“When I was a kid, there were two things I wanted badly and never got… A real dog and a Kenner AT-AT Walker.” (Patrick Boivin)
Category: Woolf + Lapin TV
Patrick Boivin Does it Again!
Jon Favreau himself twitted this… “You need to see this if you like Iron Man or babies.”
Méduses from Numéro#
It’s the new Numéro# clip. Bonzai Studio did the VFX. They of course put a lot of stuff that wasn’t there in the first place. At any rate, the clip is cholk full of atmosphere as are Numéro#’s songs.
Bonzai’s new web site is in the works, but here’s a sneak peek.
3 Saisons Nominated for 3 Genies
3 Saisons has been nominated for 3 Awards: best editing, best actress and best film at the 2010 Genie Awards, the Canadian Academy of Cinema and Television’s annual gala for Canadian film.
3 Seasons from Jim Donovan on Vimeo.
“I am extremely honored and excited to be invited to the awards ceremony on April 12th in my new hometown of Toronto,” says director Jim Donovan. “I am especially proud to accompany Carinne, for whom this is a first film…” Quite right. Her performance is especially noteworthy.
Here’s more on the 2010 Genies in the Toronto Star.
Good luck and congrats, Jim and Carinne!
Patrick Boivin Featured in Wired Magazine
Wired magazine recently interviewed director Patrick Boivin who they rightly say has YouTubed his way to Hollywood.
Here’s the pretty cool storyboard he made to prepare for the stop-motion Ninja Unboxing of Google’s Nexus One phone. When the process is this good…
In the interview, Patrick Boivin talks about how he came under the influence of moody French illustrator Moebius and, at age 16, began drawing cartoons. He has since directed many TV shows and shorts.
These are the same shorts Patrick Boivin put on his YouTube channel. “They were not popular at all,” Boivin says. “The short dramas had plenty of poetry but not a lot of punch, garnering only 200 views after six months.”
So Boivin turned to stop motion.
His video game-inspired hit Street Fighter, his funny clip Iron Man vs. Bruce Lee and his recent martial arts spoof, Ninja’s Unboxing, commissioned by Google to promote its new cellphone, have all racked up millions of views on YouTube.
Patrick Boivin and his own brand of DIY has made him a Youtube success story. But uploading your work on YouTube is not everything. Users must respond to it. And in the case of Patrick Boivin they did by the millions. 56, in fact.
That’s when Hollywood came knocking.
Now, and we’ve said it here before, Circle of Confusion is the LA-based management team that is taking care of finding directing gigs for Patrick.
In the Wired piece, he cites the work of Paul Thomas Anderson and Wes Anderson as prime influences. But Duncan Jones’ Moon was the last movie he saw that really touched him. “This is the kind of picture I would like to make: it uses science fiction to talk about something else.”
It’s just a matter of time as Patrick is heading out west in a week…
The Wired article goes into some detail on how he made the Ninja video, but there’s more DIY stuff in the interview Patrick gave to YouTube’s Creator’s Corner.
Woolf + Lapin Welcomes Animation Director Paul Laberge
We are very psyched about welcoming new talent Paul Laberge. He’s an animation director with some really fine work under his belt. He’s looking to break into fiction. And we are anxious to collaborate on unique projects with him.
Paul’s a wicked illustrator also. Check out the decks he’s designed for EXOshop.
Patrick Boivin’s Ninja Unboxing of Nexus One
It is the spectacular unboxing of Google’s Nexus One phone. The stop-motion is by none other than Patrick Boivin. In case you didn’t know, unboxing videos are quite the cult thing on the Internet.
Google hired Patrick Boivin to do something off the beaten track. And we say they were well served.
We’re biased of course, but we think it’s one of his best. And it’s gonna go viral like crazy!
UPDATE: as of this a.m. the clip is a few hits shy of half a million.
Patrick Boivin’s Chromostone
Here is Chromostone, a new clip by Monsieur Monsieur Boivin. Check him suck the energy right out of the computer…
Dave Eberts’ Where the Water Meets the Sky: Film as Tool for Social Change
Where the Water Meets the Sky – Trailer from Camfed on Vimeo.
We talked about our friend Dave Eberts’ film Where the Water Meets the Sky back in 2008 right after its Montreal premiere. Since then, this empowering film has won accolades, including Best Global Insight at the 2008 Jackson Hole Film Festival. Jury members included Katie Evans, Vice President of Acquisitions and Production for National Geographic Films.
Where the Water Meets the Sky uses film as a tool for social change. Not only do the Samfya women (Northern Zambia) in the film learn how to make a documentary about their lives, but as the story progresses and the film takes on a life of its own, the women begin to speak out on issues that affect their lives. From Aids and prostitution to exclusion from school because of reasons as perverse as lacking the money to buy a pen or a notebook.
But as Eberts’ film gains more and more focus, the Samfya women too narrow their focus on a teenage girl who best represents their experiences of poverty and exclusion. So we are told the story of Penelop, a Zambian teenage girl who is orphaned by the ravages of AIDS, stripped of all her parents’ belongings and dismally forced into prostitution.
Narrated by Morgan Freeman, Where the Water Meets the Sky is still getting attention. Rightly so. The Sundance Channel scheduled its U.S. television premiere at 10 p.m. on Dec. 1, which was World Aids Day. It will air again on December 13th.
Patrick Boivin and Lego’s Humongousaur
Here’s #3 of nine Ben 10 stop-motion clips from Monsieur Monsieur Boivin.