Magda is a 2004 stop motion animated short film by independent filmmaker Chel White, from a story written and read by monologist Joe Frank. [1]
A first love is corrupted as a man recalls his affair with a beautiful circus contortionist in this stop-motion animation of wooden manikins. [2] [3]
Short of the Week's Serafima Serafimova describes Magda as "A love story so beautiful and incredibly touching in its simplicity… it’s a real gem of untarnished beauty." [4]
Visually, the film explores the use of extreme telephoto lenses, creating enigmatic scenes that reveal themselves over time, and ghostly figures drifting in-and-out of focus. [5] Animation World Network describes the aesthetic as "swimming in the rack-focus sea of a telephoto lens with an extremely shallow depth of field. This can feel like the equivalent of driving through a thick fog, but it is also a very efficient means of directing the eye to the relevant action in some very busy sets." [6] The characters in the film are derived from basic, pose-able wooden manikins found in any art supply store, but extensively redesigned and rigged to be usable as stop motion puppets.
Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames is played back. Any kind of object can thus be animated, but puppets with movable joints or plasticine figures are most commonly used. Puppets, models or clay figures built around an armature are used in model animation. Stop motion with live actors is often referred to as pixilation. Stop motion of flat materials such as paper, fabrics or photographs is usually called cutout animation.
Aardman Animations Limited is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England. It is known for films and television series made using stop-motion and clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring its plasticine characters from Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, and Morph. After some experimental computer-animated short films during the late 1990s, beginning with Owzat (1997), Aardman entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away (2006). As of February 2020, it had earned $1.1 billion worldwide, with an average $135.6 million per film.
A brickfilm is a film or Internet video made by either shooting stop motion animation using construction set bricks like Lego bricks or using computer-generated imagery or traditional animation to imitate the look. They can sometimes also be live action films featuring plastic construction toys. Since the 2000s The Lego Group has released various films and TV series and brickfilms have also become popular on (social-) media websites. The term “brick film” was coined by Jason Rowoldt, founder of the website brickfilms.com.
A telephoto lens, in photography and cinematography, is a specific type of a long-focus lens in which the physical length of the lens is shorter than the focal length. This is achieved by incorporating a special lens group known as a telephoto group that extends the light path to create a long-focus lens in a much shorter overall design. The angle of view and other effects of long-focus lenses are the same for telephoto lenses of the same specified focal length. Long-focal-length lenses are often informally referred to as telephoto lenses, although this is technically incorrect: a telephoto lens specifically incorporates the telephoto group.
Mike Jittlov is an American animator and the creator of short films and one feature-length film using forms of special effects animation, including stop-motion animation, rotoscoping, and pixilation. He is best known for the 1988 feature-length film The Wizard of Speed and Time, based on his 1979 short film of the same name.
Adam Pesapane, known by the pseudonym PES, is an American director and animator. He has created several stop motion films and commercials, which has earned him nominations for an Oscar and an Emmy Award.
Das Rad meaning "The Wheel" is a 2001 German animated film written and directed by Chris Stenner, Arvid Uibel and Heidi Wittlinger. Produced using a mixture of stop-motion, puppetry, and CGI animation, it was nominated for an Oscar in "Best Animated Short Film", but lost to The ChubbChubbs!
Suzanah Clare Templeton is a British animator. Her film Peter and the Wolf has won several awards, including the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2008.
Chel White is an American film director, composer, screenwriter and visual effects artist. In his independent films and music videos, White is known for his stylized, often experimental use of images, unusual animation and narratives depicting an outsider's perspective. He often adopts darkly humorous and poetic sensibilities to explore topics of love, obsession and alienation; with dreams and the subconscious being his greatest influences. He describes his own work as “stories and images that reside on the brink of dreams, or linger on the periphery of distorted memories.” A Rockefeller Fellow, Chel White has made three films based on the work of Peabody Award-winning writer and radio personality Joe Frank.
BENT IMAGE LAB is a production company and animation studio specializing in story development, television, commercials, visual effects, music videos, short films, experimental techniques and tech development in augmented reality (AR). Located in Portland, Oregon, the company was founded in 2002 by partners David Daniels, Ray Di Carlo, and Chel White.
Rob Shaw is an American film director, television director, commercial and music video director, and animator. He is a graduate of University of the Arts (Philadelphia).
Shane Richard Acker is an American animator, film director, screenwriter and animation teacher known for directing 9, which is based on his 2005 Academy Award-nominated short film of the same title. He is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles.
Pro and Con is a 1993 9 minute 16mm short animated film produced, directed and animated by Joanna Priestley and Joan Gratz using drawings on paper, pixillated hands and object animation. The "Pro" section of the film was written by Barbara Carnegie and Joanna Priestley and narrated by Lt. Janice Inman. The "Con" section was written by Jeff Green and narrated by Allen Nause. The sound was designed and produced by Lance Limbocker and Chel White with music by Chel White. Pro and Con was commissioned through the Metropolitan Arts Commission's Percent for Art Program in Multnomah County, Oregon.
Triggerfish is a computer animation film studio based in Cape Town, South Africa and Galway, Ireland. The studio is best known for its animated feature films Adventures in Zambezia (2012), Khumba (2013), and Seal Team (2021), as well as the work they have done on television specials created for UK producers Magic Light Pictures. In 2016, Stick Man was awarded the Cristal for best TV production at the Annecy International Animation Festival. In 2017, Revolting Rhymes again won the Cristal for best TV production at the Annecy Festival, and was nominated for the Best Short Film (Animated) Oscar at the 2018 Academy Awards. In 2019, Netflix announced that Triggerfish would produce its first African animated TV series. In 2020, Zog won the International Emmy for Best Kids Animation. In 2021, The Snail and The Whale won Best Special Production at The Annie Awards, while Triggerfish received the Mifa Animation Industry Award at Annecy for "the pioneering role that the company has played in animation in South Africa, and Africa most widely.” In 2022, their third film, Seal Team, made the Netflix Top 10 Films global list for its launch week.
Head over Heels is a 2012 British stop-motion animated short film written and directed by Timothy Reckart. The film was nominated for Best Animated Short Film for the 85th Academy Awards. It also won the first Annie Award for Best Student film and the Cartoon d'Or for Best European Animated Short.
José "Quique" Rivera is a contemporary photographer, sculptor, self-taught stop-motion animator, and award-winning filmmaker born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1986. He is currently based in Glendale, California and is the CEO and founder of Acho Studio, an animation studio in Los Angeles that focuses on stop-motion animation.
The history of Ukrainian animation, which began in the late 1920s, is part of Ukrainian cinematography and has involved a variety of techniques, including frame-by-frame filming, time lapse, and computer animation.
Arthouse animation is a combination of art film and animated film.
Špela Čadež is a Slovenian director and film producer of animated films. She is mostly known for her use of the multiplane camera technique in her animated films.