Animated Travels

The Princess and the Frog to play a key role at Red Stick in April.

Reported by Joe Strike

Back in the pre-digital, pre-xerographic days of Disney animation, the Ink and Paint department was responsible for tracing the animators’ pencil drawings onto acetate cels and filling those transparent images with color. Technological advances rendered hand inking and painting a thing of the past, but the name lived on in 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit as the Ink and Paint Club, an after-hours honky-tonk where the ‘toons’ entertained Hollywood bigwigs.

There’s a new Ink and Paint Club in town, the town being Baton Rouge Louisiana, and the ‘Club’ the outreach arm of the city’s Red Stick International Animation Festival to the local business community. On January 16 the Ink and Paint Club held its premiere luncheon with Walt Disney Animation Studio’s Emily Hoppe on hand as the guest of honor. Hoppe, the studio’s senior manager of creative marketing outlined the role Disney and The Princess and the Frog, the studio’s first 2D animated film in five years, will play at Red Stick’s April festival.

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Tired Sundancers

Written by Cam Christiansen

If I haven’t been returning calls or emails over the last few days you will soon know why.  As the festival is winding down my wife and I are on a mission to pack in as much as we can. I have a short film in the festival this year and feel like we need to give it our all (can always sleep when we get home). It’s time to take off the gloves switch off the phones and hit the streets!  Here is a rundown of our last gasp trying to soak it all up.  If you are in a rush power scroll / skim through this info and use the ratings system to stop as you like.

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sex, lies, and videotape director and cast celebrate the 20th anniversary of their landmark indie feature.

written by Cam Christiansen

I am sitting in the filmmakers lounge at Sundance headquarters watching the historic inauguration of Barack Obama.  I am amongst a crowd of filmmakers, and there is a clear sense of hope and relief that this day has arrived.  Cheers and boos accompany politicians as they show on TV (take a wild guess who gets the boos). It’s an event that rightfully will overshadow the Sundance film festival but fitting when thinking about the 20th anniversary screening yesterday of sex, lies and videotape, by Steven Soderbergh, as a celebration of the 25th anniversary of Sundance.

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Cam gets his chance to meet Sundance Buddha Robert Redford

written by Cam Christiansen

I just got back from the Directors brunch at the Sundance institute approximately one hour out of Park City Utah.  I was one of the lucky, being a director/animator for a short in this year’s festival called The Real Place, produced by the National Film Board of Canada.

This brunch is for many one of the highlights of the festival and though we went last year it was equally exceptional and inspiring. It is a wonderful way to get to know some of the best filmmakers in the world and hear what is on peoples mind.

I spent the morning chatting with Max Maye a director of a movie called Adam from L.A. via New York. We spent the hour riding up on the bus through spectacular winter scenery. Along the way he gave me tips on screenwriting and talked about the wonders of digital technology and its impact on filmmakers especially with the advent of the newer HD cameras. (His movie was shot in HD.)

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Writer/director Adam Elliot and producer Melanie Coombs talk with the press at the Sundance Film Festival.

written by Cam Christiansen

The opening night selection of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, Mary and Max is a clayograph (a claymation biography hybrid) feature film from Academy Award winning writer/director Adam Elliot and producer Melanie Coombs, featuring the voice talents of Toni Collette, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Humphries and Eric Bana.

Opening night at Sundance is very charged and frenetic after navigating the flights, shuttles and complex waters of trying to get into the much coveted opening night film at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.  We were so frantic to get tickets that it was a relief to actually sit down in the Eccles theatre.  After high five-ing ourselves for making it with one minute to spare we focused our attention on the nights screening of Mary and Max. It seems everyone was relieved to be there including the director who reflected on the surreal nature of being there having “just” finished the film.

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