Tue, Feb 26th 2008, 10:33
We were shortlisted for the Children's Jury Award at the prestigious Encounters Film Festival. The film is Fuggy Fuggy 2, and it screened in Bristol on Friday 23rd, Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th November at the festival in the lovely city of Bristol.
Thu, Jun 12th 2008, 10:10
We are screening a few of our films in Leamington tonight at a new event they've started there called Flickers. Maybe we'll see you there!
Thu, Jun 12th 2008, 10:28
CBBC's Pedro and Frankensheep are screening as part of the official programme at Annecy 2008. The episode selected is 'Fool Moon' which sees Pedro and Frank fiddling with the tides with disastrous consequences. The series was created by Phil Cooper at the BBC. We directed and co-wrote the episodes, with Greg designing the look, and me doing the voices of Frank and Hugo. We also wrote the music. Watch an episode on YouTube now or nine of the ten at CBBC.
Fri, Jun 13th 2008, 10:02
We're off to the Showcomotion Conference in July and have been invited by Tim Dann to sit on the panel for the Get Shorty session.
Fri, Jul 25th 2008, 12:51
Yesterday I attended a great course courtesy of Aardman down in Bristol. It was a one day Comedy Intensive course led by Steve Kaplan. It did what every good course should do, which is make me want to get back to my computer and start writing. One of the most useful things he does is to look at why some comedies don't work... by which I mean he shows you clips from shows or films that are supposed to be comic, but are a complete let down. Last night I got back and deliberately watched a dreadful sketch show on BBC Three just to try and figure out why it didn't work. If you ever have the chance to attend his course I'd definitely recommend it.
Mon, Sep 8th 2008, 16:01
I've left Greg to post a million things on the blog and been terribly silent for a while. But lots to muse upon not least because I went to the Edinburgh Fringe in August. More of that later. One of the acts I missed while there was the 5 star rave review rated Camille O'Sullivan. Fortunately she's now on a tour and I saw her last Friday at the Town Hall in Birmingham. Never been to the Town Hall before - most impressive after its refurb. Camille was marvelous - amazing voice and utterly potty - going from the heart bleeding sincerity of songs like God is in the House (a Nick Cave song) to invading the crowd and making us all shout 'meow' at her. Very entertaining. Go and see her if you can.
Mon, Sep 8th 2008, 22:31
We're off for a weekend in Amsterdam. No, not that sort of weekend. We're off to the Klik! Animation Festival (12-14 September 08) because the lovely people running the festival have selected our film Codswallop for their Open Competition. It's not our first film to get into an international film festival (our films are better travelled than we are), but it is the first international one we're attending so we're really looking forward to it.
Tue, Oct 7th 2008, 09:04
Our latest short film Codswallop has so far notched up the following international film festival appearances...
As well as appearing at 7 Inch Cinema.
If you want to catch it in the UK you'll be able to see it
Here's the trailer for Codswallop from our YouTube channel.
Mon, Oct 13th 2008, 19:37
'Still' A series of seven exclusive prints available to view at the Lighthouse in Wolverhampton during the Flip Festival. The text comes from Myles' regular bouts of free writing which Greg has interpreted in a black and white hand drawn style.
Thu, Oct 23rd 2008, 13:54
The finished animations from the Digitoons Masterclass that we have been involved in courtesy of Hi8us Midlands are now live on YouTube. They will have their first performance at today's Hello Digital festival in Birmingham.
Congratulations to our six animators Nusha Amini, Lauron Farr, Qianqian Liu, Charis McNerlin, Amy Morgan, and Charlie Pinder of mookstudios. Thanks to Kate, Dave and Kulwant at Hi8us for organising everything!
Mon, Jan 26th 2009, 16:08
We are showing one of the short films we've done for the Tate at the Local Shorts Film Club in Birmingham. It's short notice on the blog - it's this week. More here.
Thu, Feb 26th 2009, 13:49
For more details about this event run by the West Midlands Animation Forum, take a look at their website.
Sun, Mar 1st 2009, 15:36
Our BAFTA nominated short 'Codswallop' is off to Berlin's prestigious Pictoplasma Animation Festival. It features in the Psychedlic Mix Night programme. More details in the downloadable programme of events.
Fri, May 8th 2009, 08:20
Last week I attended a session at the Stratford upon Avon Literary Festival. Apparently there's a famous writer who came from this neck of the woods once. Anyway... I picked out The Art of Adapation as an interesting session. Andrew Davies of Pride and Prejudice et al. fame was due to be there but had to go to Hollywood instead. The panel didn't disappoint though.
