The Cat Piano Blog has a new cradle

Hey everyone.

Thanks for all of your feedback on our film. It's really fantastic to hear what people think of it out there in blogland. Just a quick note to let everyone know that we have a new domain for our blog and it is:

http://catpianofilm.com/

It has a lot more info and links on the film too. We will be taking this blog down in a few weeks so be sure to sign up for feeds etc on our new site.

Look forward to hearing from you more

Watch the whole film now!

The Cat Piano from PRA on Vimeo.

London, Lithuania, Portugal... Oh My!

More festival news from Ari and I on the Cat Piano front. The film will make it's London premiere, after being officially selected for Raindance Film Festival, the UK's largest independent film festival.

www.raindance.co.uk/site/index.php?aid=4495

It will also play at Animatu International Digital Animation festival, in Beja, Portugal, a festival dedicated souly to 2d and 3d animated films create on computers.

www.festivalanimatu.com/2009/e_principal.htm

And over in the beautifully picturesque Vilnius, Lithuania, the film will screen in official competition at International Animation Festival Tindirindis.

www.tindirindis.lt/

ATOM FINALIST & AFI SCREENING DATES

I'm very happy to announce that The Cat Piano is a finalist in the ATOM (Australian Teachers of Media) Awards, held in Melbourne in October. This is how ATOM describe themselves;

'a professional organisation of media educators and industry professionals who are dedicated to the ongoing development of an innovative and diverse screen and media culture in Australia by providing: debate and analysis through its various publications, both print and online, the ATOM Film TV and Multimedia Awards and a broad range of professional development and training opportunities.'

Our last short film 'Sweet & Sour' was the winner of the Best Short Animation award in 2007.

The finalists should be listed on the festival's website soon.

www.atomawards.org/

Also, the screening dates of the film in Sydney and Melbourne for the AFI (Australian Film Institute) have been announced so if you're still yet to see the film, get along and see it in its full 35mm film print glory.

Melbourne - Sunday 6th September, 2:15pm at ACMI & Monday 21st September at 8:50pm at ACMI

Sydney - Sunday 13th September, 6:15pm at Cinema Paris HOYTS & Tuesday 15th September, 9:00pm, Roxy Theatre, Lindfield.

Or visit the festival's website for more details.

www.afi.org.au/AM/ContentManagerNet/HTMLDisplay.aspx?ContentID=8296&Section=Screenings

Melbourne International Film Festival Win

On Friday night The Cat Piano took out the Best Animation Short Award at The Melbourne International Film Festival. We recived a cool film cannister trophy and a handy cash prize. The Awards are also Academy accredited so this will help us get on the Oscars shortlist. Our film was up against such films as 'Slaves', the contentious animated documentary that won the Grand Prix at Annecy this year, the bizarre low-fi stop-motion short 'The Life of Puppetboy' among others. This marks our third Australian film festival award; the others being at The Adelaide Film Festival and The Sydney International Film Festival.


From left to right - Richard Moore, the festival's artistic director, myself and then sponsor from RMIT, Kristian.


In other festival news the film has also been selected in competition at:

Klik! Amsterdam Animation Festival - HOLLAND
This fresh, fun looking festival is a four day event held in September. The programm of film looks really promising too. Two fellow Australian films have also been selected; Tiny Legs of Fire by Doug Bayne (this was also in Annecy) and Scary Therapy by Suren Perera.

www.klikamsterdam.nl/


Other festival selections for The Cat Piano around the world include;

China International Cartoon & Digital Arts Festival - CHINA
This will mark the film's Asian premiere. Below is a picture of the very cutesy Chinese dragon mascot for the festival.

www.cicdaf.com/


Lucerne Film Festival - Animation Night - SWITZERLAND

ICON SF Festival - Israeli Annual Science Fiction & Fantasy Film Festival - ISRAEL
http://www.icon.org.il/2008/

and we have also been selected in the out-of-competition section at the Ottawa International Animation Festival - CANADA.
http://ottawa.awn.com/index.php

AFI nomination for Best Short Animation

We are proud to announce that The Cat Piano has been nominated for Best Short Animation at this year's AFI (Australian Film Institute) Awards, Australia's premiere film awards. This is our third nomination; Fritz Gets Rich was nominated in 2005 and Carnivore Reflux in 2006.

Here's a look at the announcement of the four nominees:
http://www.afi.org.au/AM/ContentManagerNet/HTMLDisplay.aspx?ContentID=7854&Section=Non_Feature_Nominees_Production_Information

This will mean that the film will screen in all major capital cities in Australia later in the year and AFI members will have the chance to vote for their favourites.

