On Monday last week I was informed there would be a trip on the Wednesday of that week. Stoke-Your-Fires was plied as a five day festival of the moving image. This year it was supposed to include film and digital media as well as its core subject; animation.
Animation has become a bit of an expletive among my friends as of late. It seems that we are being subjected to this more and more, Stoke-Your-Fires being a prime example of this. The first I heard was on Monday (apparently we had been told the previous week, but I was absent; probably filming or out taking pictures) and we would be going to a moving image 'festival'. My idea of festivals is a huge open space, lots of stalls, demos, people to talk to and of course lots of freebies! However it seemed it was more of a seminar, once the bus driver found where we were meant to be we were ushered into a large theatre.
The speaker (who's name, as usual escapes my poor memory) introduced a reel of winning short films and animations that had been entered previous to the festival. For me, it would have been nice to have been offered the chance to enter the competition too. It would have given me much more incentive...
The films weren't uninteresting necessarily, I enjoyed Save Our Bacon which was a short animation about a pig farmer who had been duped by a supermarket baron and was down to his last porker. Also, Entropy which won the best short film by a student. It was mostly the dialogue and the obvious difference between scientists and artists and a gifted young boy. "People are live other materials, the react depending on external conditions." And, "everything in life goes froma stage of order to a state of chaos," were two of the lines that really gripped my attention.
After the winning reel was shown we went off for some lunch, and I managed (for the second time in as many weeks) to swallow the metal ball from my tongue bar. This doesn't happen very often, thankfully and doesn't do you any harm it's more of an inconvenience really. Since I had put in my spare the week before I consulted my android phone for the nearest piercing studio and off we went. The first was a tattoo and piercing studio that didn't sell jewellery (?!) and so we were at a loss, seeing some police men, we decided to ask them. To their credit, they were very helpful and even radio'd HQ to ask someone there (who already had lots of tattoos) if they knew any shops nearby. With directions to a shop named Hedonistic we ventured futher into the depths of Stoke. I don't want to offend anyone who comes from Stoke but it seemed to be that everyone we walked past looked glum. It wasn't a rainy day, or even dull but the whole place seemed to eminate a feeling of melancholy. But enough with the Shakespearian rant, on with the show.
The shop was decorated in an industrial style and the man behind the counter was very imposing with his long dreads, multiple piercings and tattoos but he was very helpful and saved the day with his magic box of studs and bars.
After our little excursion into what I can only assume to be England's biggest consumer of anti-depressants, we returned to the museum for a panel talk by four people who work in various different parts of the animation world, which again would be informative if animation was your chosen career path. Although one of them mentioned that getting into a company as a runner was a good way to progress, which is a piece of advice I intend to (ok, attempt to) remember.
Finally, we finished the afternoon with a somewhat riveting talk by Griff Owen who works for Double Negative which deals in visual effects for films. His talk centered around Paul, a film about an alien. I wrote down pages and pages of notes on the talk, and really only learned that Avatar cost $751 million dollars to make.
The ride home would have been more enjoyable if it wasn't for the traffic. Not a complete waste of £15 but it's a good job I don't drink, as that would have been a missed night out....
Next up : Creative Futures.
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