Monday 29 August 2011

In The Can

I've just been deleting a bunch of old text messages. But here's one for posterity - a message from John Leatherbarrow,  Director of Photography on The Last Belle, dated 26th October 2010, at 7:59 in the evening:

All reshoots done and at lab. Chin chin. JL

14 years after writing the script, the last frame was commited to film. To my knowledge this is the last time anyone will be shooting an animated short this way: 35,000 hand drawn, hand painted cels, shot onto 35mm movie film on a rostrum camera. (If I'm wrong about this I'd be happy to hear.)

John Leatherbarrow and Neil Boyle

4 comments:

  1. I saw this absolute comic gem at the London Film Festival today. If you can find a way to see it... go go go !!!! Good Luck with it.

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  2. Neil -

    You wrote:

    "To my knowledge this is the last time anyone will be shooting an animated short this way: 35,000 hand drawn, hand painted cels, shot onto 35mm movie film on a rostrum camera. (If I'm wrong about this I'd be happy to hear.)"

    Mark Kausler (animator/director) and Greg Ford (producer) are making a film that is hand-drawn and hand-inked on cels and photographed by the last few functioning 35 mm animation stands in North America. The film is called "There Must Be Some Other Cat" , a sequel to Mark Kausler's previous film "It's the Cat" which was also hand-inked on cels.

    http://itsthecat.com/

    Also , Dean Kalman-Lennert is in the process of finishing his film "Dear Anna Olson" , which is entirely hand-drawn and hand-colored on cels , shot on a 35 mmm Oxberry stand.

    http://www.dearannaolson.com/index.html


    .

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  3. Thanks for that info David, it's cheered me up no end to hear that there's still life in the old rostrum technology yet, and that our film won't be the last to be made this way. In an ideal world all varieties of technology, old and new, should be available to us so we can use whatever best suits the script, or the style we're trying to achieve. But rostrum cameras are becoming more and more scarce (of the many that were available to us here in London during the making of Last Belle, only one that I know about is now still standing - the rest have been scrapped). It would be great if a few enthusiasts / studios / colleges could keep a handful of rostrums going so that the option is always there...

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