Also, for those of you in Melbourne, the film will screen three times a part of the Melbourne International Film Festival:
http://www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au/films?y=2009&filmsrch=The+Cat+Piano&film_id=11786#article11786

The screening dates are:

Sunday 26th July 2:30pm, Greater Union Cinema 6, Russell Street
Monday 27th July 4:45pm, Palace Kino Cinemas, Collins Street
Friday 7th August 4:45pm, ACMI 2, Federation Square

I'll be heading over for the festival and to take part in the 'Accelerator' young filmmakers programm so come and say hi if you see me after the screenings.

Brisbane International Film Festival

The screening dates of The Cat Piano at this year's Brisbane International Film Festival have been announced.

http://www.stgeorgebiff.com.au/Festival/Films/FilmDetails.aspx?id=345

The short will screen twice before the feature The Beaches of Agnes, on the 7th and 9th of August.

L.A Shorts Screening

The Cat Piano will be screening in competition at the Academy Accredited LA Shortsfest. Here are the details of the screening:

Program #12
Saturday, July 25th, 5:30pm
Laemmle Sunset 5 Theatres
8000 Sunset Blvd.
West Hollywood

So anyone in the L.A area who wants to see the film on the big screen, get along to LA Shortsfest.

More details of the fest can be found here:

http://lashortsfest.com/content.asp?PageID=2

Scarlett Johanssen will be opening the festival which is pretty cool. I wonder if she likes cats?

Merge Magazine article

Here's an interview I did with a street culture magazine here in Adelaide called MERGE. The questions were pretty cool... which is not always the case. You often get the 'how long did it take?' 'How did you make it move?' questions by some interviewers.

http://www.mergemagazine.com.au/verge/edditewhite

A Dendy Award, Annecy meows & Upcoming screenings

While the Cat Piano team was in France for the Annecy animation festival, back on home soil The Cat Piano was awarded the winner of the Yoram Gross Award for Best Animated Short at the Sydney Film Festival's as part of the Dendy Awards.

http://www.sydneyfilmfestival.org/default.aspx



The film's producer, Jessica Brentnall was there to graciously accept the award on behalf of the film. This award is also an Academy accredited one, which means the film will now be eligible for the Oscars shortlist for best short animation which will then be cut down to the handful of nominees.



The film's screenings at Annecy went great. It was really cool to see a 35mm film copy of it up there on the big screen. It was certainly not a cheap process but worth every cent. The film was screened seven times at the festival, twice in the giant Bonlieu theatre as part of the short film competition programm. Judging from the meows and reows coming from the audience in between the following films, it felt like the film went down a treat with the audience.

We weren't lucky enough to come away with a much coveted Annecy crystal this time but we were certainly on good company. Check here for a full list of the winning films:

http://www.annecy.org/home/index.php?Page_ID=2164

My personal favourites at the festival were 'L'homme a la Gordini' (The Man in the blue Gordini) by Jean-Christophe Lie from France which was a hilarious film set in a gawdy 70's throwback world where wearing pants is a criminal offense; L'Ondee (Rains) by David Coquard Dessault from Canada which was a serious of beautiful, atmospheric snapshots of a rainy day in an urban setting and of course 'Please Say Something' by David O'Reilly and 'Western Spaghetti' by PES.

Here's a couple of snapshots from the gang at the festival. I will post more pics up soon, when the rest of the crew arrive back from France.



Artistic Director of the festival, Serge Bromberg throws us some curly questions at a Q&A as part of the short filmmaker's breakfast, the day after our screening.



Ari Gibson (Co-Director) , Jason Pamment (Art Director) enjoy a beer in the French sun.
The 'Aussies at Annecy' picnic was a great afternoon. Baguettes with vegemite, Fruchocs and Tim Tams and even a few kicks of the Australian Football.

Upcoming Festivals

Here is a list of festivals that the film will be screening in over the next couple of months. Dates and times of the film's actual screenings still to come:

Melbourne International Film Festival (Melbourne, Australia)
http://www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au/

Brisbane International Film Festival (Brisbane, Australia)
http://www.stgeorgebiff.com.au/default.aspx

Anima Mundi Animation Festival (Rio de Janeiro/Sao Paulo, Brazil)
http://www.animamundi.com.br/

Message To Man International Film Festival (St. Petersburg, Russia)

LA Shorts Fest (Los Angeles, USA)
http://lashortsfest.com/content.asp?PageID=2

Small World International Animation Festival (Barnsley, England)
http://www.smallworldfest.co.uk/

Also, please join our fans of The Cat Piano facebook page to be kept in the loop on all related news and info!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Cat-Piano/78586590833

LE PIANO DU CHAT D'ANNECY!

