This page contains the history of each of the films I have made. To just watch them, please go to the animations
archive
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*The Adventures of John and John*
RCA, 2006
Dur. 00:07:10
This is my graduation film from the Royal College of Art, London, where I did a postgraduate Masters in Animation. The whole process took 8 months, with 5 months of that being model making, script writing, recording at John Hegley’s house and general shilly shallying about, and 3 months of actual shooting and editing.
‘The Adventures of John and John’ is the story of two down at heel friends, killing time, bickering, playing games and hoping to become rich and famous using a brain reading machine.
The characters are both about three inches high, have wire armatures and have a limited range of expressions. The flaws in their construction reflect and amplify the flaws in their characters and the comic hopelessness of their situation.
The characters developed from working with John Hegley,a performance poet, on animating a surreal sketch John had performed with Simon Munnery, where one person thinks of a breed of dog and the other person has to guess which one he’s thinking of. This dialogue became the starting point for the script.
The ‘Brain Reading Machine’ gave the opportunity to improvise and combine different animation techniques, as they attempt to ‘produce a dazzling array of cartoons, exciting-police-dramas-like-on-the-TV, and a ‘Proper Music Video’.
AWARDS & PRIZES -
Audience Vote, International Screening 3, London International Animation Festival
E-Magicians, Jury Prize and Film Grant from the Fondation
Jean-Luc Lagardère.
Animé Caribe, Best Student Film
Trinidad and Tobago, 2006
McLaren Prize 3rd Prize for British Animation,
Edinburgh International Film Festival 2006
Thames and Hudson Book Prize, 2006,
Passion Pictures Prize. 2005
*this is an extract only*
(please scroll to the bottom of the page if you require full distribution information, credits, or any other press/festivals information. If you don’t need this information I wouldn’t recommend it. a Production Diary can be found here)
Wealth,
RCA, 2005
Dur. 00:04:40, 2005.
Made for Unesco Big Small People Project,
promoting the articles of the Convention of Childrens Rights
Screenings to date:
BigSmall People Project, Camera Obscura, Tel Aviv.
Prizes to date:
Passion Pictures Prize, £1000 production budget for next film
*
Inner Picture,
Education project and film. Made in partnership with National Portrait Gallery, Orleans House Gallery and participants of Positive Activities for Young People.
Dur. 00:06:40, 2004.
Screenings:
‘Reaching Out, Drawing In’ Exhibitions, National Portrait Gallery and
Orleans House Gallery.
Tales from Ward 35,
Dur. 00:04:10, 2003.
This was a film I made while I was Filmmaker-in-Residence at Bristol Royal Hospital for Children,
so it’s an education project and a film. Made in partnership with BRHC, NHS, Aardmann’s Wallace and Grommit Grand Appeal, and Picture This Moving Image Ltd.
Synopsis: Children in Ward 35 of the BRHC drew comic strips and recorded voice overs for their stories. I didn’t give them any restrictions on their subject and this film is an edit of the best ones. Contains graphic cartoon violence.
Screenings:
Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, Spike Island Bristol.
*Pooky the Giant Shrew*
2003, 90sec. Flash animation.
*
This was the first animation I ever made. I was helped by Picture This Moving Image and a training grant from South West Arts, which has since been largely amalgamated into the Arts Council.
Picture This are based in Spike Island, a studio complex/arts centre, and their director Jo Lanyon had seen the sculpture, prints and the fan zine style books I had been making there. She helped me, filling in forms and such like.
We got the grant, despite me telling a lie- I said a shop, which I had once visited in London and liked very much, called ‘Work for the Eye to Do’, was stocking my books. I didn’t realise that Work for the Eye to Do had gone famously bust a couple of years before. It was being sold in Dillons Bookshop on Longacre, that was true- shop staff had some control over stock and I knew someone who worked there.
I was then taught Macromedia Flash 5, which didn’t immediately take in my mind, but I kept fiddling with it at home and a year later I went back to them with ‘Pooky the Giant Shrew’. They entered me into Brief Encounters festival in Bristol and it was featured in the South West section and it made the DepicT! prize shortlist.
I liked the way Animation was easy to get around, compared to Sculpture, and everyone owned it, compared to prints which are quite a commodity , though I do love the visual richness of print making. My Sculptures tend to be massive and fragile, and I used to spend a year refining each one, putting in layers of detail that no-one would see, so animation was a good discipline for me and the obsessive and laborious nature didn’t put me off, since I was already working that way.
Screenings:
Brief Encounters, DepicT! Shortlisted Film, South West Showcase, Swindon Shorts,
Lux Open 2003
Bee Control in City Parks, a Drawing of a Person, Worriers,
Naughty Little Johnny Rotten,
Home projects,
Dur. between 05:00- 00:10, 2004
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other films
What We Say Matters
A film made with young people for a DfES campaign commissioned by the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. Completed May 2007. To be distributed to all schools in the borough September 2007.
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THE ADVENTURES OF JOHN AND JOHN further information…
The following is the full directors info that I supply to festivals, please ignore if you don’t need these details…
FILM TITLE
- The Adventures of John and John
YEAR OF PRODUCTION- 2006
ANIMATION TECHNIQUE (include software used where relevant)
-
3D Stop Motion Model animation, iStopMotion, 2D Paper, 2D digital- Flash, After Effects, Final Cut Pro
FORMAT
-Video
DURATION
-00:07’:11”,
DIALOGUE ?NO DIALOGUE? - Dialogue
LANGUAGE OF DIALOGUE- English
SCREEN RATIO- 4;3 PAL
MONO/ STEREO/SURROUND? Stereo
COLOUR/ BW ? Colour
FILM CREDITS:
ANIMATION: Will Bishop Stephens
COMPOSER: Dominic McNulty
MUSICIANS: Dominic McNulty
SOUND DESIGN: Will Bishop Stephens, Mike Wyeld and Franco Ross Adams.
