Call for Submissions: ANIMARKT Pitching, Branch of Polish Event ANIMARKT Stop Motion Forum, Extends 2018 Pitching Submission Deadline

Photo courtesy of Iwona Buchcic.

As of August 1st, 2018, ANIMARKT Pitching – a branch of ANIMARKT Stop Motion Forum, an annual puppet animation-centered conference based in Łódź, Poland, where producers, distributors, representatives of TV broadcasters, animators and other professionals in the stop motion industry share with those who attend the conference their experience and practical knowledge about working in animation industry, including pitching sessions, discussions, presentations, workshops, and individual face-to-face meetings, the first event of its kind in Central and Eastern Europe – has extended its pitching submission deadline for stop motion short film projects to August 5, 2018.

“We are excited by the substantial number of all submissions that have already been submitted. Nevertheless, in order to maximise the opportunity for creators to present themselves and their projects in front of professionals from many countries, we are pleased to extend the deadline for projects of stop motion shorts,” says Agnieszka Kowalewska, programmer of ANIMARKT Stop Motion Forum.

The regulations for pitching are as follows: The film being pitched must be at the development stage. It must not have a final runtime over over 26 minutes, and at least 80 percent of the film should be made with the technique of stop motion puppet animation. Projects may include animated shorts or television special episodes made with the use of puppet technique.

Furthermore, an additional asset of the project must include the artistic input of creators (Animation Director, Storyboard Author, Author of Artistic Designs, Composer, or an animator responsible for the realization of a significant part of the animation) from at least one of the following countries: Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Germany, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia. However, the event’s organizers welcome creators from all over the world.

The full list of pitching regulations are accessible on www.en.animarkt.pl/pitching. Applications are to be submitted by an online application form at: https://goo.gl/forms/jrbY9FSjEI0fmagJ3 until August 5th, 2018.

ANIMARKT Stop Motion Forum 2017. Photo courtesy of Iwona Buchcic.

From all the applications being sent, the Selection Committee will choose 15 projects which will be presented on October 11th, 2018 as part of Pitching during the ANIMARKT event. The selection committee includes: Agnieszka Niewadził (CeTA, Poland), Nikodem Szlęzak (CeTA, Poland), István Mráz (Mozinet Ltd., Hungary), Michal Podhradský (ASAF, Czech Republic), Andrej Gregorčok (Fest Anča International Animation Festival, Slovakia), Agnieszka Kowalewska-Skowron (MOMAKIN, Poland), and Paulina Zacharek (MOMAKIN, Poland). The pitching jury will be announced later this month.

The person responsible for presentation of the selected project will be provided with a hotel accommodation (7 nights) and a reimbursement of 80% of travel costs (up to EUR 150). Moreover, they will participate in two training sessions. The script session with Wim Vanecker – a producer, screenwriter, director, script consultant, and the project manager of European Short Pitch – will be organized in a form of individual meetings focused on a given participant’s projects. Training sessions with Nancy Denney-Phelps – an animation historian and journalist who cooperates with the prestigious AWN.com publishing group – will have a similar form. Nancy will conduct a training sessions that will aim at improving the participants’ skills connected with presenting projects.

Among the projects presented during the ANIMARKT event, the Pitching’s jury will select two main winners. Information concerning the awarded projects will be announced on October 13th, 2018 during the Closing Gala of the Łódź Animation Festival LAL.KA.

The prizes in the contest are the Audiovisual Technology Center contribution in kind in the amount of: 60.000 PLN (ca €14.000), 40.000 PLN (ca €9.300) and additional awards, such as accreditation to Mifa 2019 and sound post production including studio and sound engineer for 5 days (offered by Playade Sound Studio).

The organizer of ANIMARKT is MOMAKIN (www.momakin.pl) – a multi-tasking unit working for popularizing and propagating animation and supporting creators in Poland
and in international arenas. The partners of ANIMARKT include: Audiovisual Technology Center (CeTA) from Wroclaw which is also the founder of the awards for pitching winners, ASAF (Czech Republic), Mozinet (Hungary), Fest Anča International Animation Festival (Slovakia). ANIMARKT is partially funded by the International Visegrad Fund
and co-financed by the Polish Film Institute.

ANIMARKT Stop Motion Forum 2017. Photo courtesy of Iwona Buchcic.

ANIMARKT Stop Motion Forum – which includes ANIMARKT Pitching – will take place in Łódź, Poland from 8th to 13th October, 2018.

To learn more about ANIMARKT Stop Motion Forum you can visit their website by going here. For additional information concerning ANIMARKT Pitching, please email Iwona Buchcic, ANIMARKT PR and Marketing Manager, at i.buchcic@momakin.pl, or at +48 502 598 925.

You can stay tuned for upcoming interviews and articles by subscribing to Stop Motion Geek via the “subscribe” button at the top right corner of our homepage, by following us on our Facebook @StopMotionGeek, or by following us on our Instagram @stop.motion.geek.blog.

