Nishith Takia, Shelley Page (picnic host) and Michael Rose

Matt Groening and Lou Beauchard

Matt Groening and (picnic host) Biren Ghose

Lou Beauchard, Nick Park

Vrej Kassouny, me

Annecy Day 4

Sorry for the delay, a few days late I know but I've been unable to get online.

Friday 11^th June 2010

Last full day here spent working at MIFA in the morning where I finally met Jackie Edwards from the BBC (Cbeebies). She gave me some other useful BBC contacts.

Spoke briefly with Anthony Utley from Live Frame Studios and we are looking forward to talking more back home.

Most of the afternoon was spent at the annual DreamWorks / Technicolor / Autodesk picnic in the park. Met our generous hosts Biren Ghose from Technicolor in Bangalore, India and Shelley Page, DreamWorks. This picnic is for me the most important gathering of the festival as the key companies and individuals are invited and the party begins. I met dozens of people including most of the people mentioned so far along with Kerry Drumm my ex-colleague and good friend. She and husband Steve are emigrating to Oz in a few months – she will be missed by many in the UK.

Matt Groening and David Silverman turned up, everyone’s cameras came out again.

Other festival folk I met include:

Expo Toons – Buenos Aires

Vrej Kassouny, 'ReAnimania' – Yerevan International Animation Festival, Armenia

Fredrikstad Animation Festival, Norway

Animayo – Canary Islands

Also, production companies:

My friend and ex-Aardman colleague Michael Rose from Magic Light Pictures in London, Producer of the multi-award winning ‘The Gruffalo’. (I’m very pleased to see ‘The Gruffalo’ picked up the Annecy award this year for Best TV Special - well deserved).

Bryant Whittle from the UK

Nishith Takia from Krayon Pictures, India

Emma McGonigle and Sophie Trainor from MPC in London. Sophie I’ve known for years from the days when she ran the superb London Effects and Animation Festival.

Back at the Bonlieu cafe I bumped into Dimitri Granovsky, Director of the top quality Georges Melies School of Animation and Vis. FX in Orly, France. He’s going to kindly look into sourcing a few films for one of my programmes.

After dinner with Nick, Angie and Lou I met up with Darren Walsh from Passion Pictures for a last few sups of ale at the rammed Cafe des Arts behind the old prison in the old town. The Cafe is a main hangout for festival-goers. Chatted to Gerben Schermer from the Holland Animation Festival and Spike from the Spike and Mike festival USA.

Didn’t manage to make it to the Argentina party unfortunately – too tired!

All Annecy awards were announced on Saturday, here's the link:

http://www.annecy.org/annecy-2010/festival/awards

Congratulations to the winners and everyone who made it into competition and participated this year.

A la prochaine Annecy!

The Finnish Sauna Party by the lake.

Marv Newland third from left.

Carolina Lopez from Barcelona

Lou Beauchard from Paris

Spike from the Spike & Mike Festival (California) with his usual understated head-dress.

Annecy Day 3

Thursday 10^th June 2010

Je suis fatigue!

Started the day at MIFA following up some new contacts.

It’s a HOT day and the UK stand is not benefitting from the air-con system.

Managed to step outside for a catch-up with my friend Lou Beauchard – a young French Animator/Director, Armaturist and Sculptor. She’s made a good small film based loosely on Wilde’s ‘Dorian Gray’.

Lunch with my old friend Carolina Lopez from Barcelona. Carolina is Executive Producer at the production company ‘8deAgosto’.

Other people I met today:

Andrew Simmons – Animation Supplies manufacturer.

Sylvain Vaucher – from SwissFilms who kindly gave me the latest Swiss shorts DVD to consider.

Peter Parr from the newly named Arts University College Bournemouth.

Alex St George from Skillset Academy Wales.

Russell Taylor from 16 03 Films in Edinburgh.

Marta Jiminez Pumares – Exec. Producer from Forma Animada in Seville.

Tina Klemmensen – Illustrator from Denmark and ex-Aardman colleague from way back.

Vrej Kassouny – Festival Director from ReAnimania in Yerevan.

Without a ticket I managed to follow Dave Sproxton, Angie Last and Natalie Martin from Aardman into the Simpsons show thanks to Angie’s persuasive techniques.

The Simpsons show was hilarious, as expected. The auditorium was packed.

After swiftly visiting the Finnish Sauna Party by the lake (I love the way the Finns pack with them their strong drink, saunas and folk songs – how I miss the Tampere festival!), then the Gobelins School party where I met Fumi Kitahara (ex-DreamWorks Publicity) and meeting Paul Driessen again with the marvellous director Marv Newland (Rocketship) a small group of us finally managed to get out to the Passion Pictures villa out of town to have a long chat with Hugo Sands and Darren Walsh by the lakeside. It was without doubt the most picturesque meeting environment I’ve ever experienced. A large Otter like mammal was spotted by Hugo as it swam past us - Hugo couldn’t quite remember the correct name in French but it looked like a big Otter to me. I really appreciated Hugo and Darren’s time and it was really useful to discuss possible ways for future collaboration between Passion Pictures and Animated Encounters.

A storm was brewing, the wind picked up considerably, lightning and thunder rolled in so some of us made a dash for the very rare and very expensive taxis back into town.

