Level 2 BA Hons Animation students were given a great opportunity to pitch animation shorts for the BBC Radio 4 More Than Words listening Festival 2012. The event takes place at St. Georges and is on the "Art of Listening" running from Friday 16th March 2012 and over the weekend.. The students films will show between other events. The students worked to a tight four week turnaround from concept to completion. Sophie Lowden an Animation graduate interviewed the students this week to get an insight into their experiences of working on this BBC brief.

Report and photos from BA Hons Animation graduate, Sophie Lowden. 


"I discovered that the students end results were all very different, even though they all had the same voice clips to choose from.

Anne Lantz an exchange student from Virginia explained  the project in detail. "We were all given some voice clips to choose from and then we had to pitch to the BBC so that they would let us produce animation for the festival. Then it was confirmed we only had 3 weeks to make the film. The challenge of the deadline was great!" The students had to respond to the sound clips recorded by the BBC around the theme the art of listening, they could work in a process of their choosing and the work could be character based or abstract. 

Harry Slinger Thompson found the most inviting thing about the project was the use of sound "with the idea of listening, I realised that as an animator you really appreciate sound when you are animating lip sync". He found it was such a great experience because of the industry standard they were expected to animate too. "it was nice to have something professionally recorded, for professionals to work with."

All the teams worked hard and once they finished their own projects they even choose to help out on each others.  Ollie Hamilton spoke highly about the collaboration within the student teams,  Harry choose to work alongside him as a character animator on his fox animation.

For some however, the project was a real stepping stone towards realising their career ambitions. Mae Voogd who had only ever worked in stop motion decided to use Adobe Flash for this particular project. "It was my first use of flash and I was so glad that I did it. I would recommend the project as it was so good to build a character from just a voice clip"

At the end of the day though, the students all said the same thing that the project had been a lot of fun, tough working to such a tight deadline and they were all grateful to have had the opportunity. 

"I am more than glad that I took part in this project as it has increased my skills and confidence as an animator. I also wish to thank the lecturers and BBC Radio 4 for giving us this opportunity." - Alice Dunkfield

All of the projects will be screened at St George’s Bristol before the performances of the Radio 4 programmes during the festival. 
Special thanks to the second years who worked on each project, for their interview comments and permission to show their photographs 


Sophie Lowden.