The Village (animated short film)
The Village | |
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Directed by | Mark Baker |
Written by | Mark Baker |
Produced by | Pam Dennis |
Starring | Annie Griffin, Dave Western, James Baker |
Edited by | Annie Kocur |
Music by | Julian Nott |
Animation by | Christine Anders, Lynne Anderson, Neville Astley, Mark Baker, Sally Baxter, Sharon Boxall, Guy Brockett, Juliet Bunce, Christine Courtney, Caroline Cruikshank Martin Davey, Roxanne Ducharme, Alyson Hamilton, Lynne Holzer, Flora Keen, Sara Kent, Angela Kovacs, Chris Lambrou, Berni Leroy, Vanessa Luther-Smith, Gaston Marzio, Tom Newman, Isabel Radage, Paul Ray, Sandra Roach, Sharon Smith, Rachael Stedman, Paul Stone, Peter Western, Pete Wood, Julia Woolf, Rosemary Young |
Production company | Pizazz Pictures |
Distributed by | Pizzaz Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 15 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
The Village, a Vila or a Village is an
, in one of the first scenes the man is seen digging soil planting apple trees just outside the village. The rest of the village is seen after with the main focus being about the villagers staring at each other.The Village was initially made for the British television channel Channel 4,[10] Pizazz Pictures which was the studio where the crew worked in managed the production with Baker serving as director, Pizazz Pictures also distributed the animation. The Village aired on Channel 4 TV station as a "Pizazz Pictures production".
Today The Village is available on YouTube and Baker's website.[1]
Plot
This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. (November 2023) |
The Village starts with a scene of little
After a while the gardener resumes planting trees, he sings while doing it but is interrupted by the rest of the villagers who are
The villagers gather in the graveyard to hold a funeral for the murdered old man. The villagers start chopping down the trees that the gardener had planted to build a
The gardener and the wife watch the village from a hill in the forrest while leaving.
Cast
The crew consisted of three voice actors: Annie Griffin[9][11] who played the role of all the female villagers including the old lady and the wife and Dave Western[12] and James Baker[13][9] who both played the roles of the male villager characters like the gardener, greedy old man and the large man in the tank top.
Production
Production in 1993
The production of the short animation film took about 3 months
"I liked the idea of the village having a definite inside and outside, with most of the characters staying in their houses and occasionally scuttling across the courtyard from one building to another. I worked out a basic plan for the layout of the houses and who was going to live in each one.
Since the characters walk about a lot, this layout was one of the few things that remained constant through all the drafts of the script and storyboarding."
"Once I had completed what I regarded as the final draft of the script, I translated it into a drawn storyboard by first printing out the typed script under blank storyboard squares. Filling in these blank squares with drawings was a very fast process, since I had been imagining the action, and writing about it for so long. I think the final storyboard took about two days to draw (compared with a year, off and on between commercial work at Pizazz, working on the script)".
"The Village started life as a sort of reaction to The Hill Farm. I wanted to show a darker side of rural or isolated life, and I wanted the whole story to come from elements within the location, rather than having other characters turning up to get the action going. I spent a lot of time just trying to invent elements that could fit into this kind of situation. During this period I couldn’t settle on a final plot line, so my first proposals to Channel Four, were more along the lines of describing the characters and possible ways the story might go".[1]
"I had animated The Hill Farm on my own, but it had taken three years… The production time allowed for animating The Village was just over three months, and I was going to work with a team of animators. This was one of the reasons the character designs had to be translated into detailed model sheets. I also laid out the whole film on sheets of animation paper, before the animation started. A large proportion of the budget was made of animators’ wages, so we had to keep the process as organized as possible.[1]
The team of animators were, Neville Astley, Mark Baker, Sally Baxter, Roxanne Ducharme, Caroline Cruikshank, Alyson Hamilton, Vanessa Luther-Smith, Gaston Marzio, Tom Newman, Isabel Radage, Sharon Smith, Paul Stone, Pete Western & Julia Woolf.
