Skip to main content

Montreal Stop Motion Film Festival Announces This Year's Guests!

This year, for its 6th edition, the Montreal Stop Motion Film Festival (September 26-28th) will be featuring some of the most outstanding names and projects in the business including an inside, in-depth, BTS for Laika's The BoxTrolls!  Laika will deliver a special presentation and Stoopid Buddy Stoodios may show up for a while...

Anyway, featured below is your fix on the MSMFF breaking news...

VIP Access to LAIKA Studios and Behind-The-Scenes of The Boxtrolls



LAIKA (Portland, Oregon USA) is, without a doubt, one of the most ambitious, creative, and courageous stop-motion studios in the world. They specialize in feature-length and short animated films, as well as commercials. The studio has produced two OSCAR NOMINATED stop motion films: ParaNorman (2012) and Coraline (2009).

During their special presentation, you will discover the remarkable creativity of LAIKA, with a look at their latest project The Boxtrolls (in theatres 26 Sept. 2014), and be able to meet the original puppets from the production.

For more information: www.laika.com.




Special Presentation of Robot Chicken with Alex Kramer




Now in production of its seventh season, Robot Chicken has received remarkable world-wide success. In 2014, in order to grow its audience and charm local viewers, Teletoon aired the French version of the series during their adult programming. For the Festival’s 6th edition, we are excited to have Alex Kramer, director of animation on Robot Chicken, reveal the inner-workings of this popular series.

Alex Kamer graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a degree in film and video. After graduation, Alex decided to pursue a career in animation. In 2005 he began to intern at Shadow Machine, working on the second season of Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken. Alex started working a stop-motion character animator on such shows as Robot Chicken, Moral Orel, Frankenhole, and Titan Maximum. Alex is currently the animation director on the seventh season of Robot Chicken at Stoopid Buddy Stoodios. He also teaches character animation classes, and has directed episodes of Dinosaur Office and Mad’s Spy vs. Spy. In 2013 he wrote, directed, and animated his own film, The Well.


•••

CALL FOR ENTRIES


Have you forgotten to submit your film to the MSMFF? There is still time! The call for entries closes on  June 20th, 2014.

If your film was produced after 2011, it is not too late to submit it. Check the submitsection of our website, for answers to all your questions about eligibility and submission formats. Take note, submission is free!



•••

PREPARE YOUR VISIT TO MONTREAL


Nouvel Hotel and Spa

The MSMFF is proud to be associated with the Nouvel Hotel and Spa. Located in the heart of downtown Montreal and right by Concordia University’s J.A. de Seve Cinema, the hotel is situated ideally for your weekend with us. And once again this year, the hotel willbe offering to festivalgoers rooms at a preferential rate.

For reservations, please contact David Ton, and specify that you are requesting the MSMFF rate:

    David Ton, Nouvel Hôtel et Spa
    Email : dton@lenouvelhotel.com
    Phone : 1-514-931-8841 ext.2683
    Toll Free : 1-800-363-6063

For more information and for a virtual tour, visit www.nouvelhotel.com



•••

NEW PROMO VIDEO



We are excited to present the new festival trailer, directed by the excellent stop motion director, Trevor Hardy. Trevor is a filmmaker from West Sussex, UK. His films Pushkin (2009) and Captain Orrible in Something Strange Happened (2012) were part of our programming in 2012 and 2013. In fact, Pushkin received the award for Best Independent Film 2012. The MSMFF is honoured to be working with this talented director to promote our mutual love of stop motion.

 
Trevor Hardy
FoolHardy films
www.foolhardyfilms.com



•••


BECOME A FESTIVAL PARTNER


We are always on the lookout for new sponsors!

Interested in donating to the coolest festival in town?
Write to us at info@stopmotionmontreal.com
and discover what the festival can offer for your involvement.


The MSMFF Partners with GUMBY Fest!




Last year for our 5th edition, we had a memorable visit from Gumby and Pokey, accompanied by the creator's son, Joe and his wife Joan. This year, the MSMFF is very pleased to be a partner of the Gumby Fest held on June 14, 2014 in Glendora, Califonia.

We invite you to visit the Gumby Fest website for all details on their program and guests:
http://gumbyfest.net/




The MSMFF Partners with the Toronto Animation Arts Festival Internation to present:

THE BOXTROLLS - Behind The Scenes - Case Study
June 16, 2014, 12 pm at Corus Quay, Toronto
LAIKA board artists Vera Brosgol leads a lovely talk about LAIKA studios latests stop motion feature BOXTROLLS, set to be released later this fall. Painstakingly animating a complex puppet frame by frame takes days to do one second of animation sometimes. Hear what it’s like to work at LAIKA on exciting films with tight deadlines under hot lights with tons of puppets, one frame at a time.


