Aardman Animation's latest handmade extravaganza is taking to the high seas. Leo Benedictus visits their studios and finds out why stop-motion beats Jack Sparrow
One ordinary day in 1970, a BBC producer called Patrick Dowling, who was working at the time on the children's TV series Vision On, had a visit from a colleague in religious programming. The colleague explained that his son David, with his friend Peter – both of them still at school – had made a short animated film. Crude and formless, composed on the kitchen table from snipped-out photographs and pastel scrawls, it nevertheless caught Dowling's eye. Shortly afterwards, when he met the boys, he gave them 100ft of film and suggested that they go away and make something interesting. What Peter Lord and David Sproxton made, with a little help here and there, was the British animation industry.
Today, the company they started, Aardman Animations, is a name to conjure with.
One ordinary day in 1970, a BBC producer called Patrick Dowling, who was working at the time on the children's TV series Vision On, had a visit from a colleague in religious programming. The colleague explained that his son David, with his friend Peter – both of them still at school – had made a short animated film. Crude and formless, composed on the kitchen table from snipped-out photographs and pastel scrawls, it nevertheless caught Dowling's eye. Shortly afterwards, when he met the boys, he gave them 100ft of film and suggested that they go away and make something interesting. What Peter Lord and David Sproxton made, with a little help here and there, was the British animation industry.
Today, the company they started, Aardman Animations, is a name to conjure with.
- 10/28/2011
- by Leo Benedictus
- The Guardian - Film News
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