As part of Animation Bridge: Storyboarding From Start to Finish South West Screen are running 3 masterclasses in London, Bristol and Bournemouth. Animation Bridge is a model piloted by Aardman Animations and South West Screen in 2006 with stop motion key animators transferring to CG production. The principles have now been applied to storyboard training. Animation Bridge: Storyboarding From Start to Finish is proposed in response to an acute need for improving the skill levels of storyboard artists working in the UK animation industry.

The three masterclasses are:

• Visual Structure, Bruce Block
  10 May 2008, 9.30am -5.30pm at BAFTA London
  Click here for details

• Visual Language and Story Structure, Frank Gladstone
  17 May 2008, 9am - 5pm at Watershed Bristol
  Click here for details

• Comedy Intensive Course, Steve Kaplan
  31 May 2008, 9.30am - 6.30pm at Arts Institute, Bournemouth
  Click here for details

BOOKING
Places cost £25.00 per course and are limited to people with prior media industry experience. To get a booking form, please email us. Please note that these masterclasses are open to UK residents only.

These events are funded by South West Screen, Skillset, South West Regional Development Agency and Aardman Animations.

Animation Bridge: Visual Structure - a one day masterclass with Bruce Block

Saturday 10 May 2008
9.30am -5.30pm
BAFTA, London

'Just as a writer is concerned with story structure or a musician with musical structure, a picture maker must be concerned with visual structure'.

This is a rare opportunity to learn from a highly experienced US based feature film producer, Mr Bruce A. Block.

Mr. Block has served as a producer, director or creative consultant on feature films, television shows, commercials, animated films, computer games and IMAX movies. His feature film credits include: The Holiday, Something's Gotta Give, Stuart Little, As Good As It Gets,The Parent Trap and America's Sweethearts.

Visual structure is the only language available to picture makers yet it is often misused or simply ignored. The key to using visual structure is an understanding of the Basic Visual Components and how visual structure relates to narrative/story structure. It is through the control of these components that a picture maker stirs an audience's emotions, creates new and unique visual styles and gives structure and unity to their work.

The principles discussed in the seminar can be used for live-action or animated theatrical motion pictures, television shows, commercials, or computer games. The seminar relates all of the visual concepts to practical production and bridges the gap between theory and practice.

Limited coach transport from Bristol to London is available for this masterclass. The coach leaves Aardman Animations, Gas Ferry Road at 6.30am and returns at 5.45pm - to reserve a seat e-mail Katie Daniels. Seats will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.
Booking details

Animation Bridge: Visual Language and Story Structure

A day-long presentation on cinematic language and narrative story telling with award winning Frank Gladstone
Saturday 17 May 2008
9am - 5pm
Watershed, Bristol

Frank Gladstone has been a professional animator, producer, director, writer and teacher for nearly 35 years, first managing his own Emmy award-winning studio and then in senior positions for Disney, Warner Brothers and DreamWorks, among others. His DreamWorks credits include The Road to Eldorado,Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, and Shark Tale. At Disney Animation, he worked with production teams on Rescuers Down Under,Beauty and the Beast,Aladdin, The Lion King,Pocahontas and Mulan. Frank continues to be in demand as a consultant and teacher at major studios and schools, worldwide.

This interactive, copiously illustrated and occasionally irreverent course is presented in two sessions:

Session 1: A lively discussion of three of the four basic elements of visual language: Light, Color, and Composition, and their use in supporting cinematic storytelling. Clips from the films Visions of Light,Network, Witness, andBad Day at Black Rock will illustrate these principles.

Session 2:. The forth element of visual language, Movement, is broken down into its various forms (elemental, mechanical, editorial, ocular). Finally, "Three Act Story Structure", parallel narratives, plants and payoffs, and character driven verses plot driven scenarios are defined and applied to a series of examples, including animated and live action shorts and Alfred Hitchcock's classic, Vertigo.
Booking details

Comedy Intensive Course

With Steve Kaplan
Saturday 31 May 2008
9.30am - 6.30pm
Arts Institute, Bournemouth

For more than 15 years, Steve Kaplan has been the industry's most respected and sought-after expert on comedy. His former students' accomplishments are unmatched: They have been nominated for 43 Emmy Awards, 1 Academy Award, 3 Golden Globe Awards, 1 American Comedy Award, 6 Writers' Guild of America Awards and several others. They've WON 10 Emmys, 1 Oscar, 2 WGA Awards and the American Comedy Award.

His Comedy Intensive workshop offers proven and practical methods and principles that help you understand comedy from the inside out: Why is something funny? How do you write funny? How do you make your characters funny? How do you structure a comedy story? How do you think funny so it translates from idea to page to screen? In addition to teaching his seminar around the world (he recently taught a series of workshops and seminars in Australia) Kaplan has taught workshops to such companies as Dreamworks, Disney, HBO and others.

You can read more about Steve's seminar here
Booking details

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