BFX Festival draws to a close

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The BFX Festival came to an end following five days of movie screenings, animation workshops and industry insights into some of the best movies of 2014.

The Festival, in its second year, celebrated the best in animation, computer games and visual effects from the last 12 months, with talks and workshops from industry professionals offering a ‘behind the scenes’ look at how films and games are made.

Graduates and students from Bournemouth’s universities joined industry professionals and members of the public for the Festival, designed, in part, to inspire future generations to enter the booming creative industries.

This year, industry experts took to the stage at the Bournemouth International Centre to talk about their work on movies such as The Lego Movie, Maleficent, Godzilla and Guardians of the Galaxy. Legendary computer games such as the new installment of Elite (Elite: Dangerous) were also featured – with delegates learning about what it takes to create the visual effects for games and movies and just how much of our films are digitally created.

Framestore’s Ben Lambert, a Bournemouth University graduate, spoke about his modelling work for the Oscar-winning movie Gravity, which won the visual effects Oscar at this year’s Academy Awards. Another BU graduate, Miles Green, who works for Australia-based visual effects house Animal Logic spoke about his work on The Lego Movie and how they tried to stick to the limitations of the Lego world while creating the movie.

The Festival is the idea of the International VFX Hub; a collaboration between the award-winning National Centre for Computer Animation (NCCA) at Bournemouth University and the Faculty of Media and Performance at the Arts University Bournemouth (AUB).

Weekend activities had a more family-friendly flavour, as children and parents descended on the Festival to create their own animations, during a free workshop. Children were invited to make a model out of clay before using a stop motion camera to bring their creations to life. The talks and workshops were complimented with evening screenings of popular movies, including Maleficent and Frozen.

A special art exhibition, featuring concept artwork from 1959 animated film Sleeping Beauty and Maleficent were also on display during the Festival, loaned from Walt Disney Animation Studios in California.

Sofronis Efstathiou, Senior Lecturer at Bournemouth University and the BFX Festival Director said, “It was great to see so many people learning more about visual effects and animation and their importance in cinema, TV and game making.”

Sofronis continued, “BFX Festival 2014 was a great opportunity to review some of the best visual effects and animations from the past year – I was in astonished by the quality of speakers and their presentations this year, and delegates seemed to enjoy the range of activities on offer – from screenings and workshops to talks from industry professionals on movies such as The Lego Movie and Gravity.”

Bournemouth University has a long history with the visual effects industry, with many graduates going on to work on award-winning movies and games. Over 80 BU graduates worked on the film Avatar, while around 60 BU graduates were involved in the visual effects for Gravity.

Plans are already underway for the BFX Festival in 2015, and alumni are encouraged to join in, as Efstathiou comments, “We’ll be back again next year and would love our alumni to join us so watch out for communications about BFX in 2015.”

For more information about the BFX Festival, or to keep up-to-date with the latest information about next year’s Festival, visit www.bfxfestival.com.

The Bourne Legacy

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Alumni who have done well in the creative industries come back to BU to give advice to Media School students.

Successful Media School alumni were back at Bournemouth University to share their stories and advice with final year students.

Among those speaking at The Bourne Legacy event were BU graduates who have gone on to edit The X-Factor, work on Tim Burton animated film Frankenweenie, and have gained positions at BBC Radio 1Xtra.

The event is now in its second year, and has been organised to inspire current final year students from across the Digital Media Design, TV and Radio Production courses, Scriptwriting and Global Media Practice degrees.

Mark Shufflebottom, Programme Co-ordinator BA (Hons) Digital Media Design, helped to organise the event.

He said: “It is a chance for [the students] to meet people from BU who have gone out into industry and are doing great things.

“It is about meeting these guys and them giving some really good idea of how to get into the industry.”

The first speaker of the day was Dan Mellow, an editor who has worked on TV shows including the X-Factor and Comic Relief, and is now editing comedy programmes.

Dan, who completed a Media Production degree at BU in 1995, said: “There were so many skills that I learnt at Bournemouth University that I have taken into the industry and that continue to be useful today.

He added: “I’ve hugely enjoyed the event. I hope it’s very useful for the current batch of students for alumni to come back and share their experiences and stories of how they got into the industry.”

Also speaking at the event was producer and director Céin McGillicuddy, who has worked on programmes like Made in Chelsea and MTV’s My Super Sweet World Class since completing a BA (Hons) in Scriptwriting for Film and TV then an MA (Hons) in TVProduction at BU, and fellow Scriptwriting for Film and TV graduate Danna Wills, who worked at Aardman Animations and Disney before moving into children’s magazines.

Following the talks, there was a Q&A panel session with the alumni and the opportunity for networking.

Anna Goodridge, who studied TV Production at BU from 2005 to 2008 was another of the speakers.

She is currently working as a Production Coordinator on BBC drama Holby City.

Anna said: “I started off as a runner and worked my way up the old-fashioned way, which is how you’re always going to have to do it.

“I want to let students know that your mum or dad doesn’t have to work in television – with hard work and a bit of research you can get in quite easily but you’ve got to be patient and one day, eventually, you’ll get to where you want to be.”