Made in Mind

Made In Mind is an evening of performance, film, music and mayhem in aid of Mind at The Warehouse, Waterloo, Friday 5th September 2014. Curated by Emma O'Rourke and our very own Elizabeth Holly Hurt; it is the start of a collaboration between the two to promote wellbeing through a series of pop-up events from Leeds to London. 

emmamaireadorourke.com
elizabethhollyhurt.com

Mind provides advice and support to empower anyone experiencing a mental health problem. They campaign to improve services, raise awareness and promote understanding. Their work is about people, not conditions, and Made in Mind reflects this ethos in the programme. 

All funds raised through the event will go to Mind. 

mind.org.uk

Joy will be screened as part of a programme of short films of various genres including drama, animation, dance film, art film and documentary. Most of the films touch upon mental health themes. Alongside the film screening there will be talks, readings, live music and performances, art for sale and a good old raffle with very exciting prizes. Most of the artists involved are active supporters of Mind, and many have mental health issues at the forefront of their work, or are mental health service users themselves. 

For more information on the event and artists involved go to:

facebook.com/MadeInMindEvents

For tickets go here:

eventbrite.co.uk

and if you can't make it to the event but would still like to donate to the cause, you can do so online at:

uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/madeinmind

Window Screenings

We've arranged a few screenings of our new animation, Window. Come along to one of the following events:

PREMIERE!

MiniCine at the Mills - Thursday 28th February, 7pm, Armley Mills Industrial Museum, Leeds.

Website: http://minicine.org.uk 

Tickets: http://minicine.bigcartel.com

Hush Hush Film Night - Thursday 28th March, 7pm, The Base Leeds.

Website: http://thebaseleeds.com

Young Filmmakers Day (INDIs Award) Leeds Young People's Film Festival - Monday 1st April, 3.45pm, Hyde Park Picturehouse, Leeds.
Website: http://www.leedsyoungfilm.com/events/young-filmmakers-day-2/

Making Tracks - Friday 12th April, 7pm, Whirlygig Cinema at Rich Mix London. Window will be screening with a live original score, composed and performed by The Cabinet of Living Cinema.
Website: http://whirlygigcinema.com 

Exploding Cinema - Saturday 20th April, 7.30pm, MS Stbnitz, Canary Wharf.
Website: http://www.explodingcinema.org 

Showroom Shorts - 23rd April, South Yorkshire Filmmakers Network at the Showroom Cinema, Sheffield.
Website: http://syfn.org

Chapel Allerton Short Film Festival - Monday 26th August, Seven Arts, Leeds. As part of the Chapel Allerton Arts Festival.
Website: http://www.chapelallerton.org.uk/

Leamington Underground Cinema Festival - 23rd-29th September 2013.
Website: http://leamingtonundergroundcinema.wordpress.com/

This blog post will be updated with more details and screenings as and when they are confirmed, so keep checking back!

Also follow us on twitter @enJoy_film for regular updates.

You can watch the teaser for Window here: http://vimeo.com/enjoyfilm/windowteaser 

Window

When a little girl visits her Grandma's old house, her unsettling surroundings begin to creep into her dreams...

The 7th stop motion animation from enJoy film focuses on the idea of how the sights, sounds and experiences of your environment can affect your subconscious.

Made over the course of ten months this is the most complicated animation we have made to date; utilising three different animation styles layerd on top of each other we effectively had to shoot the film three times! We played around with the idea of using different animation techniques in the same film with Joy, and wanted to take this to the next level. This animation sees claymation, 2D puppetry and hand-drawn animation in the same shot, with each layer animated in stop motion.

We tried a few things we haven't done before... We finally managed to have a free standing armature by using magnets underfoot. We worked in a much larger scale to enable us to put more detail into the set and also allowed us more freedom of movement. The majority of the action is hand drawn and shot in stop motion, something we really enjoyed experimenting with but took a lot of patience.

The edit was the most complex we have attempted yet; and we did this using the new Final Cut Pro X software which we had to re-learn to use! We had 2 layers of green screening, which took a long time to perfect. We also played around with changing the scale and positioning of the 2D puppets, which turned out to be much easier than expected.

It's taken us a long time, but we're very happy with the result and can't wait to show you all. We are hoping that Window will go round a few screenings before we release it online. In the meantime, onto the next animation....

To see a few production stills from Window, head over to our facebook page: facebook.com/enjoyfilm

enJoy

Hush Hush....

Shhhh, we've got a secret to tell you....

On 31st January Burnt Trees will be screened at the first Hush Hush film night at the Base Leeds.

The Base is a creative studio run by Champion Up North; an independent agency with a core in music and visual arts supporting the professional development of musicians and artists in Leeds.

