Machester Animation Festival: Will Becher's Masterclass

On Wednesday, I attended Will Becher's masterclass and it was truly fascinating. I had always loved watching Aardman's work growing up, so it was great to hear what Will had to say. I know I had met Peter Lord at BAF last year, but Will showed a lot of clips that were from 'behind the scenes' and the inner Aardman-fangirl in me was unleashed once again.

Will went into a lot of detail about how the puppets and sets were made, and how important it was to make them as sturdy and solid as possible. They would do a lot of planning ahead to make sure they would only make what they needed to in order to be time conscious, but also think about the camera camera angles they were going to use and how they would maneuver in more awkward sets. This usually meant making the sets which detachable parts so they could make their way around the set.

Positioning Models on a Shaun the Sheep Movie Set

Will talked a lot about the company's history and their production progress (he would tell us things like they would typically animate 3 seconds a day on the Shaun the Sheep movie) but the part of his presentation that I found most interesting was the section on Live Action Video. Sadly I don't have an clips that I can show as we were asked not to photograph this section of the presentation, but it was great to see where the team got their references from. Usually the producer and other members of the team would act out different scenes so that they could "capture the essence of the performance". You can tell that this was a huge benefit for the team as the animation clearly captures the emotions that were acted out in the LAVs, and is definitely something I'm going to take away from the presentation. Not only does it look like a great way to collect reference material that is going to benefit animating, it also looks like a lot of fun and a good way to interact and build relationships with co-workers. Hopefully one day I will have built on my confidence and people skills enough that I can be as crazy and outgoing as the people displayed in the LAVs that we were shown.

Will ended on a note that can be summarized in just one sentence; GET YOUR WORK OUT THERE. He said that he got his job at Aardman by being persistent and ever so lucky. By showing his enthusiasm and persistently contacting the studio he was able to find work as a runner where he got experience in model making and it was from here that he was able to work his way up.