The last month has been an exciting one for The Cat Piano team. After the film made its world premiere at the 2009 Adelaide Film Festival we found out we won the Audience Choice Award for Best Short Film. This was a great start to the film's festival life.

Then came the big news. The Cat Piano has been selected in Official Competition at the Annecy International Animation Festival held in the picturesque alpine village Annecy in France. No short film of ours has ever been accepted into the short film competition so we were thrilled to finally b there. Over 1800 animations were entered into the festival and only 40 short films out of that were selected in competition. A group of ten of us; Myself and co-director Ari Gibson, Animators Makoto Koji, Alex Grigg and Benjamin Drake, Art Director, Jason Pamment and editor Jeremy Hill Brooks, will be heading over to the festival in early June to see it screen in the Big Kahuna of Animation Festivals. We congratulate the other Aussies to have something in the festival including Steve Baker with 'Dog with electric collar' in the panorama section and Darcy Prendergast with 'News!' also in the panorama. The PRA have also been selected in the TV special section with 'Ghastly Gourmet - Meat, Meat, Meat' directed by James Calvert and myself (Eddie White).

Here's a short trailer of the film.

Adelaide Film Festival 2009 Premiere

We are happy to announce that The Cat Piano will premiere at the 2009 Adelaide Film Festival. Our short was lucky to be the only animation to receive funding support from the film festival's Investment Fund, following in the steps of two of our past shorts; Sweet & Sour (2007) and Fritz Gets Rich (2005).

We're really excited to get this fantastic opportunity at what is a great film festival that provides great opportunities for filmmakers in this state by funding films, not just screening them. We attended the media launch the other day at Adelaide Airport and the funded projects (features, docos and shorts) look pretty diverse and intriguing. To check out the official press release go to:

2009 Adelaide Film Festival

The full festival programme festival will announced early next year.

A Touch of Halloween

As it's Halloween today we thought we'd post a piece of animation from The Cat Piano that had that a bit of a haunting Halloween flavour. This shot (uncoloured at the moment) of three young Von-Trapp-esque singing kittens being snatched by the shadowy kidnapper via a gramophone, was animated by Makoto. It's been quite an epic shot to finish, with it's different elements and characters, even though it is a short shot. I can't wait to see what the sound and music add to it's humour.

It's Alive

The animation of The Cat Piano is being steadily created by our 2d animation team here at The PRA. It is really amazng to see a film slowly coming alive by the day. We thought we'd put up an example of a cleaned up, but uncoloured shot from the film. It gives you a sense of what the animation style will be. This shot, of a folk-singing cat atop a city rooftop was animated by Ari. We have also chosen to make the film in a 2.39:1 ratio as it seemed to really help the dynamic of the composition in the film.

TWO JOIN THE CLOWDER

We're very happy to welcome two more animators aboard The Cat Piano animation team. Alex Grigg and Benjamin Drake both students of Queensland's Griffith University animation course. The two animators who studied with our own Makoto Koji, have come down from sunny Queensland to work on the film here in well..sunny Adelaide! Both of them have great drawing and animation skills and we look forward to what they can bring to the project.

Check out Alex Grigg's blog



and Benjamin Drake's




Here's a lively page of cat piano themed sketches that Alex sent us a week before he arrived. His style clearly fit with the film's.

The film will be finished by the end of January 2009 so watch this space.

Cat Piano in IF mag

Hi all you fiesty felines

There was an article on The Cat Piano in the latest issue of IF (Inside Film) magazine. The issue was focused on music and sound so our film sat well at home in it. The article, by film journalist Simon DeBruyn also includes an interview with Benjamin Speed in regards to the film's score.

Here's the link:
If Magazine

Also, above is a sketch of some of the cast of characters that our poet in the film enlists the help of. The pic is only a sketch and is still to be cleaned up and coloured of course.

Thanks to everyone for your interest and kind comments on our film. We really hope to have a really cool final film to show you in the coming months. Along the way we promise to put some animation tests up on the site.

Nya!

Hello and hajimemashite! (nice to meet you!)

My name is Makoto Koji and I am a member of the Cat Piano team. After graduating my animation degree in Griffith University Brisbane, I traveled south to animate on this project alongside the inspirational duo of Eddie and Ari.

We have once again been over due for a blog, so I will be filling in this evening to update you all on our progress.

