There was certainly a flurry of rendering yesterday before our Pop up Picture Palace was to take place at 7.30 in the evening.  The wall was just rendered by 3pm, the film by 3.05pm.  So Emily and I even had time to do hair and make up as Ashley's wonderful schedule suggested.  Yes, we dressed up and there was popcorn, golden chairs and Tony Tunes and his wind up gramaphone.  There will be many photos of the fantastic event, but tonight I will just post a before and after picture of the wall, we went back this evening to take a few pictures from the roundabout and give out the last of our programmes.

Our pop up picture palace poster

Ashley has made us a wonderful poster for our pop up picture palace.  Even though an event is counterintuitive to me as an animator, that poster makes me excited, but then I remind myself that there is a persistent amount of digging on the event pavement, the dentist wall that we will project upon is still patchy and we have got quite a lot of animation to do still.  Would Pro Plus be the professional answer?

David Hall - 1001 TV Sets (End Piece)

All these TV's, 1001 of them, are busy transmitting analogue signals from terrestrial channels, until the moment that the signal is switched off.  I wonder if David Hall knows when that will be? He is showing the work at University of Westminster's P3 Gallery until a few hours after that moment.  What an exciting artist he continues to be, and how fitting to have him signal the end of analogue telly with this amazing, huge, noisy, hot, live floorscape.  Go along if you can.

Labrynth

I'm teaching at Anglia Ruskin again this semester on this module and this one too.  Today we watched Labrynth, 14'15", 1961, by Jan Lenica.  It's such a curious, mysterious and inventive film, and spare on the animation.  It comes from the Anthology of Polish Animated Film which I would very much recommend.

A Highly Committed Movie, 7'25", 1979 by Julian Antonisz is a cameraless film on the same Anthology, it's so so beautiful, and lively, the latter coming from the direct technique.  A female singer with a gravelly voice describes the loss of culture in a town, due to the greed of a naughty old woman and the story is complimented by wonderful characters looping grotesquely to the thumpy score.  Julian Antonisz was also an inventor, and wrote the musical soundtrack too.  What a find.

The two films slightly help to clarify my muddled mind as with three weeks to the big night, Emily and I are in the final furlong of our Wood Street Picture Palace Project, and it's time to pull the rabbit out of the hat in the studio.  Today I was snipping on the train, and tomorrow I'll be resident in our special  unit in Wood Street Indoor Market.  You can stop by if you like as long as you do some snipping too.

Poppy's family on a day trip

Brother

That's me on the left

Germs

 Germinator is the film that Emily and I made with Gayhurst Community School and it's doing really well.  It's won a prize at Animated Exeter, been screened at three festivals, and on Monday, Emily will accompany 8 of the young filmmakers to the BFI for the First Light Film awards, because Germinator is one of three films nominated in the audience award, it's really exciting. There is a special blog for the film so you might be able to see some pictures from the day there.