BAFTA Cymru
BAFTA Cymru (or BAFTA in Wales) is the Welsh branch of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and was founded in 1987.stop-motion puppet and cut-out animation techniques to produce short films and music videos.
Life and career
Wallace grew up in Bristol and developed an interest in animation through short films made by
Aardman Animations
Aardman Animations Limited, known simply as Aardman, is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England, United Kingdom. It is known for films and television series made using stop motion and clay animation techniques, particularly those fe ...
, the Bristol-based studio known for its stop-motion
clay animation
Claymation, sometimes called clay animation or plasticine animation, is one of many forms of stop-motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually plasticine cl ...
techniques. He studied at Newport Film School, receiving a BAFTA Cymru nomination in the "Short Form & Animation" category for his graduation film, ''The Man Who Was Afraid of Falling'', in 2012. He was then made a BBC Performing Arts Fellow in 2015 and included in a list of 32 "Ones to Watch". Wallace has also worked in theatre, and has likened the process of working with animators, and of animators getting to grips with puppets and the characters they represent – building an atmosphere informing the work – to directing a theatre play.
Wallace collaborated with Péter Vácz on the 2016 music video for the track "Dear John" by British band
James
James may refer to:
People
* James (given name)
* James (surname)
* James (musician), aka Faruq Mahfuz Anam James, (born 1964), Bollywood musician
* James, brother of Jesus
* King James (disambiguation), various kings named James
* Prince Ja ...
. Wallace and Vácz had met as students on "Animation Sans Frontières", an animation course, and have collaborated on a number of projects over the years, as well as teaching stop-motion animation together.
In 2017, Wallace created a critically acclaimed stop-motion puppet music video for the Sparks song " Edith Piaf (Said It Better Than Me)". Depicting a surreal adventure set in 1930s' Paris, the video used wire puppets moving in cardboard scenery with painted backgrounds and was completed in just six weeks' time. Wallace was given a great amount of artistic freedom for the video and Sparks were very pleased with the result, pronouncing it a "work of art in its own right" that perfectly captured the song's mood, and "perhaps Sparks' best video ever". Wallace subsequently created animated sequences for the 2021 British-American Sparks
documentary
A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...
''
The Sparks Brothers
''The Sparks Brothers'' is a 2021 documentary film about Ron and Russell Mael, members of the pop and rock duo Sparks. The film, directed by Edgar Wright, and produced by Wright, Nira Park, George Hencken and Laura Richardson, premiered at the ...
''. Directed by
Edgar Wright
Edgar Howard Wright (born 18 April 1974) is an English filmmaker. He is known for his fast-paced and kinetic, satirical Film genre, genre films, which feature extensive utilisation of expressive popular music, Steadicam tracking shots, dolly zo ...
, the film reviews the 50-year career of
Ron Ron is a shortening of the name Ronald.
Ron or RON may also refer to:
Arts and media
* Big Ron (''EastEnders''), a TV character
* Ron (''King of Fighters''), a video game character
*Ron Douglas, the protagonist in '' Lucky Stiff'' played by Joe ...
and
Russell Mael
Russell Craig Mael (born October 5, 1948) is an American singer best known as the lead singer for the band Sparks (band), Sparks, which he formed in 1971 with his elder brother Ron Mael. Mael is known for his wide vocal range, in particular his f ...
and had its world premiere at the
2021 Sundance Film Festival
The 2021 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 28 to February 3, 2021. The first lineup of competition films was announced on December 15, 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Utah, the festival combined in-person screenings at the Ray ...
on January 30, 2021.
2018 saw Wallace make a music video for Parker Bossley's track "Chemicals", using cut-out animation, a technique Wallace had previously employed in a short film titled ''Natural Disaster''. Bossley had seen ''Natural Disaster'' and was interested in a video using a similar type of collage animation technique to depict a psychedelic trip in which the lead character metamorphoses into various animals. The video won a nomination in the short film category at the 2019 Palm Springs International Animation Festival.
Wallace has also been working for some years on '' Salvation Has No Name'', a 16-minute stop-motion tale about the refugee crisis, and was invited by Aardman Animations co-founder
Peter Lord
Peter Duncan Fraser Lord CBE (born 4 November 1953) is a British animator, director, producer and co-founder of the Academy Award-winning Aardman Animations studio, an animation firm best known for its clay-animated films and shorts, particu ...
, who admired Wallace's work, to set up production in Aardman's studio. The film is part-funded by the
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves filmmaking and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...
and will feature the English-language debut of
Itziar Ituño
Itziar Ituño Martínez (born 18 June 1974) is a Spanish actress, who performs in her native Basque language as well as in Spanish. She is best known for her role as Inspector Raquel Murillo in the television series '' Money Heist''.
Early li ...
as well as the voice of
Yasmine Al Massri
Yasmine Al Massri (born 1978) is a Palestinian-born US-American and French actress, dancer, video artist and human rights advocate. She made her film debut in the 2007 film ''Caramel''. In 2015, Massri starred as ''Nimah Amin'' and ''Raina Amin'', ...
. The film is executive produced by
Game of Thrones
''Game of Thrones'' is an American Fantasy television, fantasy Drama (film and television), drama television series created by David Benioff and for HBO. It is an adaptation of ''A Song of Ice and Fire'', a series of high fantasy novels by ...
star
Maisie Williams
Margaret Constance "Maisie" Williams (born 15 April 1997) is an English actress. Williams made her acting debut in 2011 as Arya Stark, a lead character in the HBO epic medieval fantasy television series ''Game of Thrones'' (2011–2019). She g ...
and BAFTA Cymru winner Lowri Roberts through their company RAPT. Production was interrupted by the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
in March 2020, with about a third of the film's shoot completed before moving to Manchester to resume filming in 2021. The film had its world premiere at the
Edinburgh International Film Festival
The Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF), established in 1947, is the world's oldest continually running film festival.
EIFF presents both UK and international films (all titles are World, international, European or UK Premieres), in al ...