Sep 18, 2019

Cartoon Forum 2019: Watch 6 pitches for the new European Show

Comic Forum, Europe's vast co-production platform for television series, kicked off Tuesday in style (and plenty of substance).

About 1,000 badge holders - producers, distributors, investors, broadcasters, SVOD platforms and artists - gather in Toulouse, France, to watch studios across the continent pitch their latest projects as they do every year on May 9.

This edition, the 30th edition of the forum, features 24 projects from 85 countries and includes more than 500 hours of content in total. These figures represent modest growth in previous years, speaking to the dynamism of the European animation industry. I will report further on the trends of this year's event going forward, but here's a project that caught my eye from the first day of the pitch.

Project: At the start of World War I, an 11-year-old girl washes off on the shores of the remote Scilly Islands of Britain. Apparently, having lost all memory, she mutters the word "Lucy" before being silent. The local community takes her carefully, but then rumors about her origin begin to spread.

Pitch: This was one of the slicker presentations of the day - as expected from the production company Xilam, the series currently high on the success of its features I lost my body is subtly animated in 2d, with a lush painting background (style befitting the classic story). High production values are reflected in large budgets. The studio's CEO, Marc du Pontavice, confirmed that elements of the pipeline developed for "I Lost My Body", such as the use of Blender for hand-drawn rendering of 3d characters, are being reused here. The source novel "Listen to The Moon" by Michael Morpurgo is little known on the European continent, but loved in the UK.

Question: The story we saw was sober and understated, with a sense of mystery, but no real drama. How does Morpurgo's story split into episodes (and at that time unconventional long ones) - Dupontavice describes Lucy Lost as a very long film in nature - does he think these voices will be used in the final work - if so, they might rank some viewers in the UK.

Details: 10×26 minute episodes. Xilam animation. The budget of the series is 1200 million euros. It's a Family

Project: This documentary series focuses on 15 high-profile athletes who face discrimination because of race, gender, sexual orientation, or disability. The episodes weave together animated sequences and footage with live-action talking heads.

Pitch: The creators opened with a stark warning that their project, unlike most in comic forums, is not at least humorous, it includes footage of racist chanting at a football game, interviews with gay athletes, and a lot of rotoscopes as she walks down the street. It didn't prevent some nervous tittering between the scenes, and the trailer that included an animated clip that showed her like a child symbolically trying to fit a toy block into another shaped hole. The fleet, dynamic hand-drawn animation, the theme that spans all sports of Jean-Charles Mbotti Malolo, the talented director behind the short film touch sense and just shorlisted Cesar candidate is very topical and the project was presented with verve and patent honesty.

Question: Animated segments are increasingly used in live-action documentaries, which often describe a person's back story or subjective experience they seem to unfold here as well: Mbotti Malolo helps to establish a common experience of all people facing discrimination through abstraction. I'm interested to see how frequent these segments become and how they add to our understanding of the plight of athletes.

Details: 10×10 minute episode. Bachibouzouk/DPT/Film Angels Productions/Hors Zone. Young adult/adult.

The Project: Another documentary series, we focus on a group of people who came together to create a new kind of sound, a musical genre and subge every episode, where the family describes how each was formed from a previous style.

Pitch: As Hollywood's music Biopics boom, TeamTO has come up with a fun spin on the genre. By introducing a turning point in the history of pop music, we are a family, and the pilots of all music (and therefore, by implication, of all people and communities) are talking about their collaboration with Aerosmith's Run-DMC in rock-rap fusion's groundbreaking work "Walk this Way." It will be. The French studio that also produced the "Hyper Real" dog series "Mighty Mike" has a blocky, cartoonish cg aesthetic. It works with retro themes and the writers have clearly done their research (with the help of podcasts that switch to pop). Some of the featured artists-Bossa Nova legend Joan Gilberto, says- would not be known to today's teens; but the show engages them

Question: The thrill of seeing real stars at work is lacking because this series does not use archived footage. It's not always a thrilling sight for anime characters to stuff or compose songs.How do creators diversify and keep their visuals exciting?Potential supporters would want to be reassured about the music clearance fee, but the creators said their initial discussions with record labels were "encouraging."

Details: 52×5 minutes. Team top... 12-15 years old.