Pam Dennis, the producer, and her assistant, Angela Cocker, would check with us on a weekly basis to find out if we were keeping up with the schedule. We were always behind, but somehow we got the animation done, only straying a couple of weeks over schedule",[1] "Annie Kocur edited the rushes and Julian Nott composed his score to the final picture edit. Danny Hambrook started track-laying the sound effects. We had less time than on The Hill Farm, but we worked in more or less the same way, track-laying in the day and recording effects at night. The main difference was that we worked digitally and in Dolby stereo. Certain effects proved harder to get than others – in particular the scratchy noises made by the ants, which ended up being a mixture of several sounds. Extra voices and effects were recorded by Dominique Wolf and the final sound mix was by Adrian Rhodes".[1]
4K scan and restoration by Modern Film Labs California (2016)
In October 2016 a 4K scan and restoration of the film was made to improve the quality. The restored version is available on YouTube and Mark Baker's website.
Reception
Mark Baker's personal description of The Village
"The film is set in a small, isolated village where everyone has something to hide. The villagers spend about half their time trying to find out their neighbours’ secrets and the other half trying to preserve their own. One villager seems to have no interest in this way of life, and is considered an outsider. He comes under special scrutiny from the rest of the village, and his every move is noted..."
"The Village is a 14 minute long animation film that uses the traditional animation technique of cel and painted backgrounds. It has virtually no dialogue. It was funded by Channel Four Television and produced by Pam Dennis at Pizazz Pictures, London."
General reception
The Village first aired at evening in May 1993 on Channel 4. The reception of the short film was mainly very positive,[14] many critics loved the film with some[who?] describing it as a "near perfect animated short movie".[citation needed]
Awards and nominations
Nominations
In 1994 The Village was nominated twice, an
Awards summary
The Village was given 8 awards,[1][16] it was awarded the best "Animated Production Especially Produced for Television and Not Part of a Series" at the Ottawa International Animation Festival in 1994, in the same year the Hiroshima International Animation Festival awarded The Village the "Hiroshima prize", Carrousel International du Film awarded it the best short film award, in the Annecy International Animation Film Festival the animation was awarded the prize of "Special Jury Award", Cartoon Forum, Europe awarded it the prize of "Cartoon d'Or", The Village was awarded the best animated film and FIPRESCI prize at the 1993 Kraków Film Festival. It was also awarded the best short film prize at the Chicago International Film Festival in 1993.[16]
List of Awards, 1993–1994
Ottawa International Animation Festival | Prize for "Animated Production Especially Produced for Television and Not Part of a Series" 1994 |
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Hiroshima International Animation Festival | The "Hiroshima Prize" 1994 |
Carrousel International du Film | Best Short Film 1993 |
Annecy International Animation Film Festival | "Special Jury Award" 1993 |
Cartoon Forum, Europe | "Cartoon d'Or" 1993 |
Kraków Film Festival | Silver Dragon (1st prize) for Best Animated Film and FIPRESCI Prize 1993 |
Chicago International Film Festival | Best Short Film, Silver HUGO prize 1993 |
Stuttgart International Film Festival | 2nd place for best animated short film 1993 |
Festival du Mons, Belgium | 1st Prize 1994 |
See also
- Mark Baker (animator)
- Annie Griffin
- Short film
- Hand-drawn animation
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Mark Baker Films – The Village". www.markbakerfilms.com. Retrieved 2023-06-09.
- ^ The Village (1993), retrieved 2023-06-09
- ^ "The Village". Dr. Grob's Animation Review. 2020-09-21. Retrieved 2023-06-09.
- ^ andreapatruno. "The Village by Mark Baker – Review". Tumblr. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
- ^ "The Village (Film, Animation): Reviews, Ratings, Cast and Crew – Rate Your Music". rateyourmusic.com. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
- ^ Solomon, Charles (1994-04-22). "ANIMATION REVIEW : Festival Draws on British Humor". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
- ^ The Village, retrieved 2023-06-13
- ISBN 978-1-136-13598-9.
- ^ a b c d The Village (1993) – IMDb, retrieved 2023-06-06
- ^ The Village (S) (1993), retrieved 2023-06-09
- ^ "Annie Griffin". IMDb. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
- ^ "Dave Western". IMDb. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
- ^ "James Baker". IMDb. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
- ^ Cavalier, Stephen (2015-06-11). "100 Greatest Animated Shorts / The Hill Farm / Mark Baker". Skwigly Animation Magazine. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
- ^ "1994 | Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences". Oscars.org.
- ^ a b The Village (Short 1993) – Awards, IMDb, retrieved 2023-06-13