Annecy 2010

Sorry about the lack of updates, lately, but we’ve been busy with Max's (our very special covert-ops specialist and businessman extraordinaire) trip to Ottawa’s animation festival. And we take this opportunity to remember our experiences in Annecy, earlier this year.

After working hard on our project, The Undertaker Chronicles, last May we received a little note that confirmed that we were selected for Creative Focus. It was our first time at Annecy, and it served as a sort of rite of passage for us as a studio. Many of the people we know today we met during the trip or because of it. It was an experience that made us grow at personal and professional levels, and it meant a huge victory on the establishment of our brand-name.

But you probably don’t care about those things. What you want to know is how the festival was, who we met, and what was going on in there. So, without further ado, let’s dive into our perceptions of the festival!

Upon arriving on Sunday we’ve got what we expected: a silent town subsumed in expectance. As in probably every little town in the world, Annecy sleeps on Sundays, with many of its stores closed and its people spending the last of their weekends inside their homes. The weather was fantastic the whole week through, though, so it was a great time to get familiar with the place and its surroundings. Starting with Monday, the story flips completely over.

Students, fanatics, journalists and people from inside the industry (independent or not) from all over the world gather around Annecy to get to know each other, learn the business’ drills, make deals or simply to see what’s new. Animation may seem like a smaller industry when compared to film or music, but it sure doesn’t feel that way when you try to buy a ticket at Annecy. Anything film-wise we’ve seen throughout the festival deserves a deeper comment than the ones I can make on the tolerable length of one post, so I’ll just mention the ones that caught most of our attention.

And it was also a special year to be an Argentine lost in Annecy, because our country was honored in the festival as a way to celebrate the bicentennial anniversary of our first independent government. There were many sections dedicated to pay tribute that ranged from publicity animation to retrospectives and projections of Argentinean feature films. Among the people we found there was Juan Pablo Zaramella, Santiago Bou Grasso from El Empleo fame, Juan Antin with Mercano, Claudio Iriarte, the Faivre Brothers, Tatanka Animation Studios, the guys from L’Orange Gutan (Gluko & Lennon), October the Cat and many, many more. Everything was organized by INCAA and the team from Caloi en su tinta, who were presenting their feature film ¡Ánima Buenos Aires!

Most of our first days we spent watching movies. On Monday we got to watch Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox and, yes, it is everything you should expect about a children’s film directed by Wes Anderson. It was on the grande salle, and we got to witness the tradition of the paper planes for the first time with our own eyes. We also got to see a selection of shorts, some of them pretty amazing. Tuesday we began with the first meetings, before the mercadi was officially open. We still got some time to go through the school’s and studio’s booths. Martina caught a glimpse of Waking Sleeping Beauty, and told us some very interesting things about the movie. I hope to see it soon and share my own opinion. At night there was a party at a palace to celebrate the inauguration of the mercadi. Everyone was super relaxed and having a good time. And that’s when everything changed.

 

On Wednesday, with the mercadi officially opened, the meetings came in cavalcades. Our leisure time was almost over, and the breaks we took we spent them at the lake, visit the palaces or sneak into some conferences. You could find tons and tons of students with sketchbooks under their arms or, if you were lucky, things like Silverman playing with a band on a street and Peter Lord dancing to it. Thursday Max gave the official pitching of our project. There were a couple of producers here and there, but most of the people attending are there to pitch projects themselves. We must say, though, that the moderator of the event deserves a special kind of congratulation for all the positive energy he had during the whole process. Hands down, one of the persons with the bestest attitude we’ve ever met.

All-Star pitching Max.

Friday was almost like Wednesday, but at the end of the day we met with Silas, from Cartoon Network. The booths were being disassembled earlier because everyone was expecting to watch the French team’s debut on the World Cup. We were losing all hopes of finding Silas among the rubbles, but then he came along and invited us to a bar. He was even nice enough to invite us the first round of beers! We drank with moderation, because at night we had the INCAA party at a bowling club. It was pretty bizarre to be eating Argentinean empanadas among people like Bill Plympton and Matt Groening. That’s also where we met David Sproxton and Peter Lord from Aardman and, even though the motto of the party was “NO BUSINESS TONIGHT”, we squeezed a reunion for the next day.

So on Saturday we had breakfast and lunch (not brunch, seriously) with the Aardman Brothers. Our projects weren’t the kind of things they’re used to work with, but they were kind enough to hear us anyway. Then Silas came along, sat with us and the conversation moved on to other work venues. After that, we met we met with Pablo Navarro y Pedro Bumblebaum, that were signing copies of Animation Insiders. We got our own autographs ;).

Animation Insiders crew + Disney's visual development artist (and amazingly nice guy) Bill Perkins. Photo courtesy of Issam Zejlay.

That’s more less our version of the story. Yes, it’s a little short on what films were up to be seen, but we wanted to give you our version of the facts rather than a string of reviews. There is absolutely no way to be just to everyone in such a brief space. We’d like to thank the people of Ecat that seemed to be everywhere and congratulate our Argentinean collegues from cancanclub for their film, Teclopolis (still wondering if it’s a wordplay on “Peludópolis”, by legendary Quirino Cristiani). We also loved Mario Rulloni and Pablo Zaramella’s pixilation that was filmed in record time and shows you around Annecy. Check it out; it’s next best thing to actually being there, and a little bit more cartoony and fast paced. Just a little bit.

David Silverman, Nik and Rolf Baechler playing. Peter lord grooving.  Photo courtesy of Sprockets.