Since my arrival I have been animating after hours alongside co-director Ari, who has taught me so much. It is a pleasure to be animating beautiful characters "traditionally" and I have found it very therapeutic. Eddie has now joined the animation team (making it three of us! YAY!) , to help us colour the Cat Piano world.

To help you visualize the process, I have drawn a picture!
(My camera is broken...)

The Cat Piano Animation Team!!!



Eddie in orange: colouring,
Ari in blue: animating on his cintiq
Me on a Piano....???

Although it may seem that everything is coming along, we are actually having many difficulties.
At this point in production it is vital to have a locked edit of the film.
We do not have one.... BUT!!!!

Ari has postponed his animation and is working hard on this edit as I speak/type.
He is confident that it will be completed soon and this should assist in speeding up the animation process.

We are aiming to post some animation tests as possible.
So please stay tuned!

Until next time, OYASUMINASAI!!! (Goodnight!)

The poet arrives

The narration by Nick Cave was recorded last month in Melbourne's Soundfirm studios, who kindly supported our film. It was a very exciting day for myself and producer Jessica Brentnall. The day ran very smoothly...well almost.

We arrived at the studios and then thought we'd go and have a coffee for the next hour before Nick arrived. This was a perfectly fine idea, except for the fact that my phone's clock was still set to Adelaide time not Melbourne time (a half hour behind). We only realised this when we arrived on time (we were actually 30 mins late) but Nick Cave had just arrived and so weren't in too much strife.

The session was recorded by Rob McKenzie who had set up two old style microphones in the style of the 1950s Kerouac beat poetry recordings we were trying to borrow from. With very little discussion we went straight into the recording.

It was great to hear Nick's voice immediately and know that we'd made the perfect choice. We did 6 takes of the poem. Some slow, some fast, some very straight and others very animated. I couldn't have asked for a better selection. It was great to witness such a great artist/performer doing his thing. After a nice chat with Nick about his kid's movie choices (They went to see 'Surf's Up' but ended up taking them to 'the Bourne Ultimatum'), both of our upcoming feature film projects and some other things we said goodbye and knew we had some great stuff to work with.

The next day in Melbourne both my laptop and digital camera were stolen when my girlfriend's father's place (where I was staying) got burgled. This was not good. BUT luckily the thieves didn't take the Cat Piano picture signed by Nick Cave (Thanks thieves...in case you happen to be reading this blog) I guess maybe they realised that some things can't be replaced.

We are currently cutting together the narration and we are trying to get the film to around a 5 to 6 minute duration. We will have much more to show you in the coming weeks so keep checking us.

Nick Cave adds voice to Cat Piano

Well we promised some exciting news and here it is. Singer, poet, writer, actor and generally all round legendary Australian artist Nick Cave, will be narrating The Cat Piano. Myself and Ari are thrilled and honored to have him lend his voice to our film. Thankyou to our producer extraordinaire Jessica Brentnall who helped us in aquiring his services.

The narration will be recorded in early November in Melbourne.

In other great news, with the help of Jessica Brentnall (once again) WACOM the makers of the ever helpful drawing tablets have come on board as a sponsor by providing us with a CINTIQ. For those of you who don't know what a Cintiq is, it is basically a screen that doubles as a monitor AND a drawing tablet. It speeds up the animating process dramatically and has thus far proved to be an invaluable tool in the process. So a big thanks goes out to the people at WACOM.




Other people that have joined the Cat Piano team are award-winning sound designer Rob McKenzie who will be creating the soundscape for the film, and Jeremy Hill-Brooks who has kindly agreed to be our editor.

So the journey continues. Here is a couple of pics that help show you what the style of the film will be.

STORYBOARDS EMERGE

Hi everyone
Well after some weeks of working on the storyboards for The Cat Piano, I am happy to say that we have completed them and have put some a few on here for you to see. Obviously we don't want to put on so many that it gives the whole story away, so we've chosen a snippet of a selected scene.

Ari has started on some tests for the animation and will start animating the film very soon. As soon as we have some pencil tests for you we will put them up on the blog. I will also be be able to announce who will narrate the film in the coming weeks.

We hope to finish the film by early December. Jessica Brentnall, one of the film's producers is organising a film showcase called PULSE, featuring emerging young Australian directors and so The Cat Piano will hopefully recieve its premiere at the Pulse screening on December 6th in Sydney, alongside films by young director's such as Nash Edgerton, Garth Davis and Amiel Courtin-Wilson. The Pulse showcase is also going to travel to L.A and New York City in Jan next year which will be cool.