Comments

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 ...

Read full article »

Interview with Mark Smith, Director and Writer of Stop Motion Short Film, "Two Balloons"

A still from Two Balloons featuring the character of Elba. Photo courtesy of Mark Smith. As I sit, listening to Peter Broderick’s moving composition for piano More Of A Composition , I close my eyes and envisage an enormous funnel cloud skimming across the crystalline face of an ocean – the skies are murky and unusually dark, lightning crackles, spider-webbing across the darkened skies before then vanishing, and still, after its gone, an electricity continues to hum in the air and I simply know that it’s going to soon strike again. And as the scene presents itself to me, I suddenly feel something similar to what director Mark C. Smith felt when he saw the same image as he sailed to a small island called Grenada along with his wife in a timeworn sailboat. For him, in that moment inspiration struck, and the idea suddenly came to him for his heartfelt stop motion film, Two Balloons . For me, I open my eyes and feel as I did the instant Two Balloons ...

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. “...

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...

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...

Read full article »

Interview with Joseph Wallace, Director and Animator of Psychedelic, Cut-out Stop Motion Music Video for Canadian Artist Parker Bossley's "Chemicals"

Parker Bossley as seen in Chemicals . Photo courtesy of Joseph Wallace. “I think the thing I’ve always found wonderful about cut out animation is that it’s one of the most immediate forms of animation,” muses British stop motion animation director Joseph Wallace – currently based in Bristol, UK, where, in January of this year, he founded the stop motion studio Hangar Puppet Animation Studio – in discussion of the medium he employed in his most recent film – the surreal, psychedelic music video for Canadian artist Parker Bossley’s debut single, Chemicals , which has already won a Vimeo Staff Pick. Perhaps more than anything else – perfectly suiting the film’s subject matter –the style and medium allow to film to transcend to time itself, just as Wallace implies, undoubtedly allowing the film to become just that – immediate. Almost so much so one gets the feeling they’re clawing at air in search for a handle on reality as they fall…along with Bossley – also the film’s protagoni...

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

Read full article »

Interview with Chris Randall, Creative Director and Co-Founder of Second Home Studios

Chris Randall in the Mills & Reeve Innovation 50 list. Source: https://twitter.com/SecondHomeChris/status/904681346060230656 “I came to animation mainly from a point-of-view of blind curiosity,” Chris Randall—the creative director and co-founder of Second Home Studios, a Birmingham, United Kingdom-based, award-winning animation studio—tells Stop Motion Geek. “I’d always loved the medium but never took it seriously, or saw myself with a part to play in it. It wasn’t until after Uni that I realised I basically like tinkering and trying out new things, whilst at the same time telling stories. So, animation is a perfect fit for me.” First founded in 2004, Second Home Studios has garnered multiple BAFTA and Royal Television Society awards and nominations for many of the films in their diverse repertoire of artistic and commissioned projects, encompassing all styles of animation—from stop motion to CGI to 2D—as well as puppetry and mixed-media. In their fourteen-and-counting years...

Read full article »

Interview with Lucy J. Hayes, Producer of Stop Motion Love Story, "Lost & Found"

Knitsune in Lost & Found . Photo courtesy of Andrew Goldsmith. Ever since her childhood, Lucy J. Hayes – the producer of Lost & Found , an extraordinarily beautiful short film that make for a profound mediation on the impermanence and imperfection of life and beauty – she’s wanted to play some part in the creative industry, in some way, shape, or form. For Hayes, that dream went unquestioned. However, the challenge turned out to be figuring out quite where she belonged in the creative industry. “I dabbled in acting and directing, however, I was terrible!” Hayes tells Stop Motion Geek. It wasn’t until she began to put on plays with her friends in her adolescence and early adulthood that the answer to her search dawned upon her: All that Hayes found came innately to her – everything from her ardor for creative work to her love for working with creatives to bring an idea, the kernel of a story, to fruition – she found in the title of “producer.” Knotjira (left) and...

Read full article »

Interview with Niki Lindroth von Bahr, Director, Writer, and Animator of Stop Motion Short Film "Bath House"

In art as in life, when in the thick of something – a chain of, at times, loosely connected actions and consequences – it can be easy to miss “the point.” It’s often only in retrospect – the moment when one can contemplate, assessing and reassessing an event, whether mundane or abnormal – when one can discover meaning and a “point” to events in life as in art. When in the thick of something, things often feel commonplace, moments of actual weight sporadic, chaotic, and adrift, lost in the moment. Niki Lindroth von Bahr’s Bath House – a 15-minutes-long short film – perfectly captures these feelings of disorder and inconsequential consequence in the midst of the mundane and seemingly aimless. This mood is further accentuated in the film by a disquieting lack of a soundtrack, using dialogue only sparingly which perfectly accompanies Bahr’s incredibly lifelike puppets and animation, together harmonizing and bringing to life moments and an atmosphere that are rarely (if...

Read full article »

Stop Motion Geek

Search This Blog