South Australian production company Anifex picks up award at Santa Barbara International Film Festival for short film ‘Sleight of Hand’
South Australian Animation production house, Anifex and writer, director and animator, Michael Cusack (left) have received the “Bruce Corwin, Best Animation Award” for short animation film ‘Sleight of Hand’ at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in California.
The film has received much critical acclaim and this award is its best result to date.
The Santa Barbara Film Festival is one of the most respected Film Festivals in the world and Sleight of Hand’s success in this competition is particularly significant in that Santa Barbara is a “feeder” festival to the Academy Awards. To win this category means that
Sleight of Hand can now be considered for that honour.
The film has been seen in a few major Film Festivals in recent months and was in competition in the Austin Film Festival, Texas and is presently in competition in the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, both of which are Academy Award feeder festivals too. Sleight of Hand was also a nominee in the Best Short Animation category of the AACTA awards, held in Sydney last month.
Says Cusack: “Stop motion is such a time consuming and exacting art form, that it’s really great when your work is recognised in this way. When you are working on the film you are concentrating so hard on just getting it done that you tend not to think about what will happen to it once you have finished. It’s amazing to think that an audience half way around the world is watching your film and not only that, but think it’s worth awarding an honour such as this!”
Anifex is well known throughout the industry and are renowned for their animation of iconic advertising characters such as the wildly popular Schmackos television commercials. This all achieved through the art of stop motion, where a character (or puppet) is moved a tiny increment at a time and a frame is taken. It takes 24 moves like this to create one second of action when projected. At 9 mins and 48 seconds long, there were over 14,000 frames taken to realise the action in the short film.
The film makers are hopeful that this award will bring the film to the attention of many more people as it continues its festival run.
3 Comments
Great film. Bloody well done, Michael, Richard and the gang. You’re on your way to the Oscars now. Please wear your fez.
Proper animators, making proper films. Well done guys. A labour of love justly rewarded.
C’mon you Reds!