le abbaye fontevraud

Well, here I am blogging from the beautiful and fastinating abbey of the fontevraud order .
Tommorow we will have screening in the old monks refectory.
I just had dinner with Jean Paul from Les Armateurs and Xavier, our host. Xavier is an expert on both animated films , especially Japanese ones and also Mediaeval art. He saw the presentation Ross Stewart and I gave in Annecy and asked Gebeka the French distributors abouta screening here. I am in great company actually, since Michel Ocelot as well as several Japanese and European animation directors have presented their projects here in the past.
The buildings are very impressive , sort of Romanesque a bit like Mellifont Abbey in Ireland, but on a much grander scale. Apparently Richard the Lionheart is buried here so we have some good mediaeval company too.

Today was spent doing interviews with journalists for papers, magazines and tv as well as some internet sites. It was interesting, as the French journalists are very like the Belgian ones , they have very intelligent and interesting questions , very "film theory" type things.
Its great how many people catch all the levels of visual symbolism we tried to work into the film and appreciate the research we put into it.

The days are starting to blur , we will have the screening tommorow and then go to Angouleme for another one. I am told an illuminator will be at the screening tommorow in the Abbey!

I got a hold at last of the first comic book all printed and shiny! It looks great and its very gratifying to have a real "BD" in my hands after all these years! I think its cool to have the little prequel story at the start as a bonus, and it does seem to read well going from the last page of the prequel straight into the goose chase which is the second sequence of the movie. The prequel sort of takes the place of the prologue part in the movie.

Anyway, I also recieved the Cd of the soundtrack which is beautifully produced with the illumination that Lily Bernard made to show Brendans "first attempt" as the decoration on the actual Cd. There is a nice leaflet inside with some of the scene illustrations and so on. I also had a look at some of the promo material that Gebeka have prepared for schools . it really nicely produced stuff, I'm building up a great collection of souvenors!

Anyway I'll stop blabbing now, we are recievings oem beautiful compositing from Digital Graphics for the Song of the Sea trailer these days and I am trying to keep up with that stuff between everything else! Poor Fabs is getting his baptism of fire as AD right now as my point of contact on stuff while I'm away!
So its still very busy on many fronts.


I had to post this funny conversation from the Jameson Dublin Film Festival blog - this must have been Pauly in the jacks !

"UPDATE:
I think I may have the winner of the best “Overheard at the Festival” remark already.
This was overheard by me in the men’s room at the Festival Launch Party in the Odeon Bar on Monday.
Man 1: Last time we spoke you were working on some cartoon. How did that work out for you?
Man 2: Not bad, it’s the closing film of the Festival.
Man 1: Oh!"