Annecy day 2

Ross Garner- Stop Motion Pro

Maggie Ellis - Film London

Juan Pablo Zaramella - Director and Jury Member

Jayne Pilling and Michel Ocelot

Clifton Village Characters copyright Big Squid 2010

Abi Feijo and Regina Pessoa

Gin Piau from the British Embassy, Paris

Annecy Day 2

Wednesday 9^th June 2010

Today is the first day of the MIFA (The International Market of Animated Film). Animated Encounters is part of the UK stand kindly supported by the British Embassy in Paris and South West Screen in Bristol. I had a good chat with Gin Piau from the British Embassy who is in charge of the participation of British companies throughout the key French market events such as Annecy. Gin and Sophie Debodisco – Senior Trade Advisor (UKTI) have been incredibly helpful with their support for the British contingency as has the ultra-organised Johanna Bolhoven from South West Screen who has been responsible for bringing the group together and organising the whole UK MIFA presence with great professionalism and friendliness.

It was great to have Juan Pablo Zaremella drop by the UK stand - he's on the Graduation Film Jury along with Nick P. and Peter De Seve.

There is a real camaraderie and friendship between the Annecy attendees (both old and new) and that is one of the unique features of Annecy.

I managed to catch up with my old friends Abi Feijo and Regina Pessoa from Portugal. Two of the nicest people you are ever likely to meet. If they were a bottle of Port they would be Vintage but with a Ruby character as well.

My highlight of the morning was hooking up with Ross Garner and Paul Howell. These guys co-own Stop Motion Pro (SMP) – the leading industry standard software for stop-frame animation. I had a good talk with Ross about festival involvement and he kindly gave me a demonstration of their latest SMP 3D system – it really is something to behold – a fine thing of beauty and something I think everyone interested in stop-mo animation should check out – maybe something you will be able to see in action during Animated Encounters in November (18-20^th in case you’ve forgotten already)....watch this space!

The lovely Maggie Ellis from Film London arrived mid-afternoon and we chatted about funding issues and opportunities. She is Head of Production and Talent Development at Film London and is as keen as I am to develop new opportunities for new talent. Hopefully I will be speaking again to Maggie in the near future.

Just before the 4pm competition screening I managed to catch Hugo Sands and Andrew Ruhemann from Passion Pictures. I wish to talk more with them about a possible presentation of some of their work. I’m also dead keen on seeing Andrew’s new film that's in competition 'The Lost Thing' (nice strawberries Andrew!).

Across the tables was my old festival chum Peter Lord who was chatting with Hannah Minghella – President of Production at Sony Pictures Animation. Hmmm...I wonder if there is any scope for new productive relations between Animated Encounters and Sony Pictures Animation....

Managed to watch the International Competition 3 programme – What a mixed bunch of stuff there was - some good - some baaad! Had to pinch myself to check reality on a few occasions.

Mr Darren Walsh from Passion has arrived. Arranged to catch up tomorrow.

Had dinner with Jayne Pilling (Director of the British Animation Awards) and met Michel Ocelot – one of the true greats – who was collecting signatures in celebration of Nicole Salomon – Nicole was someone everyone at Annecy used to see every year doing what she has always done best – promoting and celebrating the artform and its creators. Hats off to Nicole!

Annecy would not be complete without the larger than life Spike, with small hat as always, from the Spike and Mike festival of animation (California).

Ended up in the Captain’s Pub (English pub) on a strict two pint limit (almost) with Andy Wyatt from Falmouth. We failed. It was good to meet two of Andy's students and hear their experiences of Annecy so far.

I was very pleased to meet up with Phil Davies from Astley Baker Davies - the company that brought us the hugely successful pre-school series 'Peppa Pig'. I'm looking for an opportunity to chat more with Phil to persuade him to maybe bring a show to Bristol....

Annecy 2010

Paul Driessen and myself

Ron Diamond, Matt Groening, David Silverman and Serge Bromberg

Matt Groening, me and David Silverman

Day one

Tuesday 8^th June 2010

After the usual unpleasant scrum of getting through Bristol airport at 6am I finally arrived in Annecy just in time to hook up for lunch with Nick Park and Angie Last from Aardman. Nick has very kindly agreed to renew his official patronage for Animated Encounters and is going to help by requesting original artwork from other animators to help with much needed fundraising for the festival (more to follow in the coming months).

Met up with Portugal’s finest woman animator Regina Pessoa and the magnificent Paul Driessen (multi-award winning and Oscar nominated Dutch animator) who kindly invited me to join them for the official opening of the ‘Creators and Creatures’ exhibition up at the Castle (Chateau).

The Annecy Chateau is one of the most picturesque medieval buildings in France (dating back to 13^th Century in parts). Each year it hosts an animation exhibition and Maurice Corbet’s ‘Creators and Creatures’ exhibition is a perfect complement to the 50^th Anniversary of the festival. The exhibition is truly a ‘who’s who’ of all the great and the good of the animation world over the last 50 years. It was great to see so many familiar faces from Annecy in old(ish!) photos looking so youthful – some of them still do, sort of, it has to be said (politely).

Luckily I bumped into my old friend Matt Groening – creator of The Simpsons. Matt visited Bristol back in 2002 and was Animated Encounters’ VIP guest for the ‘Desert Island Flicks’ session. Also met David Silverman – Supervising Animation Director from The Simpsons Movie, Ron Diamond – President, Co-Founder/Co-Publisher at Animation World Network, President/Executive Producer at Acme Filmworks, Inc. and Serge Bromberg – Artistic Director of the Annecy festival. Managed to take a couple of pics with these guys. Matt’s son, Abe, was also there and it was a great pleasure to meet him also.

Not bad networking for day one I suppose and I make no apologies for my shameless name-dropping!!