Epica winners announced

FILM: “The Party Bus”, Shiseido

The Film Grand Prix was won by Shiseido in-house for its quirky and poetic film “The Party Bus”, which combines animation, special effects and drama to tell a contemporary fairy tale. The 3D animation required close to 2000 stop motion shots.

Shiseido creative director Masato Kosukegawa said: “I would like to thank Shou Yanagisawa, the director, and all the artists who worked with us, for their precise and inspired craft. ‘The Party Bus’ was made to expand Shiseido’s reach to young people. We thought a lot about what we could do with makeup in this confused and divided world. In the end we arrived at the concept that makeup can be courageous, and that doing your makeup your own way brings self-confidence. This led us to touch on the topic of LGBT. In Japanese culture there is a strong conservative tendency, and stories of LGBT are not commonly told yet. I think this film was probably the first work by a major Japanese company to address LGBT in an advertisement.”