After the Annie and VES (Visual Effects Society) awards, comes the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA), rewarding the outstanding work done not kust in the field of live-action but also in the field of animation and visual effects. This year, the victors were Kubo and the Two Strings, The Jungle Book and A Love Story.
Laika’s Kubo and the Two Strings won the award for Best Animated Film, beating Disney Pixar’s Finding Dory, Disney’s Moana and Zootropolis (a.k.a Zootopia). “I am utterly shocked,” director Travis Knight said. Knight and his team worked on the film for five years so that the film comes out and gets a great reaction from the audience. “It’s pretty surreal,” he said. The director of the longest stop motion animation also spoke about how he got Matthew McConaughey on board to voice the character of Beetle/Hanzo- Kubo’s father. They were listening to an interview he did and “were struck by how incredibly beautiful his voice was.” What got McConaughey drew him to the project was that the film is a story of family. “It was really heart-warming when he said ‘Yes’,”added Knight.
In the category of Best Special Visual Effects, The Jungle Book triumphed amongst the tough competitors Arrival, Doctor Strange, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Robert Legato, Dan Lemmon, Andrew Jones and Adam Valdez were the masters behind the astounding work done in the film. Talking about how difficult it is to create rich and distinctively drawn characters through visual effects, Valdez said, “It’s a piece-by-piece-meal sort of artistry when people are sculpting and laying out the hair one by one, deciding on the colours and material and the eyes, and the animation team breathing life into it.” Award-winning visual effects supervisor Dan Lemmon said, “There’s something magic about starting from nothing and bringing a character to life.”
Though the wizard world movie, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, didn’t bag the award in the Special Effects category, it did manage to grab the Best Production Design award. Competing against it were Doctor Strange, Hail, Caesar!, La La Land and Nocturnal Animals.
National Film and Television School’s A Love Story, produced by Khaled Gad and directed by Anushka Kishani Naanayakkara grabbed the Best British Short Animation award. The seven-minute short is a tale of love between two balls of wool who weave a colourful world together.
Our spidey-senses are tingling! It’s EE Rising Star nominee @TomHolland1996 #EEBAFTAs https://t.co/kbRSAWWNQM
— BAFTA (@BAFTA) 12 February 2017
The newest Spider-Man in town, Tom Holland was bestowed the EE Rising Star Award. This is the only award wherein the audience gets to vote and choose the most promising new talent in the industry. Competing against him were Laia Costa, Lucas Hedges, Ruth Negga and Anya Taylor. Also, for the first time Andrew Garfield (played Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man series) and Tom Holland met each other on this joyous night.
Talking about his encounter with Garfield, Holland said, “We met for the first time on the red carpet today and it was really nice. He’s a really lovely guy. He was everything I hoped he would be. He’s a brilliant actor and I’ve always been a fan of his work. I look forward to picking his brains and seeing if he has any advice for me.”
Tom Holland is gearing up for the 2017 release Spider-Man: Homecoming (5 July) and will also star in Avengers: Infinity War (4 May, 2018).