I spent most of my last week at Encounters Short Film Festival 2008 in Bristol. Enjoyed myself as 'Keith Reynolds can't make it tonight' was screened in two of the short programmes and ended up gaining another special mention for the 4mations International Newcomer in Animation Award which was nice.


'The surprise demise of Francis Cooper's mother' also had his World Premier at the festival in the UKFC Digital Generation section but was not in competition. It was interesting to see the two films both in the same festival. I think 'Keith Reynolds' got one of his best reactions I've seen it have when I watched it on Tuesday. It's harder to tell what people thought of 'Francis Cooper', as it's a darker film in general and not as funny, but people who spoke to me before they saw it weren't too ashamed to come and speak to me afterwards so that is something.

I think maintaining an interesting blend between what is happening on screen and what you are hearing is something I need to work on. With 'Keith Reynolds' I think people like the fight scene (see preview) because of this. Looking at 'Francis Cooper' I notice scenes where the visuals don't add much or anything to driving the story and I could have thought of more interesting things to show. I had a problem with 'Keith Reynolds' in that I was contained to a side-on view of the building - with 'Francis Cooper' I was contained to six days of the week, visiting each character on each of those days - and so for my next film I'd like to make what I can show and when I can show it as unconstrained as possible.

I do think I learnt a lot visually making the film. I think in still form 'Francis Cooper' looks a lot nicer than 'Keith Reynolds' and I'm pleased with that because I didn't like reading write-ups about how ugly some people thought Keith was! Being able to feel comfortable feeling as though I can create nice visuals I can hopefully focus a bit better on what I'm going to show rather than how I'm going to achieve showing it - which should mean I can be a lot freer in what I make which somewhat helps to solve the problem I mentioned at the end of the previous paragraph.

Anyway, Encounters is over and I was happy to see 'Stand Up' by Joseph Pierce and 'Skhizein' by Jeremy Clapin win awards as I like those two films as lot. Well done.

Labels: festivals, Francis Cooper, keith reynolds, news, trips