The January event is the first of the monthly Hush Hush screenings and is already sold out! The event will run as a monthly screening promoting the work of underground visual artists and independent filmmakers from Leeds, and we are delighted to be part of the first event!

You can read our interview about Burnt Trees and our work here: http://thebaseleeds.com/index.php/film-interviews

In addition, Joy will be screened at the second event on Thursday 28th February!

Spreading the Joy

We've been a little quiet recently whilst we've been model making for our upcoming animation 'Window', but our existing films have still been finding their way around Yorkshire...

Back in August both 'Joy' and 'Burnt Trees' were selected for the Chapel Allerton Film Festival at Seven Arts in Leeds, screened on bank holiday Monday. http://www.chapelallerton.org.uk/

This week 'Joy' was screened for the second time at the award winning MiniCine - congratulations to the guys for their well deserved Best Programming award at the British Federation of Film Societies’ film Society of the year awards! http://miniminicine.com/

And just today (29th Sept) 'Joy' and 'A Cinema Near Ewe' were screened as part of Point Blank Theatre Company's 'Lock-In' Festival in association with Sheffield's Festival of the Mind, this screening of local shorts was programmed by our very own Elizabeth Holly Hurt. http://www.pointblank.org.uk/

We'll be back soon with details of our upcoming animation...

Hansel of Film

Shetland Arts is taking a UK-wide part in the London 2012 Festival celebrating the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.  ‘A Hansel of Film – Shetland to Southampton and Back’ is a relay of screenings of short films made by the public in each of the nations and many of the regions of the UK.

Our animated music video for Burnt Trees by Heavy Dials has been selected for screening in two of the locations: Skipton and Aldeburgh.


For more information on Hansel of film visit their website: http://hansel2012.org/about/hansel-of-film

To book your FREE tickets to any of the events go here: http://hansel2012.org/get-involved/attend-an-event

And if you can't make it to Skipton or Aldeburgh, watch Burnt Trees on the Hansel site here: http://hansel2012.org/films/heavy-dials-burnt-trees

Animation Showcase

Saffer & Co film and video production company based in Leeds are releasing their new short film, A Mind's Wood, at a premiere event on Tuesday 22nd May 2012 at the Library Pub in Hyde Park.

As the film is a combination of live action and animation they have also invited us to showcase our work during the networking phase of the evening! Joy, Burnt Trees and A Cinema Near Ewe will be shown on a loop as people arrive and mingle.

The event isn't open to the public but will be a great platform for us to show our work and we would like to thank Saffer & Co for this opportunity.

Take a look at their website here: http://saffer.co/

Burnt Trees at Leeds Young People's Film Festival

We are delighted to announce that Burnt Trees has been selected for the Independent Directions (INDI's) competition, and will be screened at the Young Filmmakers' Day on Monday 2nd April at Hyde Park Picture House; as part of the Leeds Young People's Film Festival.

The Young Filmmakers' Day will be a combination of short film showcases, a live link up to a filmmaker, masterclasses and the INDI's competition.

The event starts at 12pm and Burnt Trees will be screened in the 20-25 age range; this section of this competition will run from 3.30-5pm, and the best thing about it is that it's completely free!

For more details visit the Leeds Young People's Film Festival website here:
http://www.leedsyoungfilm.com/film/young-filmmakers-day/

Joy (Birthday Present #2)

February is our first birthday month, and as promised here's our second birthday present!

On this day last year we started filming Joy; our first animated short, funded by IdeasTap. Therefore we felt it would only be right for our second birthday present to be the release of Joy online!

So far the film has been unavailable online as it has been around a good few screenings, including a showing at the Kerry International Film Festival. We are very proud of the success and feedback we have received from these screenings and now we would like to share Joy with everyone!

So here it is: http://vimeo.com/25470569

enJoy!

A Cinema Near Ewe (Birthday Present #1)

IT'S OUR BIRTHDAY!!!!

It's exactly one year today that we secured funding for Joy and formed enJoy film, and to celebrate we are releasing two birthday presents this month.

Birthday present #1 is a new animation titled A Cinema Near Ewe: our entry to the British Animation Awards sting competition. The only criteria in the competition brief was that the film should include at least one sheep, so we decided on several! This is our first use of dialogue in animation, however this is only to translate the sheep's conversation as we still wanted the action to be driven by the visuals. 

A Cinema Near Ewe is now available on our vimeo page: http://www.vimeo.com/enjoyfilm/acinemanearewe. Look out for our second birthday present later in the month!

Happy Birthday to us!

Burnt Trees Screening!

Exciting News!

Burnt Trees, the music video we made in 2011 for the band Heavy Dials, will be screened at the January edition of Showroom Shorts.