Paul Allen talked to three writers, radio writer Mary Cutler (The Archers, Falco radio adapations), novelist and screenwriter David Nicholls (Starter for Ten, Tess of the D'Urbervilles adaptation for TV) and Deborah Maggoch (adapter of Pride and Prejudice for the big screen, and The Diary of Anne Frank for the BBC).
Actor Richard Derrington did some readings. He has a great voice and I recognised him from a play (rather appropriately an adaptation of the novel Unless) that my wife was Costume Supervisor for at the Stephen Joseph Theatre.
Various elements of adaptation were discussed. Here's a few nuggets that I picked up.
Paul Allen kicked off asking about voiceover. Obviously books are often told in a first person narrative which makes voiceover seem an obvious choice. But it can often be a lazy option. Sometimes the adapted dialogue needs to be more like the internal narrative of the original book and less like the dialogue as written in the original. Sometimes the deliberate use of voiceover at a crucial moment can work really well, especially if it's used sparingly elsewhere.
There was a lot of talk about what you keep, what you chuck away and what you add. Essentially you have to ignore all the fans who say, "you are going to include that bit aren't you?" and create something that seems authentic to yourself.
Adaptations of real lives can be tricky because they don't have plots! Sometimes you have to fill in the gaps. For example Deborah Maggoch commented that Anne Frank's diary isn't very specific about why she fell in and then out of love with Peter. So Deborah had to make a leap of imagination for her TV adaptation.
Dates of events are often shuffled around to suit the screen adaptation.
Adaptations into serial form have other requirements... you need to find a way of summarising at the end of a week of radio stories. And at the beginning of the new week you need to summarise and have a second big bang beginning.
Writing about absent characters works in a novel, but is trickier in radio.
When adapting something that's been successfully adapted before you have to find the themes in the story that resonate with you and find a new angle. David Nicholls revealed he's working on a new film version of Great Expectations, but it's still too early to say if it'll make it beyond script stage.
When adapting create your first draft from the original work, then don't refer back to the original work again. That is regressive. The adaptation should evolve from the draft.
Sometimes the "favourtie bit in the book" doesn't translate to screen and has to be left out completely. David Nicholls spoke about how in his novel Starter for Ten there is a comedy dance sequence which everyone who reads the book finds very memorable. When he adapted his novel for film he was encouraged to include that scene. The scene was shot for the film, but it just didn't fit in to the screen narrative. As a result the whole scene was dumped. David said it was expensive lesson for him to learn.
Depending on the project, the writers used the book alone as the basis for a story, or they did do some research around the era. Sometimes for real and recent events they decide not to talk to the people involved and to find their own story in amongst the existing material.
And there it is... and remember, all but one of Shakespeare's plays were adaptations of earlier works.
Mon, Nov 2nd 2009, 08:37
Come celebrate the launch of Flip Festival 09 with a look at the current state of the West Midlands’ animation industry, drinks and screenings. Find out more here
Thu, Jul 16th 2009, 09:42
On the 24th August we will be heading north for a couple of days courtesy of Peacock Visual Arts to take part in the very first Aberdeen City and Shire Film Festival. We're running some workshops and also putting on a public screening of our short films with a Q&A to boot.
If you're based in the Highlands (where all good people have their roots) then come along... the screening is 6.30pm on Saturday 25th August at the Peacock.
Download the brochure for the whole festival here.
Mon, Jul 20th 2009, 17:02
See the fruits of The Great Animation Challenge, the best entries to last year’s Flip Animation Festival and chew the fat with fellow Animation Forum WM members at the next AFWM event Out Of Hours: Animation on Tuesday 21st July 2009 at Light House, Wolverhampton.
Mon, Aug 17th 2009, 09:46
BAFTA and Paper Bag are opening the 6th London International Animation Festival with a party packed evening of films, live performance and music. We have been invited along to talk and show a few of our films and witness an actor reading of one of our Spamland films.
Show starts at 7pm at the Roxy Bar and Screen. Come along and help launch the good ship LIAF.
Our short film Codswallop is also featuring in the International Programme 3 of LIAF. More details on the LIAF website.
Tue, Sep 22nd 2009, 15:22
Greg recently won an award at Images 33 run by the Association of Illustrators. You can see the exhibition of the illustrations, including Greg's entry, as it goes on tour around the UK. Here are the dates for your calendar!
