Actifed

Michael Dudok de Wit's Animated Short, Father And Daughter, Shines.

HOLLYWOOD--Among the winners and amid the glory at the 73rd Academy Awards was animation director Michael Dudok de Wit, who received a much-coveted Oscar in the category of best animated short film, for Father and Daughter, which he wrote, directed and co-animated.

Represented for commercials stateside by Acme Filmworks, Hollywood, Dudok de Wit is hoping that this award will boost interest, in his work--which includes short films, spots and illustrations--making it easier to get future projects off the ground. In fact, the day after the awards ceremony, he was asked to pitch on an unnamed commercial. He signed with Acme five years ago, but has since been busy with his films.

Father and Daughter is a beautifully haunting story of physical and emotional separation as experienced by a young girl who bids her father farewell and watches him disappear across a lake in a rowboat. Set against the flat Dutch landscape and huge skies, the pen-and-ink-style animation follows the girl throughout her life as she keeps returning by bicycle to the spot where she last saw her father. The landscape changes with the seasons; the young girl grows older and has a family of her own, yet she continues her vigil. As an old woman she returns once more to the lake, which has retreated over time. Making her way through much of what once was lakebed, she discovers a derelict, half-buried rowboat and curls up inside it. Soon after, she is a young girl again, reunited with her father in a scene that is deliberately left open to the viewer's own interpretation.

The short was created from drawings in pencil and charcoal. All of the backgrounds were drawn with charcoal, with Dudok de Wit often using his palm or fingers to smudge the artwork, scanned into Photoshop and given a sepia tinge digitally. The animation was drawn with soft pencil on paper, scanned, and colored and painted in Cambridge Animation System's Animo software. The camera effects and compositing were done in Animo at London-based digital art studio Spider Eye. The complete eight-and-a-half minute digital picture was then transferred frame by frame onto 35mm film.

Father and Daughter is a Dutch-British co-production by CineTe Filmproductie, Amsterdam, and Cloudrunner, London. The latter was a company set up to make the short film. Producers were Claire Jennings and Willem Thijssen; animation was by Dudok de Wit and Arjan Wilschut; music was by Normand Roger in collaboration with Denis Chartrand, and sound was by Jean-Baptiste Roger. Compositing was completed by Alistair Beckett and Nic Gill of Spider Eye.

The film took two years to produce and was four years in the making. After writing his first synopsis in 1996, Dudok de Wit contacted British freelance producer Jennings, who was immediately interested in the project. In order to apply for funding from the Dutch Film Fund, Amsterdam-based producer Willem Thijssen was bought on board as co-producer.

At the Holland Animation Film Festival, the jury awarding Dudok de Wit its Grand Prix 2000 unanimously agreed, "the maker of Father and Daughter succeeded with delicate and simple means to portray an extremely emotional story and reach the level of intensity that is very uncommon in animation."

Dudok de Wit has worked as a freelance animator/director since '81, often working through London-based animation studio Richard Purdum Productions, London. (Dudok de Wit is not signed exclusively with the company, but makes most of his commercials through the animation studio, collaborating with producer Jill Thomas. He also maintains a private studio in London for his own projects.) Dudok de Wit's credits include spots for such clients as Actifed cough medicine, Heinz Salad Cream, Macallan Malt Scotch Whiskey, Volkswagen, The Irish National Lottery, Owens Corning roof installation and Nestle Smarties.

Born in Holland in '53, Dudok de Wit studied etching at the Art College of Geneva, Switzerland, and animation at the West Surrey College of Art and Design, England (since renamed The Surrey Institute of Design), where he completed his first short, The Interview, in '78. He then freelanced as an animator for a year in Barcelona, Spain, before moving back to London, which is still his base. He started working on commercials in '81, and continued to direct spots while pursuing other projects. In '92 he created another short film; called Tom Sweep, through Richard Purdum Productions. Tom Sweep is about a little road sweeper who tries very hard to keep the streets clean, but becomes terribly frustrated as people continue to throw litter everywhere. Next he made The Monk and the Fish, which was nominated for a '95 Oscar in the short animation category. Produced in the south of France with the French animation studio Folimage, Valence, The Monk and the Fish was created using India ink and watercolor. The six-minute film follows a monk who discovers a fish in a water reservoir near a monastery, becomes obsessed with it and tries everything he can to catch it.

Dudok de Wit has also worked on television and feature film animation projects. These include Heavy Metal, a feature directed by Gerald Potterton; and the '80 TV movie The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, directed by Bill Melendez. Dudok de Wit was involved in storyboarding on the Disney features Beauty and the Beast ('92) and Fantasia Continued ('00).

Interested in animation since childhood, he is currently illustrating a children's book titled Oscar & Hoo, to be published by Harper Collins this year. He has given lectures on animation as well, at London art colleges including The Royal College of Art, The National Film and TV School, and The London Animation School.

Still, the filmmaker's post Oscar fame has largely been driven by the fact that not only did he win in the short film category, but he netted a high-definition TV set for making the evening's shortest acceptance speech. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences offered the prize as an incentive to shave time off the seemingly endless ceremony.

The television set will be donated to a yet-to-be-decided children's charity in the Los Angeles area. "It's funny and kind of embarrassing," said Dudok de Wit, who in some interviews has received more attention for winning the television than the Oscar. "I only wanted to make a simple speech any way, but we were told that if we spoke over a certain amount of time, music would play."

COPYRIGHT 2001 BPI Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group