Showroom Shorts is a regular short film screening held in the cafe bar of the Showroom Cinema in Sheffield, and is organised by the South Yorkshire Filmmakers Network (syfn.org). Our first short, Joy, was screened at the event back in September 2011, and we are very pleased to have been invited to return to screen Burnt Trees. 

Burnt Trees is being screened at the event on Tuesday 24th January, 19:30-22:00. The event is free and open to everyone.

Merry Christmas from enJoy!

Just a quick note to wish everybody a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from us and all of our 2011 Characters!

Keep your eyes peeled for us in the New Year, we have a new competition sting coming up in January, ideas for some new shorts, and it will be our first birthday in February so we will have a nice little treat for you all. 

enJoy your Christmas!

Taking a Break...

Just a quick blog post because we have been taking a break recently so not much to report.

We have just started working on the models for a new project (see pic); our entry to the British Animation Awards BAA Sting, which will feature our first animals as the brief is to create a short animation involving at least one sheep. We would have liked to have finished this by Christmas but it's looking more like it will be early next year.

In other news, we have confirmed two more screenings of Joy recently, bumping our total up to 8 screenings. The upcoming events are: 9th December at The Honor Oak (our first screening in London!), hosted by Tiny Dog Theatre; and 12th December at a showcase of local films in aid of Macmillan Cancer Trust at the Nation of Shopkeepers in Leeds. More details can be found here:

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=227437480642244

Heavy Dials: Burnt Trees

We agreed to make an animated music video for Heavy Dials in the summer this year, it was a great project to work on as the band already had a strong concept for the video, which we ran with. Set after a fire, the video sees a somewhat soul-less female character exploring a desolate burnt landscape, soon realising that she is gradually breathing life back into the earth. Trees and flowers grow around her, and towards the end she sees what she has created and decides to destory it so that she can begin the cycle once again; relating to the themes within the song.

The project came with many challenges as we were attempting things we had never tried before and it was a great learning curve. For one, we were making a female character with lots of skin showing and hair that moved in the breeze, these things were both troublesome so we are going to consider using different materials in future that are more adaptable to movement.

We also had to animate the set as well as the character, which was challenging from a design aspect as we had to build a set which could accomodate the trees underneath so that they could then be pushed up through the ground. It was also a challenge in terms of animating; adding tiny leaves one by one, shot by shot, whilst also moving the character was frustrating at times, but we really enjoyed this challenge and think that the end result is effective.

Once again our favourite part of the project was model making, it was great to be able to work on a detailed set again; creating charcoaled wood scrapings, ash and rubble and really working into the landscape. We also thoroughly enjoyed experimenting with a slighly more surreal 'other-worldy' aesthetic, encorporating un-natural materials such as wire into the naturalistic surroundings to give it a bit of an edge. This is something we would like to do more of in future.

The video is available to view in the work section of our website. Making photos and storyboard can be seen on our facebook page.

We are very greatful to Heavy Dials for giving us this opportunity, the single can be downloaded for free by following this link: heavydials.bandcamp.com

Philip

Philip is our second entry into the Flippin' Stings competition run by the Flip Festival. As our first entry was an object animation, we decided to make this sting more character driven, and used the opportunity to experiment more with the character. We worked in more of a cartoon style (mildly inspired by Camberwick Green and Pingu!), which we really enjoyed. Another reason we like working on these short projects is that it gives us a chance to experiment with different aesthetics.

The making was pretty straight forward as we had a simplified design. And the majority of the shooting went well as Philip was very stable, so we were able to just push him along! However the flip was rather tricky and we ended up having to go for closeup shots rather than a wide shot of the flip.

We really like Philip, and hope to do more things like this in the future.

We will keep you updated on the outcome of the competition.

Flippin' Charts

The Flip International Animation Festival are running a competition called Flippin' Stings, which invites animators to create a ten second ident promoting Flip, and the chosen stings will be used within the festival.

We decided to take part, as we really enjoyed making The E4sy Way for the E4 Estings competition a few months ago; when working in stop motion even a short film takes months to make, so creating a ten second film is a breath of fresh air as it only takes a couple of days.

We had two ideas for the competition so decided to make both. Flippin' Charts is the first of the two; the idea came from an office set that we already had made for something that didn't happen. As the set was already made we only needed to make the flip charts, so the whole process took just one day. The film features flip charts with animated writing displaying the four stages of creating a stop motion film.

See the video and images here: http://enjoy-film.com/Flippin_Charts.html

Look out for our second entry, 'Philip', next week.....

Joy Screenings!

