Bruce Alcock's 2005 award-winning film At the Quinte Hotel (above) played at more than 50 festivals. He's now working on a four-minute short, Vive la Rose, a co-production with the NFB. © 2005 Bruce Alcock.

This being the month dedicated to themed stories about features and shorts, the AWN editors thought it might be a good idea to touch base with some of our favorite shorts directors to see what they were up to. We sent out about 30 inquiries and received about half as many replies. While both Caroline Leaf and the Quay Bros. informed us that they're not presently engaged in an animation project (too bad) and Michael Dudok de Wit alleged that it was too early to talk about his new film, other animators provided us with reports that ranged from a few semi-coherent lines to more elaborate descriptions of their current projects. Here then, mostly in their own words (with occasional editorial emendation), are their responses. (Note: Anyone interested in the activities of the Canadian Chrises [Hinton and Landreth], Wendy Tilby & Amanda Fortis, and/or a number of other NFB animators are directed to Janet Hetherington's recently posted story.)

Bruce Alcock
Bruce Alcock has worked primarily as a commercial director, utilizing live action, CGI, drawings, photo-animation, film scratching, clay, and anything else that might serve to produce an image. His 2005 film At the Quinte Hotel played at more than 50 festivals and won a number of awards.

"I'm working on a four-minute short right now, in co-production with the NFB. It's called Vive la Rose, and it's based on a French Newfoundland folk song. The actual recording of the song features Emile Benoit, who was in his nineties at the time and died soon after the album was released. His wavering voice and the really emotional recording make this a lovely, very moving piece. It's a very sad tale of unrequited love and the death of the woman the singer loves, who he calls "a Rose de les villages," or the Rose of the villages. Right now we're in storyboard and animatic development, as well as some technical pre-planning. The action will be combined stop-motion objects and painted/drawn paper, all shot on location in Newfoundland (off the East coast of Canada) using available natural light."

Cordell Barker's third short film project, tentatively titled Runaway, isn't as silly as his previous films. © National Film Board of Canada, 2007 in production. All rights reserved.

Cordell Barker
Cordell Barker is the director of The Cat Came Back (1988) and Strange Invaders (2002), both of which were nominated for Academy Awards. He has worked on numerous TV ads in Canada, the U.S. and England, and was a director and animator for the TV series "O Canada" (1997).

"My third and current short film project is tentatively titled Runaway. In a nutshell, it's about happy passengers on a runaway train. It was inspired by my perception that a very wide swath of society seems to be merrily floating along either totally oblivious to or in complete denial of our runaway ride. The film will be driven by a very rhythmic soundtrack composed by Benoit Charest, the composer who created the great sound on Triplets of Belleville. This project isn't quite as goofball as my previous two films, but as you can never fully escape your own sensibilities, it should still hopefully have a satisfying lack of earnestness.

"This film is by far the most complicated of my three films. The concept obviously necessitates animating a lot of extra characters and while this alone is a daunting enough chore (especially for someone who is not a natural drawer), while I'm juggling the primary animation, I'm simultaneously directing my animation assistant, coordinating the CGI sections of the train action, working with the musician and constantly re-structuring the animatic. I'm trying to simplify the story, as I'm struggling against contrivance and an overload of plot points that can naturally pepper a film like this. At times it really feels I've bitten off more that I can comfortably chew. This is all in and around my working on commercial work to help pay the bills. I'm hoping (determined) to finish all of the animation this winter so that I can emerge from the winter, butterfly-like, in supervisor mode on all the colour, compositing and audio in the push for the finish. Looking forward to the end of a monster."