Animation Calling

As of today, the official trailer of the 29th Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film (ITFS, May 3 to 8, 2022) is online and can be admired in full length. It is called "Black is Back" and was created by François Chalet. The Swiss artist teaches storytelling and expanded animation at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and works as a visual artist in the fields of illustration, animation, installation and performance as well as on cross-platform projects. Michael Fakesch is responsible for the sound. The music producer, sound designer, DJ, lecturer and film music composer was one of the two founders and members of the electro duo Funkstörung and has already worked for Björk, Wu-Tang Clan, Jean-Michel Jarre, Notwist and Nicolas Winding Refn.

Link to the ITFS Trailer 2022: https://youtu.be/kPo1GxehrdM

Who are the two creators behind the trailer? How did they go about creating it? Let them speak for themselves:

To the complete interviews: https://itfs.de/en/festival/black-is-back/

François Chalet on the idea for the ITFS 2022 Trailer

I had revised the twelve principles of animation in preparation for teaching at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and once more had to realise how little I have actually mastered them. So, I thought it would make sense to focus on the fundamentals of animation once again. The trailer is about the "bouncing ball", "squash and stretch", "exaggeration", "expressions", failure, reduction and basic shapes, and naturally "à la sauce” Chalet. Also, I really wanted to address for a moment the immersion in another world and the forgetting of our everyday life: The light in the film suddenly goes on and the hall is instantly illuminated by the inversion of the image. We see our neighbour sitting next to us in the cinema and want to immerse ourselves in the magic of animation again as quickly as possible.

Michael Fakesch on sound in animation and for the ITFS 2022 Trailer

I have already created the music and sound design for several hundred animations, and I couldn't imagine a cooler job. Sometimes I even dream about sound and every time I see an animation, I already have the 'right' sound in my mind. By the way, I can't imagine how to watch animation without sound. I think it's only through sound that animations come alive, it's only through music that animations become emotional.

Actually, it was clear pretty quickly what kind of music or sound design it should be. At the beginning I tried an approach that was much more comic-like, but somehow Francois and I had the feeling that we had to make it even more edgy and counteract the childish naiveté of the visuals with a very experimental sound design.

https://www.itfs.de/en/