Piece Hall, Halifax: 4 October 2009 - 7 November 2009
Shire Hall, Staffordshire: 14 November 2009 - 3 January 2010
Birmingham University: 6 January 2010 - 8 February 2010
Suffolk University: 13 February 2010 - 28 March 2010
Nuneaton Museum: 3 April 2010 - 15 May 2010
Aberystwyth Arts Centre: 22 May 2010 - 04 July 2010
Mon, Sep 28th 2009, 15:12
I came back from the TV Comedy Forum the other day. I’m not sure how I feel about conferences generally. On the one hand they can be an invaluable opportunity to meet new people, find new business and prevent insanity (from normal activities such as writing where you spend too much time alone). On the other, you can come away having picked up a kind of catatonic panic – “catapanic” if you will.
Catapanic can be constituted of several parts:
(1) first a kind of urgent and terrifying awareness of what the industry is (apparently) looking for
(2) secondly a frenetic urge to immediately supply something that fits the remit
(3) thirdly a conflicting instinct that you should just trust yourself and do what comes naturally to yourself even if that apparently conflicts with (2)
(4) a sense that you are irrelevant
(5) a sense that everyone is irrelevant
(6) a sense that everyone wants to be successful at the expense of everyone else
(7) a sense that the successful are worried they might not be for very long
(8) a sense that doing anything might be wrong, so you should just remain still and inactive as a way of not doing anything wrong, except that that might also be wrong
Oh yes. The joy of TV conferences... at least I got to hear Graham Linehan talk though (along with Harry Enfield, Armstrong and Miller and Jimmy Carr who was in for an ill Frankie Boyle). I'm a big fan of Mr Linehan's stuff and it was very interesting to hear him talk about how he constructs comedic narratives by finding three or so set pieces that really make him laugh, and then finds a way of binding them together in a story. Catapanic finally subsided about 36 hours after the event. Phew!
Wed, Oct 7th 2009, 10:22
Once again Peter McLuskie of the Light House has asked us to inveigle our way into his fantastic animation festival. The Flip Animation Festival is now in its sixth year and we've been fortunate enough in previous years to have sat on industry panels for debates, chair a session on Doctor Who animations, show an exhibition of prints, design the look for the festival, and opened the festival with a retrospective of our work.
This year we're back like a chronic rash... and are running a scriptwriting course, interviewing Sarah Cox and showing a programme of short films (not our own this time - instead it's a bunch of films that we love and want to share).
Find out more at the Flip Festival website and book your tickets asap!
Thu, Feb 11th 2010, 19:11
We are presenting The Moon Bird tomorrow - the 12th February 2010 - at Animated Exeter. If you're in the vicinity please do come along!
Wed, May 26th 2010, 10:03
The Brothers McLeod will be involved in a number of events at the Stratford upon Avon Fringe, including an Animation Night, a live paint and a illustration exhibition. Check out the flyer...
Thu, Jun 3rd 2010, 11:12
Coming up: Sunday 17th July 2010.
This is taken from the Larmer Tree Festival website: "The Brothers Mcleod's resident animator and illustrator Greg McLeod presents an eclectic mix of animations from their back catalogue of short films, including their BAFTA nominated Codswallop and their latest film The Moon Bird. Greg will be talking about the films and giving an insight into the creative process of animation."
Mon, Aug 2nd 2010, 18:07
There's a free talk at the BFI Southbank on Saturday 7 August at 13.30. It's titled 'Collecting for Tomorrow' but is specifically about collecting contemporary films for tomorrow. Clips from various works including The Brothers McLeod's films will be shown as part of the talk.
Wed, Aug 18th 2010, 12:35
The Moon Bird is being screened continuously at the latest Chapman Brothers touring exhibition in Plymouth. It's a Hayward Touring show. Here's some more details:
My Giant Colouring Book returns to this method of working, this time appropriating join-the-dot drawings from a children's picture book. Many of the Chapmans’ favourite themes are found here, often with a dark undercurrent. The series of 21 etchings include sabre-toothed owls, psychedelic grinning cats and bears trapped in the belly of the Loch Ness monster. This exhibition offers a fascinating introduction to the imaginations of two of Britain's most inventive and subversive artists .
Now showing at the Peninsula Arts Gallery in Plymouth.
Thu, Aug 26th 2010, 16:56
Sunday the 12th of September at the Crescent Theatre. Three of our Sticks films will be screening as part of The Comedy Hour for Artsfest.
Tue, Aug 31st 2010, 12:28
We are the proud sponsors of the Birmingham Zine Festival - coming in September 2010. More details below.
