GALLOP has been officially selected to screen in competition in the Animated Encounters Best of the South West programme as part of Encounters International Film Festival 2010!!
So Gallop is now following her big sis Ami into the festival circuit... Snik, they grow up so quickly :)
Recieved a lovely letter from Poland, where Ami was screened last year, asking if Ami would like to come back and visit the audience in three small Polish towns and in Poznań once. So there she goes again to Poznan and further, but this time without me... Luckely I don't have to book a flight every time Ami goes off haha!
Wanted to use this spot on the website to talk a little bit about behind the scenes of 'Gallop' (my latest animation film about the canter of a horse).
I've viewed the film to a certain amount of people and mostly their reactions have been amazing (so 'Gallop' is going down pretty well, which is great). Additionally I also have people asking what i've done with the footage, as they believe that I've used some old footage.
This I take as a compliment as it shows that I've done a good job, simply cause people can not figure out what I've done, but maybe I did my job a bit too good... So here, a little behind the scene / explaination so people can understand what I've done and why I do classify it as an animated film.
In this short footage, one can see the final footage and the orginal footage. The orginal footage is the one with the girl riding the white French Arabian horse. By using the program After Effects, I've been able to manipulate the footage, removing the girl and the gear from the horse and added some grain and dirt to it. So one is left with some 'old footage' of a galloping white French Arabian horse.
This little trick has been used on some other shots in 'Gallop'.
After some hanging around on the internet, I bumped into Ami. She was previously asked to be shown on the dailymotion.com page and that is where I found her. But she did more than just her normal bouncing; she was unstopable cause Ami won the third place in Shooting People's Film of the Month for January 2010.HOERA!!
Even now when Gallop has finished and is making her first enter, Ami is still bouncing around, making new friends. She really enjoys the UK and is honoured to be screened as part of the Children’s Jury Animation Award Programme during the Film Festival for Children and Young People in Caernarfon North Wales in November, and the Bristol Harbour Festival in July.
So make sure you'll be around and maybe you'll bump into Ami!!
After 2 years of hard work, I've finished my latest film 'Gallop'.
In a nuttshell, 'Gallop' is an animated film about the canter of a horse.
It is an artistic reaction to the motion studies of the 1900's. The film visualises the hrose in an extraordinary way to illustrate the relation between experiencing motion and a horse its excitement of cantering.
'Gallop' will premier on the 18th of June at the MA ANIMATION Showcase 2010, at UWE Bower Ashton - Bristol UK. Hope to see you there!
Participating in the BFOP, Viktoria Horvath, Louise Fletcher, Wendy Sheppard, Charlotte Bryant and Dominique Bongers (me)are exhibiting our photography work in the Teohs restaurant (southville, Bristol):
Shutterbugs Using traditional black and white film and old school darkroom printing, a group of UWE evening course photography students came together to get creative and experiment! Each with their own individual style, brought together by their love of black and white.
Teohs 278 North Street Southville Bristol BS3 1TF
Email info@dominiquebongers.com for further details, or visit www.teohs.net.
Today (saturday) at 8.30 the postman brought me a little package which contained a betacam with Ami and a letter from Leeds Young People's Film Festival.
The letter brought good news and said:
Dear Dominique,
Congratulations! Friend gets a special mention in the Leeds Young People's Film Festival shorts competition! The jury gave it a special mention because "I liked the animation style and the story was really sweet" Freya, 9.
Of course, Ami is extremely happy and keeps bouncing around, making me uncapable of doing anything else than also bouncing around. We both are really happy with the news and thankful to the jury for giving Ami a special mention. Thank you. :)
Quite recently Barry Purves, one of UK's famous stop motion Animators (and director & writer), known for his amazing animations such as: Next, Screenplay, Rigoletto, Achilles, has finished his 2nd book: Basic Animation: Stop-motion.
In the book, he talks about stop motion and he also happen to find a little spot to write an amazingly nice comment about Ami (Friend). As I don't know much about copyright issues but certainly dont wanna get in trouble with copyright stuff, please, buy the book and turn to page 89!!
So hereby I (and Ami of course) would like to thank Barry Purves for his kind words!
And again I went to my wednesday evening course with Tamany Baker to do some b&w photography. This time I came with a3 paper so that I really could blow some of mine medium format negatives up! The result: grain! and lots of it!!! Please check these out and if you wanna see more just click on the photography button on the left!
Last saturday I went to Folkhouse for a Simple Portrait Photography Course. Normally I find it very difficult to capture people with my photocamera. Thanks to Graham Parish and his one day workshop I now have less problems with it as I now also now what it is that I try to capture in my photographs.
If you would like to see some of the pictures please check out the photography site or www.persnikitie.deviantart.com
Today I recieved an email from Rich Warren - Encounters to see if Ami would like to participate in a project (collaboration between the Cube Cinema and Encounters) for Haiti.
The project is called: THE HAITI KIDS KINO PROJECT
The Haiti Kids Kino Project is a basic, micro-humanitarian goodwill project to provide a small opening for fun, escape, community, emotion and social occasion to a people and place the Cube wishes to communicate with, and contribute to rebuilding hope. The intention is to improve quality of life through the act of making, sharing and reflecting and forging friendships and exchanges.
Ami and I believe that this is one amazing project and are extremely honoured that Rich Warren considered our participation. Hopefully, next to being shown, Ami will make some friends over there as well!
