Colenso rewarded for paper cuts
Following on from two golds in the ‘charity’ and ‘art direction and typography’ categories at the 2010 Axis awards, Colenso BBDO’s animated film of Maurice Gee’s novel Going West, which was produced for The New Zealand Book Council to promote books and reading, has received another nod, this time from the Museum of Art and Design in New York.
The animation won the Museum’s Choice grand prize award at Moving Paper, an international (and extremely niche), film festival of cut paper animation. And the judges said: “Your piece is truly exceptional, and the decision to award it the grand prize was unanimous among our judges”.
Colenso BBDO and London’s Andersen M Studios worked for eight-months to bring it to life through hand cut ‘pop-up’ scenery springing up from the pages. The Going West film raked in over 700,000 YouTube views, inspired more than 3400 tweets or blog posts around the world, and reached number eight in the Viral Video Chart compiled by Unruly Media.
“We wanted to grab people’s attention for just one moment in the hurly burly world of modern media and direct them to the adventure that can be had in one’s own head at the flick of a page,” says New Zealand Book Council chief executive, Noel Murphy: “Colenso and the Andersen M Studios created something that achieved that and more by literally bringing the book itself to life. The fact that this video continues to garner praise from around the world is a testament to its originality and also to the enduring power of books and stories.”
There’s no doubt, it’s an amazing animation and a tribute to the novel appeal of artisanship. Even so, maybe it’s just us, but with a goal to inspire more reading, an amazing film only seems to reinforce the fact that video is a more exciting medium. If only books were on YouTube, then people would read them.
What do you think?