•••

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Aardman Co-Founder David Sproxton's Tips for Success in the Animation Industry, Part 1 (of 3): 3 Pre-Production Tips

Aardman founders David Sproxton (left) and Peter Lord (right) standing in front of Wallace & Gromit set for Variety (Photo by Charlie Gray) “It all started at a kitchen table,”  says co-founder of Aardman Animations, David Sproxton,  about the beginning of his career in animation, “Pete [Peter Lord] and I met as schoolkids….Pete and I got to be great mates and we started playing and thinking up stories. I was always interested in photography and kind of, I guess, the process thing about films….One day we got out the Bolex, stuck it up on a stand and actually just cut images out of color supplements. We’d obviously watched programs like  Vision On , which obviously used a plethora of styles. Cut out is the easiest thing to do. We didn’t really understand cel animation or actually how you drew stuff. We just moved stuff around and did stuff with chalk drawings.” Earlier this year, Aardman, in celebration of the 40th anniversary of their studio,  released a ...
Post a Comment
Read full article »

Vincent & Puppet Scales

Tim Burton's Vincent  is a masterpiece; the short was animated by the brilliant Stephen Chiodo .  I do love that the short was shot in black and white film, ask any true film-lover and
Post a Comment
Read full article »

Interview with Samuel Lewis - Animator, Character Designer, and Sculptor on Stop Motion Short Film, "Lost & Found"

Knotjira, a clumsy dinosaur made of wool, as seen in Lost & Found . Photo courtesy of Andrew Goldsmith. “If I had to pick a starting point for my career as a stop motion animator I would have to say it was my obsession as a six year old with a book called ‘Playing with Plasticine’ by Barbara Reid,” Samuel Lewis – a London-based stop motion and 2D animator and director, whose most recent labor of love can be seen in his contribution to the Australian stop motion short film, Lost & Found – tells Stop Motion Geek. Upon reflection, Lewis explains that his love for the medium of stop motion began very early in life, and has merely managed to burn ever brighter in his fervor to master the craft. “I would spend countless hours fixated on sculpting tiny snails, fruit bowls and dinosaurs to the point where I would stay inside on family holidays sculpting a surfer in a beach scene rather than going to the actual beach that was only a short walk away,” Lewis recalls wistfully. “...
Post a Comment
Read full article »

Interview with Kangmin Kim, Director of Stop Motion Short Film, "Deer Flower"

Kangmin Kim animating the dream sequence from Deer Flower . Photo courtesy of Kangmin Kim. The experience of childhood is something like existing within a waking dream. In childhood, as in particularly vibrant dreams, the distinct and unique experience presents itself to simply exist in each moment without explanation or reflection – to become fully and wholly enveloped in each and every moment, the option of operating outside of which is somehow nonexistent. In that special time in one’s life, moments simply are . And yet, childhood, like dreams, is a fragile and temporary reality. It’s not until one “wakes” from childhood, by entering adulthood, that one can reflect upon and appreciate the past and, in retrospect, realize just how odd and unusual certain experiences might have actually been. Korean filmmaker and animator Kangmin Kim captures this feeling beautifully in his outstanding short film Deer Flower . Deer Flower tells the semi-autobiographical of auteur Kangmin...
Post a Comment
Read full article »

Interview with Nadine Buss, Cinematographer on Oscar® Nominated Stop Motion Short Film "Negative Space"

One of the surreal flashback scenes from Negative Space . Source: Vimeo. “These are my guidelines for lighting,” Nadine Buss, the cinematographer of the Oscar®-nominated short film Negative Space , tells Stop Motion Geek, “feel, re-explore sensations,” she says, only to then lightheartedly add, “and remember the lights you saw.” Feel . If Buss’s creative fingerprint on Negative Space  could be described in just one word, it would be just that. A beautiful and heart wrenching story, Ru Kuwahata and Max Porter’s Negative Space  – a stop motion short film based on a poem of the same title by Ron Koertge – is, in many ways, one story presented as two: One half of the narrative is of a young man – Sam – as he packs a suitcase for travel before then driving to the funeral home where his late father’s viewing is being held. It’s a narrative colored by Buss in the hard, icy light of winter, which contrasts sharply with the sunny, warm light in which the second story is pa...
Post a Comment
Read full article »