The time has finally come for us to share Joy with the general public! We've been impatiently waiting to screen Joy and see what people think - so please feel free to come along to any of the events listed below, we'd love to see you there and hear your thoughts. Until then, check out the trailer and making of videos here: http://www.vimeo.com/enjoyfilm

Screening info:

SHOWROOM SHORTS 

13th September, 7.30pm @ Showroom Cinema, Sheffield. (FREE)
 Hosted by the South Yorkshire Filmmakers Network (SYFN) more details here:
http://syfn.org/news/ (second feature in the news bulletin)



MINI CINE


22nd September, 7pm @ Armley Mills, Leeds. 
A monthly film screening; showing a feature film supported by a short, the feautre film showing this month is 'La Haine' written and directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. Tickets now SOLD OUT:
http://miniminicine.wordpress.com/%20

PECHA KUCHA
28th September, 7pm @ Portland Works, Sheffield. PechaKucha Nights are informal and fun gatherings where creative people get together and share their ideas, works, thoughts etc. £5/£10/£20
http://www.pecha-kucha.org/night/sheffield/

NEXUS NIGHT CAFE


16th October, 2am - 6am (Sat night/Sun morn) @ Nexus Art Cafe, Manchester. (FREE)
A weekly night time screening event for those who want to wind down after a night out! Joy will be screened on a loop throughout the night so drop in at any time.

http://welcometo.nexusartcafe.com/

SHORTSBREAD

1st November, 6pm @ Dock St. Market, Leeds. (FREE) 
A monthly networking and screening event for filmmakers and film fans, hosted by the wonderful WYIFN:
http://www.wyifn.co.uk/

KERRY FILM FESTIVAL
1st November, 6pm @ Siamsa Tire, Tralee (6 Euro).
Joy will be shown as part of the international category of Animation Shorts
http://www.kerryfilmfestival.com/?cat=57

TINY DOG PRODUCTIONS
9th December, 7.30pm @ The Honor Oak, London. (£3 entry)
The first evening of short film from Tiny Dog Theatre.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=288283354532309

NATION OF SHOPKEEPERS
12th December, 7pm @ Nation of Shopkeepers, Leeds (FREE, optional donations to charity on the night)
A showcase of local film to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Trust.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=296609543696549


This blog post and Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=107385339365359 will be continually updated with further details and (hopefully) details of new screenings as they come up. For anybody who is interested in screening Joy, please get in touch at contact@enjoy-film.com


Hope to see you soon!

enJoy!

The E4sy Way

We spent last weekend making a ten second animated short for the 2011 E4 Estings competition.

Our entry, titled The E4sy Way (clever eh?) is about finding the easy way in. The E4's want to be on TV, and they are all trying their hardest to get inside, but one E4 has more common sense than the others.

The video made within two days. We already had our idea for the concept and design so the first day was spent making the set, which was fairly straightforward, but we had to consider how we would do things like having the E4's coming through the wall and floor. Then the second day was spent shooting and editing, which was also very straightforward as we were just animating objects rather than human characters. All in all it was really enjoyable to work on something that was fast paced and completed very quickly, we'll definitely be entering again next time!

You can watch the video and vote for our entry in the competition by following this link and clicking Yay! http://www.e4.com/video/toCGWAyh6fnUT0bRnp9mZX/play.e4

There are also photo's of the design, construction and production of The E4sy Way on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/enJoyfilm or in the new gallery on our website: http://enjoy-film.com/E_Sting.html

New Developments

Since the completion of Joy a few weeks ago we've been making plans for several new projects, and we thought it was about time we shared the news!

Firstly, we have released our behind the scenes video 'Making Joy', available to watch on our website here: http://enjoy-film.com/Videos.html

We have been preparing for an exhibition of our Joy models, with an accompanying animation workshop in association with Point Blank Theatre Company, as part of a large event in a new creative space in Barnsley (date and details tbc).

This coming weekend we will be creating a ten second animation for the E4 Estings competition: ( http://www.e4.com/skins/doitandwin/100eba297679504b733671e9e8abd9a0/entry-terms.e4 ) We have given ourselves just two days to devise, design, model make, animate and edit the ident, and this will be available online next week. We are also looking into taking part in other film competitions which are coming up soon.

Finally, we are very excited to be working with Milieu Sound ( http://www.milieusound.com/ ) on the production of an animated music video for Heavy Dials. We are currently in the development stage and the video is due for completion in September.

Joy - Final Cut

Just a quick post to say that Joy is now finished!

We have loved making the film, and are going to miss working with our Harold. We can't wait to share Joy with everyone when we release it online in a few months, but until then we will have releases of the soundtrack preview and 'Making Joy' behind the scenes video, and other exciting news coming very soon...

We would like to say a big thanks to IdeasTap for funding the project through their Ideas Fund Innovators Award, and for making Joy possible. And a huge thanks to John Hamilton for lending us all his hard work and talents to create such a beautiful score.