The members of the international juries that will decide the Magnolia prizes at the ongoing Shanghai Television Festival were Thursday made to do double duty as speakers in public masterclasses that were open to a generation of aspiring documentary and animation makers.
David Stephan, jury president in the animation category, along with fellow judges Spencer Ooi and Jia Fou, spoke at length about getting their starts in the business and finding inspiration.
“When I studied animation, I didn’t have a textbook available. I saw extremely limited things, so I did further research to make myself understand what I was doing in such a career,” said Jia.
“The most important thing when learning animation is to draw. You have to keep drawing. Draw any form of any subject,” said Stephan. “You also need to watch a lot of animation, communicate with others and get feedback. Then, finally, it’s time to get your drawing moving.”
He also suggested that animation professionals should carry a sketchbook with them to capture everything at any time in life, from facial expressions to the specific actions of characters, so that the static pictures start to move naturally.
Jia agreed, proposing that observation is a prerequisite for subsequent imagination, because animation needs to resonate with the real world in order to appeal to audiences.
“Imagination is the most powerful thing and will be the source of your confidence. Don’t make animation a very serious thing. Serious animation is neither beautiful nor attractive,” said Ooi.
Malaysian producer and director Poh Si Teng (“Saint Louis Superman”), Chinese scholar and curator He Suliu and Germany’s Sabine Bubeck-Paaz, a producer and commissioning editor with ZDF and Arte, were also at the Shanghai Exhibition Center on Thursday. Their masterclass was on documentary filmmaking.
The trio said that they have bonded over a shared passion for the factual genre. “Over these few days together, the three of us have gone from being very unfamiliar with each other, to watching a lot of excellent works and enjoying the exchange of ideas between ourselves,” said He.
China has become a significant force in documentary co-production, especially in films with wildlife and nature topics.
Poh said that documentaries are expressions of real conditions. but do not necessarily need to be about serious subjects.
“When I was in Amsterdam 30 years ago, there were very few international collaborators interested in filming in this format,” said Bubeck-Paaz. “But now there are many platforms for international cooperation, and I hope that people can use them to cooperate more, and not be lonely producers.”
