Animation feature will be lost for words
Black Sunrise will rely on visuals for GIRAF show
You might think independently producing an animated feature in Canada would provide enough challenges without the filmmaker going out of his way to add to them.
But Nick Cross, an Oshawa, Ont.-based filmmaker who will be the visiting animator at Calgary’s Giant Incandescent Resonating Animation Festival (GIRAF) this year, says he intends to tell his longgestating dystopian tale Black Sunrise without the benefit of dialogue. “It’s an artificial handicap that I’ve given myself,” says Cross, the 40-year-old award-winning animator behind such irreverent shorts at The Pig Farmer and Yellow Cake.
“Dialogue is an easy way to tell the story: Just have the characters say what’s happening.
“I feel like it’s more of a challenge for myself and more interesting to solve story problems through visuals and the actions as opposed to describing what is happening.”
If the two trailers found on YouTube are anything to go on, Black Sunrise will be chock full of disturbing visuals.
There’s masked torturers, decaying, maggot-filled rabbits, headless horses and gas-masked soldiers running amok through the streets of an unnamed city.
The action, which has to do with a passive protagonist’s growing awareness of the harsh realities of a totalitarian government, is being chipped away at by Cross in between his day- job duties storyboarding for Nelvana, which makes children’s cartoons in Toronto.
As part of GIRAF, which runs from Wednesday to Sunday, Cross will be holding a workshop at the Plaza Theatre for Calgary’s would-be animators on Friday.
Presumably, one of the virtues he will be highlighting is patience.
“It gets too overwhelming when I think about how much more work I have to do,” he says.
“So I just focus on each little bit at a time. It will probably be another three years before I am done.”
Festival-goers will get a sneak peek of Black Sunrise on Friday, which is a good fit for the five-day event. GIRAF, which is organized by Quickdraw Animation Society and overlaps with events being planned by the National Film Board’s travelling Get Animated festival, celebrates the best underground animation cinema from around the world while offering various workshops.
This year, that includes one with Eric Hayes, an unusually gifted 17-year-old Calgarian who will be giving a workshop of special effects and stop-motion for kids on Saturday at the Quickdraw Animation Society offices. Paul Dutton, the Calgary-based illustrator who acted as assistant director for the 2011 Oscarnominated French film The Illusionist, will be holding a master class on Sunday at the same location. Other highlights will include a laser-light installation by visiting animator Philipp Artus, which opens at EMMEDIA screening room and will run until Dec. 1.
The festival will also screen It’s Such a Beautiful Day on Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Plaza Theatre, the first in a trilogy of films by cult animator Don Hertzfeldt.
For a complete list of events and films visit giraffest.ca