on.  

The Mapability team are wokring out of their Subiaco offices, but we checked in on them  and heard that they too were falling a little behind schedule, which was great relief to hear for the other competitiors.

The Pixel Monkey team has spent some time in the sound booth recording sound for their project.   Gareth Lockett displayed an previously undiscovered talent as a sound artist.

The WAM BAM 49 hour animation competition commenced last night.   The idea behind this is simple, 4 teams of animators have from friday night until Sunday night to make a short animation.  

We began the evening with a brain hurting discussion about the end of daylight saving, which is scheduled to occur during the competition, did it give us an hour less of time or an hour extra.   Eventually we worked out that it was in the animators favour, they got an hour extra.

The session began with each team choosing three words out of a hat, when creating their animation the teams will have to use the three words are their creative starting point.   The first team is the Pixel Monkey's comprising Gareth Lockett and Kerry Jean Watson from Raging Pixel, their three words are 'bun', 'gem' and 'wacky'.   The second team is from local animation company Mapability who pulled the words 'bum', 'battle' and 'wart'.   Third is line was the team named 'Tim is Late' who scored the words 'band', 'aim' and 'waffle'.   The final team named 'The Damned' will be working with the words 'barricade', 'album' and 'water'.

The teams began brainstorming ideas and concepts immediately.   There was manic scribbling and drawing, storyboards and character designs began to appear within a few hours.

The animators will be working in the Animation Centre between 9am and 10pm on Saturday and during the day on Sunday, if your in Fremantle drop in and visit us.

Here's some news from the shorts film festival,

Online entries now open.

There’s a flurry of activity as SHORTS Film Festival gets ready for take off to London! In a significant partnership with UK’s leading short film festival, a selection of SHORTS Film Festival entries will be showcased for the first time at Rushes Soho Shorts Festival in London in 2008. It’s a big win for SHORTS and our filmmakers whose works will be seen by major international film sindustry figures and backers.

For a chance at this not-to-be-missed, extraordinary opportunity, filmmakers are urged to get their entries in by the 14 March 2008 early submission deadline. Entries are open to filmmakers across Australia with a short film entry of no longer than 20 minutes in length, in any genre.

Attracting high quality short films from around Australia, SHORTS Film Festival champions cinematic storytelling at its best. The competitive national festival offers one of the richest prize pools in the country including a coveted first prize trip to the prestigious Cannes Film Festival as well as the opportunity to be selected for screening at the iconic Shorts Outback Festival in Parachilna and Rushes Soho Shorts

Festival in the UK, in the lead up to the 2008 SHORTS Film Festival at the historic Queen’s Theatre in Adelaide.

So download an entry form at www.shortsfilmfestival.com and get your entries in by the 14 March 2008 early submission deadline or the final deadline of 1 August 2008.