I'VE MOVED! 

...over to Tumblr. Like a traitor (Sorry, Blogger). It's just easier to update! You can now follow me over at http://jessiola.tumblr.com/.

The old posts from this blog have been transferred over, but i'll still keep this up and running for now.

Toodle pip!

CHICK

I thought i'd share this short I just discovered on my internet travels, which I saw yonks ago at the 2009 Annecy animation festival. In fact, I raved about it here. Well, it's finally online after doing the festival circuit.

It's called Chick and it's written & directed by Michał Socha. It's short, sweet and sexy, depicting the seduction of a man by a firey temptress. It's messy, ink splat style is as passionate as it's subject matter and I love the restricted colour palette. All that red on black! Nice. It's stuck in my mind ever since I saw it. Great soundtrack too.

News and happenings

Hello.

Thought I should check in and update all my many, many, MANY readers...*tumbleweed blows by, coyote howls in the distance*...of my latest news.

Fixing Luka has managed to pick up not one, but THREE awards at the Limelight Film and Arts Awards in June. We picked up Best Animation, Best Visual and then manage to somehow pick up Film of the Night - which came with a £10k Production fund prize! Lordy.

I didn't expect to pick up anything but there you go! I wished at that moment of hearing of our wins that I was wearing a monocle and drinking a cup of tea from some fine china. If only so I could spit out my tea dramatically and gasp so much that my monocle fell out. But I wasn't. Instead, I brought the crew members on stage (producer - Anna Odell, Editor - Rachel Tunnard, Colourist - Tom Balkwill and D.O.P - Ruan Suess) as well as my little sister. Then I proceeded to babble my way embarrasingly through some thank yous. Anyway, to see my horrificly gurning face and to find out more information about Lime Light and it's awards, check out the website here.

FL has also been picked up in a few more festivals, which is always great! It will be playing in the Born Shorts Film Festival in Denmark on September 16th. It will also be at the Ficbeau: The International Shortfilm Festival of Bueu in Pontevedra, Spain.

Speaking of festivals, it's come around to the time of FL showing at Rushes Soho Shorts Festival. It shows as part of the Animation programme, this Saturday (23rd July) at 3pm and on Tues 26th July. More details to be found here.

More news! I was also successfully chosen for commission for my latest short film project by B3 Media on their TalentLab scheme! My project is quite ambitious (animated and live action social realism...) so i'm really excited to have the chance to realise it.

I also had my first foray into public speaking. I was invited by Glasgow based, cross-disciplinary producers, Trigger, to talk at a Pecha Kucha event. Pecha Kucha is an evening of talks from 12 creatives, who show 20 slides based on a topic and have 20 seconds to talk about each slide. Pretty frantic, but I enjoyed it, even if I had to quickly ditch the notes I was clutching in my sweaty hands, finding out that just waxing lyrical about the images behind me works just as well. Definitely taught me a thing or too about how to prepare for public speaking.

Finally, I also revamped my website, jessla.co.uk. Go take a little look.

And that's that. Information overload, much?

Fixing Luka does Brazil

It's been a bit of a good week for Fixing Luka. We found out that the film's been successful for selection in the Anima Mundi festival. Anima Mundi is split between two cities and will be shown in Rio de Janeiro from 15th-24th July and Sao Paulo from 27th-29th July.



Fixing Luka's also been nominated for 2 awards at the 2011 Limelight Awards, in Best Animation and Best Visual. Which is brilliant! So, looks like it's time to dig out the posh dress again which sits collecting dust in the back of my wardrobe.

AND to top it off, Myself and music making master Pete MacDonald has been successfully selected to be part of the Edinburgh International Film Festival's Talent Labs. I'll be toddling along to the filmmakers lab whilst Pete will attend the composer lab.

Speaking of the EIFF, Fixing Luka will be showing at this year's festival on Saturday 25th as part of the Animated Interactions on at 6pm at George Sq Theatre. We were all pretty chuffed to find there was a still of it in the EIFF's brochure.

Ooft. Sorry for that burst of festival and awards madness. To keep up to date on all things FL, go like us on our Facebook page and then I won't spam this blog with festival dates. That's a lie, I totally will. But go like the page anyway! I'll shutup now.

B3 Talent Lab

A couple of weeks ago, I found out that i'd been selected for the B3 Media Talent Lab - a week long set of workshops from industry professionals, to help a group of 17 filmmakers and artists (myself included) to develop ideas for shorts, features and art installations. As you can imagine, I got pretty excited about being chosen for such a great opportunity. I was akin to a child dizzy on lemonade.

Anyway, I travelled down last week to B3's HQ in Brixton, London to be part of the Talent Lab. I submitted an idea for a mixed media short film involving live action (gasp! Actors who aren't puppets!) and animation, and was looking to gain insight into developing my narrative and visual style. The workshops were brilliant and they helped with just that - getting a focus on my story and an idea on how the hell I would go about making the short.

As well as that, the other artists and filmmakers in the Talent Lab were a fantastic bunch. It was pretty great to have such a mix of talent around me to bounce ideas off. Also, I got to swan around London, feeling a bit cosmopolitan.

So, now I have to submit a script for my outline, to be considered for further development. More news as it comes!

Nine Types of Light

One of my favourite bands, TV On The Radio have a released a new album, Nine Types of Light. It's great. And that's not just blind fandom talking. Alright, maybe it is a little. But what's even greater is that they've commissioned a variety of filmmakers to make video for each of their songs on the album and collated them into one fantastic hour long film.

There's some killer videos for each track (Tunde Adebimpe being a down and out Prince impersonator tops high on the list), but the one which took my breath away starts at 5.52 and is for the track 'Second Song'. It's directed by RCA graduate Mikey Please and well...just watch it. It's a dreamy, abstract intergalactic stop-motion adventure and I adore it. I caught Please's BAFTA award winning short The Eagleman's Stag and have been fascinated with his work ever since.

Anyway, check out all the shorts here.

2011 Showreel

I actually put this up a few months ago, but clearly I am pants at self-promotion. Here is my new showreel for 2011. It features clips from Fixing Luka as well as my work on OOglies and personal/student projects.