Behind the Scenes of "Robocop 2" at Tippett Studios and how "Jurassic Park" Changed Special Effects Forever

A depressingly large percentage of Hollywood movies boast a gratuitous amount of potential and possibility and yet, for one reason or another, often fall far, far too short to live up to the films they seem to have the potential of being. Although it’s a shame that many of these films have a stupendous level of production value and talent but are often often overlooked, as production value and talent are seen as secondary and supplementary to a quality story – the special effects work done on such second-rate films sadly go unrecognized the most often. An immutable fact stands strong – mediocre films, no matter the level of talent and amount of time poured into producing their special effects, are seen and remembered as nothing but wasted potential…or worse. Yet few box office bombs have had special practical effects work as groundbreaking, especially in the stop motion realm, and yet unfortunately remains unrecognized in every respect than the 1990 film Robocop 2 , both an irrefutabl...
Post a Comment
Read full article »

Interview with Heather Colbert, Filmmaker Behind The Music Video for Tom Rosenthal’s “How Have You Been?”

Hypnos looking on at the moon. Photo courtesy of Heather Colbert. “After talking with Tom, I just let the track play, while I drew or noted down ideas that came into my head,” Heather Colbert—a Bristol-based animator and filmmaker—tells Stop Motion Geek about the origins of her newest project: creating, almost single-handedly, the music video for English singer-songwriter Tom Rosenthal’s “How Have You Been?”—a haunting and beautiful acapella piece off his latest album, Z-Sides . “He told me the album was about sleep and so the images that came to me were of nocturnal and natural things. I also saw a connection in the beautiful lyrics to a character living with mental health issues, especially in the line ‘I woke up, but it didn’t go away’. So I began to see a creature trying their best to get on with their task, but being hindered by the fear of the world that they inhabit.” Hypnos (left) and Shadow (right) in the film. Photo courtesy of Heather Colbert. The third musi...
Post a Comment
Read full article »

Boinx's iStopMotion for iPad Review

Before I jump into the review i'm going to say that Boinx is not paying me to do this review and the following is my personal opinion only .  With that being said let's get to it shall we? Before we get into it I would like to show you some clay test animation that I made with iStopMotion... Untitled from SMG on Vimeo . The first thing that shows up when you open iStopMotion is a quick Stop Motion video which runs you through the key features of the app for instance: the capture button, playback, and adjusting your camera settings.  Let me say that this video is of the poorest quality of animation, it's just terrible.  But, if you stop to think about it, there is a good explanation for this; my guess is that Boink doesn't want beginners to look at animation that is the equivalent of Coraline and comparing their own work to it. This app itself is very straightforward.  Directly below the welcome video is a plus button which if you tap creates a new proje...
Post a Comment
Read full article »

King Kong [1933]

Yes, it's back to the olden days, back when the idea of Stop Motion was the brainchild of Willis O' Brien.   King Kong , is the most influential movie in history as far as I'm concerned.  Willis O' Brien, was born on March 2, 1886 in Oakland, California.  He did run away at the age of 13 but, as most do after running away, returned at the age of 17.  Now into the Stop Motion aspect of it all.  Finding himself with some time to kill one afternoon,
Post a Comment
Read full article »

Interview with Bradley Slabe, Co-Director of Stop Motion Love Story, "Lost & Found" (Part 1/2 of Interview with "Lost & Found" Directors)

Knotjira (foreground) and Knitsune (background) in Lost & Found . Photo courtesy of Andrew Goldsmith. The true essence of art – a reflection of life itself – is very much akin to the Japanese aesthetic of “wabi-sabi”: it’s imperfect, impermanent, and, at times, profoundly...incomplete. It is both at once a fundamental truth, and, curiously, more often than not, a thing incredibly hard to acknowledge, to make peace with. Yet perhaps our resistance is justifiable, for once we admit that the world is full of unknowns – unknowns that aren’t ideal, that aren’t perfect – we are just as soon confronted with the actualization of a deep, intrinsic, and very human fear: the fear of a future full of...unknowns that aren’t ideal, that aren’t perfect. Yet it’s the confrontal of that fear that is the most terrifying reality of all, for the moment we make peace with it we have just as soon have acknowledged that our paths in life aren’t in our own hands, or something we can contro...
Post a Comment
Read full article »