Jane Williams had a difficult line to tread while leading this year's Vital! International Animation Festival in Cardiff from June 22-28, 1998, but in my opinion, she did a pretty good job. Balancing the expectations of old and new attendees, those wanting a small, art festival "like the old days" and those wanting a festival like two years ago, is a hard task and it's tough to find a middle ground in a year when the big industry sponsors are not recruiting. Especially when every other country on the map is holding a festival this year. There is no denying she had a challenging job.

A Chance to Meet the Buyers
The previous Cardiff International Animation Festival took place during the big studio recruiting craze of 1996 when desperation for talent was running high. As a result, big companies with massive booths moved in and took over. Grumbling complaints from the old-timers were heard, but never before had the likes of Disney and Warner Bros. participated so heavily. Well, 1998 is a very different year with the animation industry beginning to come back to this stratosphere. As a result the large name players were either not present or very low-key, with evidently lower budgets and aspirations. Meanwhile, Cardiff is a festival of students, who are hungry for more advanced training and jobs. The festival organizers, however, did a great job of bridging this gap by creating "Commissioning Brunches" and "Careers and Crumpets," a new feature that fit everyone's needs. For an hour and a half, sponsoring companies hosted a presentation in a large room and served either lunch or tea. Companies like Granada Animation, Cartoon Network, Passion Pictures, Aardman Animations and Nickelodeon could reach the people that were most interested in them without dedicating numerous staff members to a costly booth for the entire week. Plus, students and producers could meet the key personnel of these companies and hear exactly what they wanted when looking for new projects, while getting some great snacks in the process! While some experienced players scoffed at remarks like, "We are seeking good projects, presented well," most found the sessions very helpful and frantically scribbled notes. These sessions were packed. "We only planned to have 50 but ended up with 150!" was heard by almost every organizing group. The success of these events really set the tone at Cardiff. Cardiff's niche is one of educational panels and discussions, which is suiting since the festival boasts wall-to-wall students, with most industry professionals dodging between Cardiff and London.

"Commissioning Brunches" and "Careers and Crumpets," were held at the Cardiff International Arena (CIA), home to almost all of the panels, presentations and discussion groups, as well as the Expo. The Expo was sparse and both attendees and participants seemed disappointed. The floor could be covered in a matter of minutes. Exhibitors did say, that while they were disappointed by the small amount of traffic, they did know they were targeting strictly animation people. Some of the standout exhibitors were: BBC Worldwide, Cartoon, Nickelodeon, Granada Animation, and a host of puppet and armature creators including John Wright Modelmaking, The Puppet Factory and Elm Road Film Productions. All of the booths this year were very modest and small. Indeed, some were virtually unmanned for the entire festival. Did anyone see anybody at the BBC booth? All I saw was a loop of those creepy Teletubbies. Sony Imageworks had a small booth at the Expo and a room upstairs where Barry Weiss, Vice President of Animation, interviewed possible hires for their new feature Stuart Little, which stars an intrepid white mouse.