ACTORS: John Hegley and John Korn
PROGRAMMING DESCRIPTORS.
FORMS: Animation
GENRES: Alternative, Comedy, Microcinema, Independent, Magical Realism, Surreal, Satire, Art
3-LINE SYNOPSIS.
A tale of two down at heel friends, killing time bickering, playing games and hoping to become rich and famous with a brain reading machine.
125-WORD SYNOPSIS.
Two friends keep themselves entertained on a rainy day in their tiny bedsit, playing guessing games and bickering. They try to make their fortunes using a film making machine which drills images direct from the brain, but Johns brain proves to be not up to the job.
Featuring the voice acting of poet and performer John Hegley and his frind John Korn, and the cult 1960’s street prank recordings of Coyle and Sharpe.
155-WORD SYNOPSIS.
‘The Adventures of John and John’ is the story of two down at heel friends, killing time, bickering, playing games and hoping to become rich and famous using a brain reading machine.
The characters are both about three inches high, have wire armatures and have a limited range of expressions. The flaws in their construction reflect and amplify the flaws in their characters and the comic hopelessness of their situation.
The characters developed from working with John Hegley,a performance poet, on animating a surreal sketch John had performed with Simon Munnery, where one person thinks of a breed of dog and the other person has to guess which one he’s thinking of. This dialogue became the starting point for the script.
The ‘Brain Reading Machine’ gave the opportunity to improvise and combine different animation techniques, as they attempt to ‘produce a dazzling array of cartoons, exciting-police-dramas-like-on-the-TV, and a ‘Proper Music Video’.
250-WORD SYNOPSIS.
The Adventures of John and John is a tale of two down at heel friends, killing time bickering, playing games and hoping to become rich and famous with a brain reading machine.
The characters are about three inches high, they have wire armatures and have a limited range of expressions. The flaws in their construction reflect and amplify the flaws in their characters and the comic hopelessness of their situation.
It began as an idea for combining many improvised methods of animation, using a 2D screen within a cramped, dolls-house space.
The characters started to form whilst working with John Hegley on ideas for animating his poems. One of the ideas was a sketch John had performed with Simon Munnery, in which one person guesses a breed of dog and the other person has to guess which one he’s thinking of.
The two characters in John Hegley’s dialogue merged with the two characters in the graduation film, and the Dog Breed Guesswork dialogue became the starting point for the script.
Happily, the film ended up half stop-frame model animation and half 2D animation appearing on the Brain Reading Machine’s screen in front of characters John and John as they attempt to produce cartoons that will prove Very Popular with the General Public and make them Rich and Famous.
As they desperately try to catch the eye of Multimedia Production Executives they produce an dazzling array of flawed cartoons, ‘exciting-police-dramas-like-on-the-TV’, and ‘a Proper Music Video’.
FESTIVALS & SCREENINGS -
Screenings:
2007
•London International Animation Festival
•Melbourne International Film Festival
• Moscow International Film Festival
• Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film
• Dresden Film Fest
• International Film Festival Rotterdam
• Premiers Plans, Angers, France
• Clermont-Ferrand, Short film Market
2006
• E-Magicians, France
• Anifest, Hungary
• Cinanima, Portugal
• Sleepwalkers Film Festival Tallin, Estonia
• Animé Caribe, Trinidad and Tobago
• P.I.S.A.F South Korea
• Edinburgh International Film Festival McLaren Award screenings
• Royal College of Art, Graduation Show2, Animation
AWARDS & PRIZES -
E-Magicians, Jury Prize and Film Grant from the Fondation
Jean-Luc Lagardère.
Animé Caribe, Best Student Film
Trinidad and Tobago, 2006
McLaren Prize 3rd Prize for British Animation,
Edinburgh International Film Festival 2006
Thames and Hudson Book Prize, 2006,
Passion Pictures Prize. 2005
PERSONELLE
DIRECTION
William Bishop-Stephens
ANIMATION
William Bishop-Stephens
WRITING
William Bishop Stephens
Writer
John Hegley
Additional Material
PERFORMANCE
John Hegley, John Korn
Voice-Over Artists
Mal Sharpe, Jim Coyle
Archive Material
CAMERA
William Bishop Stephens
ART DEPARTMENT
William Bishop Stephens
POST PRODUCTION
DIGITAL EFFECTS
Nuno De Costa
Martin Pickles
SOUND EDITOR
Franco Ross Adams
Mike Wyeld
MUSIC
Original Music/Composer
Dominic McNulty
REPRESENTATION
Kara Wescombe,
kara@wrongboy.com 02073813820 (home)
Publicist/ Administator
PRINT TRAFFIC
For films submitted by the Royal College of Art
Jane Colling
Royal College of Art
Royal College of Art
Kensington Gore
London, SW7 2EU
United Kingdom
jane.colling@rca.ac.uk 02075904512 (Work)
For Films submitted independently or through the British Council
Kara Wescombe,
14, Barton Court,
Barons Court Road,
London W14 9EH
kara@wrongboy.com 07876211961 (mobile) 02073813820 (home)
ACADEMIC
Joan Ashworth
School Administrator
Royal College of Art
Royal College of Art
Kensington Gore
London, SW7 2EU
United Kingdom
joan.ashworth@rca.ac.uk 02075904512 (Work)
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