Two Balloons screens at the 30th Galway Film Festival on Sun 15 July
Two Balloons
Screens at 30th Annual Galway Film Fleadh on Sunday 15th July
The magical stop-motion animated short film Two Balloons was produced in Portland, Oregon and premiered at the 30th Foyle Film Festival in Ireland last November. Since then the film has been screened at some of the most prestigious international film festivals and won many awards. And now the filmmakers are delighted to announce that Two Balloons will screen at this year’s historic 30th annual Galway Film Fleadh, taking place from 10th to 15th of July.
Two Balloons was four years in the making and it tells the spellbinding story of two adventurous lemurs travelling the skies in their wondrous airships. One night they meet by chance and forge a bond which sees them through a calamity and cements their friendship.
Two Balloons was inspired by the music of Peter Broderick, a celebrated American composer who has collaborated with Philip Glass, Efterklang, Yann Tiersen, M. Ward and Dustin O’ Halloran amongst many others, as well as composing his own music and film scores. When director Mark Smith heard Broderick’s ‘More of a Composition’ he knew instantly that he wanted to work with him. The score for the film is an intrinsic piece of the production and as Peter is based in Co. Galway with his wife, singer Brigid Mae Power, this screening at the Fleadh feels like something of a homecoming for Two Balloons.
Originally the film was envisaged as a live action short and the plan was to build two real airships, but the production ran into problems when they couldn’t secure an aircraft hangar for the required length of time. So instead Mark decided to create the film as a stop-motion animated film despite the fact that he had no prior experience of stop-motion. As he says: ‘I was obsessive about preparation because I had never produced a stop-motion project. Sometimes I saw pre-production as training for an endurance race I had never run before.’
One of the first questions asked when they made this decision was, ‘what form will the characters take?’ Mark took inspiration from Cyril Connolly’s The Unquiet Grave in which Connolly admires ring-tailed lemurs: ‘they held the secret of life to me; they were clues to an existence without thought, guilt or ugliness wherein all was grace, appetite and immediate sensation.’ And so the two curious adventurers in Two Balloons were born.
Mark and his crew spent sixteen months storyboarding and building a stage to encompass the sets of the half-scale lemur world. Only then did they begin to shoot, which was an intensely time-consuming process: shots which were only ten seconds long took two months to shoot. The result is the nine-minute long Two Balloons, a poignant and heart-warming film which was a labour of love for all involved.
Since its debut the film has shown at many film festivals including Flickerfest International Short Film Festival (Australia), Santa Barbara International Film Festival (USA), Atlanta Film Festival (USA), Short Shorts Film Festival (Japan), Anima 2018 (Belgium), and the upcoming Fantasia International Film Festival (Canada).
Two Balloons has also won numerous awards, most recently the Special Mention Jury Award at Animafest Zagreb, the longest running animation festival in the world. The crew of the film was especially delighted with this award, highly coveted as it is within the animation industry. Other awards garnered by Two Balloons include Hoka Award Best Animated Short Film (Oxford Film Festival), Adult Jury Award: Best Animated Short Film (Toronto International Film Festival, TIFF Kids), and Jury Award: Best Animated Short (Sonoma International Film Festival).
The team behind Two Balloons is looking forward to visiting Galway next month and sharing the magic of the film with the Fleadh audiences.
Behind the scenes: A Stop Motion Ocean: https://vimeo.com/237123570
Behind the scenes: Assembly of a Miniature Storm: https://vimeo.com/238038660