In June I attended the Annecy International Film festival for the first time, and it was just as good as everyone assured me it would be! The setting itself was perfect - Annecy is a lovely little town, easy to find your way round (important for me as my sense of direction is beyond bad), with a nice lake, and a lovely old area with cobblestones and canals. The festival itself was fantastic. Lots of things going on, films, talks, gatherings etc. There was a great atmosphere, with everyone there to have a good time and share a love of animation.
I watched a lot of great films - and some pretty terrible ones! It was great to have the opportunity to watch films in other styles or from countries that I might not otherwise be able to see. It was fun to be a part of special events, like the European premier of Waking Sleeping Beauty with a Q&A afterwards with Don Hahn, Ron Musker and John Clements. I also attended a Dreamworks talk that went into the research and preparation they did for working on How to Train Your Dragon. It's always fun being shown video reference used for particular shots you recognize from the film, that you wouldn't otherwise get a chance to see.
Because there were so many people at Annecy this year (apparently a couple of thousand or so more than last year) I didn't get to see everything I wanted, but didn't feel that I missed out on too much, and there's always next year!
The other huge benefit of Annecy was getting to meet fellow AM students in person - some of whom I've seen around online, or been in class with, others who I'd never heard of but quickly made friends with! It's great just being able to turn up at an event like this and know that you already have a ready-made group of cool people to hang out with!
All in all it was a pretty fantastic week, and I'm already looking forward to next year!
So the week after Annecy was the last week of term, but I was quite behind due to my trip, so didn't finish the term as strongly as I would have liked.
So now we're just beginning Week 4 of Class 5. I can't quite believe that I'm about to embark on the final shot of my Animation Mentor experience. Guess I'd better try and make it a good one! It is scary that I'm nearly finished, and still don't feel particularly competent at this animation business. However, I've decided that I need to try and make the most of it before it's all over, and learn as much as I can. And while I may not feel confident about my animating skills, even I can see that I have made a huge improvement from when I first started just over a year ago!
So this week I'll be picking my 2 person dialogue, and starting to think about costumes and scenarios.
In the meantime I'll leave you with the latest pass of my monologue. Still some polishing up to be done, but I think it's getting there.
Monologue polishing phase from Sarah Knight on Vimeo.
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