''Runaway'' is a 2009

animated short Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most ani ...

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

animator

Cordell Barker Cordell Barker (born 1956) is a Canadian animator based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He began animating in his late teens after taking on an apprenticeship at Kenn Perkins Animation. A two-time Academy Award nominee, Barker is an animation filmmaker w ...

. The film received a special jury award for short films at the

Annecy International Animation Film Festival The Annecy International Animation Film Festival (french: Festival international du film d'animation d'Annecy, officially abbreviated in English as the Annecy Festival, or simply Annecy) was created in 1960 and takes place at the beginning of J ...

and was named the best animated short film at the 2010 Genie Awards. In 2010 the film won the

Yorkton Film Festival Yorkton Film Festival (YFF) is an annual film festival held in late May in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, Canada. In 1947, the Yorkton Film Council (YFC) was founded and in 1950 the first international documentary film festival officially opened in w ...

Golden Sheaf Award for Best Animation. The film was also selected for the

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,6 ...

and was short-listed, though not nominated, for the

Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film The Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film is an award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) as part of the annual Academy Awards, or Oscars, since the 5th Academy Awards (with different names), covering the year ...

. It was also included in the Animation Show of Shows.

Plot

The film's story takes place aboard an out-of-control

train In rail transport, a train (from Old French , from Latin , "to pull, to draw") is a series of connected vehicles that run along a railway track and transport people or freight. Trains are typically pulled or pushed by locomotives (often k ...

. Barker intended the film to be a

parable A parable is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, that illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. It differs from a fable in that fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as characters, ...

about life, and how the

ruling class In sociology, the ruling class of a society is the social class who set and decide the political and economic agenda of society. In Marxist philosophy, the ruling class are the capitalist social class who own the means of production and by exte ...

tries in vain to insulate itself from the fate suffered by the

lower classes A social class is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories, the most common being the upper, middle and lower classes. Membership in a social class can for example be dependent on education, wealth, occupation, income ...

Production

The film was produced in

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749 ...

by Michael Scott and Derek Mazur for the

National Film Board of Canada The National Film Board of Canada (NFB; french: Office national du film du Canada (ONF)) is Canada's public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary f ...

. The musical score for the film was composed by

Benoît Charest Benoît Charest (; born in 1964) is a Canadian guitarist and film score composer from Quebec. He is best known for the soundtrack of the animated film '' The Triplets of Belleville (Les Triplettes de Belleville)'' (2003), for which he won a Cé ...

, known for composing the

film score A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to ...

for the animated film ''

The Triplets of Belleville ''The Triplets of Belleville'' (french: Les Triplettes de Belleville) is a 2003 animated comedy film written and directed by Sylvain Chomet. It was released as ''Belleville Rendez-vous'' in the United Kingdom. The film is Chomet's first feature ...

(Les Triplettes de Belleville)''. ''Runaway'' took Barker eight years to complete. The entire film was made with

hand-drawn animation Traditional animation (or classical animation, cel animation, or hand-drawn animation) is an animation technique in which each frame is drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation in cinema until computer animation. Proc ...

, with the exception of some more visually complex scenes:

Actors

Richard Condie Richard Condie, (born 1942) is a Canadian animator, filmmaker, musician and voice actor. Condie is best known for his 1985 animated short ''The Big Snit'' at the National Film Board of Canada and has won six international awards for ''Getting ...

as the Captain *Leonard Waldner as the Fireman *Muriel Hogue as the Lady

Musicians

*Chet Doxas, clarinet *Jim Doxas,

drum kit A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair of matching drumsticks ...

*Mike Cartile,

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standar ...

*Al McClean,

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of Single-reed instrument, single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed (mouthpi ...

*Dave Martin,

tuba The tuba (; ) is the lowest-pitched musical instrument in the brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, the sound is produced by lip vibrationa buzzinto a mouthpiece (brass), mouthpiece. It first appeared in the mid-19th&n ...

*Morgan Moore,

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range: ** Bass (instrument), including: ** Acoustic bass gu ...

*John Sadowy,

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a musica ...

References

External links

Watch ''Runaway'' at NFB.ca
* {{ACCT Short Films Films directed by Cordell Barker National Film Board of Canada animated short films 2009 short films Films set on trains Best Animated Short Film Genie and Canadian Screen Award winners 2009 animated films 2009 films 2000s animated short films Animated films about trains Canadian animated short films Quebec films 2000s English-language films 2000s Canadian films