CALDERA is now online!

Our most recent short CALDERA is now available online!

CALDERA on Vimeo

CALDERA premiered at SXSW in 2012, was officially selected for SIGGRAPH Asia, Seattle Int'l, Palm Springs Shorts, Stuttgart Int'l Animation, and over 40 other festivals worldwide. It was awarded the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction in Linz Austria, and garnered several other awards including Best Animated Film at Rome Independent, Award of Innovation at Seattle Int'l SIFF, and Best Short - View Social Awards.

CALDERA was helmed by Evan Viera (Director/Composer/Co-Writer) and Chris Bishop (Co-writer/Animation Supervisor) and was produced at Hampshire College over two and a half years. I co-produced and edited. CALDERA was the first film to go through our Bit Films Incubator Program, which we created after completing The Incident at Tower 37. In this program we invite orphaned independent films to be made on campus with the College's students and resources. 

You can read more about this amazing project in some of my prior posts, or at the film's main website.

Congrats to the whole team!

Casting Call for SEED

As mentioned in my previous post...

SEED is a dramatic sci-fi short set in a post-agricultural America (think Alfonso Cuarón’s CHILDREN OF MEN). The roughly 8-minute film is being shot on Easter weekend, March 30 and 31, at the amazing Wauregan Building in Holyoke.

THE ROLES:

1 Male, ages 50-65

1 Female, ages 16-25

1 Male, ages 30-40

AUDITIONS:

Saturday March 2nd from 1-5pm

Preference will be given to actors with film and/or TV experience.

To schedule an audition time please email seed@bitfilms.com with your resume and headshot. Auditions will be held on the Hampshire College campus. Details and directions will be sent via email with confirmation of your audition time.

Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/events/527318647313214/

SEED - a new film in preproduction

I'm pleased to announce what I believe is the seventh Bit Films production: SEED is ramping up right now for shooting in late March.

Excuse me: Shooting? Yes, this one will be live action, not animated. SEED is a dramatic science fiction short based on a near-future post-agricultural world that's been haunting me for years. I've written all sorts of variants of this story but the one that felt the strongest just wasn't animated. Though it does feature some cool CG VFX.

What I know already: this will be a 2-camera shoot using DSLRs. It'll take place over a weekend at the amazing Wauregan Building in Holyoke (an old paper mill with a spacious basement that fits the tone of the SEED world perfectly). The current script runs 8 pages.

In the Hampshire County area and want to be involved? Don't hesitate to get in touch.

More to come.

Bit Films Spring 2013 internships

Now posted!

CALL FOR 2013 SPRING INTERNS

Please come join us on one of our two ongoing animation projects. See details at the link above. Deadline is this FRIDAY but the application isn't too onerous.

A tremendous Prix

Bit Films was born ten years ago this September. Born from a crazy idea that students could and should work together to make films that push the medium of computer animation into meatier and more thoughtful places than Hollywood was willing to attempt. From Displacement (2002) to Catch (2005) to The Incident at Tower 37 (2009) to Caldera (2012) to Tube (upcoming), we've kept on doing it, and today we're especially honored because the venerable Prix Ars Electronica gave one of its two Awards of Distinction to Caldera!

http://www.aec.at/prix/en/gewinner/#computer-animation

This is a terrific acknowledgement of the creative vision and leadership of Evan Viera and Chris Bishop, as well as a wonderful honor to all the crew members who worked to bring this film to life.

But it is also a celebration of the model--radical at times but perhaps not so much any more--that we've been trying to follow for almost a decade: where undergraduate liberal arts students work closely with fellow students and mentors, complementing their individualized, course-based education with hands-on, high-end, collaborative work; where an institution like Hampshire College offers its space and resources to independent artists at no cost because it recognizes the benefits for all involved of having such people around; and where ideas for animated films that certainly don't scream "cartoon!" can take root, mature, and ultimately emerge as fully-formed ideas.

It means all the more to me that Evan and Chris are alums of this program -- they both participated on Bit Films projects when they were students and continued to do so after they graduated. I was pleased to be able to invite them into the Drome when Caldera was still nascent, and now they've come full circle--from students to project supervisors--with distinction, no less!