Fresh from his success on the red carpet, we catch up with Grafik Talent Marcus Armitage about the highs and lows of launching his animation My Dad and what comes next
It’s over a year since we last featured you – what’s been happening in your world?
I was extremely surprised in February to discover that my graduation film from the Royal College of Art had been nominated for a BAFTA for short animation. It was one of those things that I had dreamt about, but never really expected to happen. The next thing I knew, I was walking down the red carpet. It was a huge honour and such an exciting time. Unfortunately I didn't win, but it's just a motivation now to keep making films and pushing them as far as possible and maybe I'll be lucky enough to get there again in the future.
Since the BAFTAs swept me up and then dumped me back in the real world, I have been hard at work. I co-directed What is Literature for? for the School of Life, a five-minute short on why we read books and what they can do for us. This was great fun, and a chance to work in a completely new way, the cut-out style offering a very playful and instinctive way to work. I also made another School of Life video, The Meaning of Life in 60 Seconds. This was a much quicker turn-around, using that same style.
After this, I directed and animated a short film for the NHS that was shown at a conference on women using mental health services. Working to a poem written by one of the women using these services, I animated her ideas and emotions visually, which was a great challenge. The deadline was also very tight, so everything was created digitally.
It has been great to still be making short films since graduating, and it's something I hope will continue.
Tell us about the process of getting your film My Dad from the trailer we saw last August, to launch of the full-length version last week…
The film was finished last August, but has been hiding behind a Vimeo password until now. Many film and animation festivals require the film to be offline so while the film was doing the festival circuit it was gathering Internet dust until launch day.
What have been the most memorable highs and lows?
Finishing the film was a huge high. So much hard work went into it in quite a short amount of time and putting the end credits on was a massive relief. Then, going straight into the School of Life work maintained that high — I had graduated and gone straight into making something new. I hadn't even left the building.
Then the BAFTA nomination came along, which was surreal. I got to wear a tuxedo, walk down the red carpet and my girlfriend accidentally touched Michael Keaton's bum. It was great. And then the low. It was such a strange weekend, and it all just ended, back to work, no more suits and champagne.
That was hard to get back up from, I found it difficult to motivate myself to start something new. But then I found out my film was in the official selection for Annecy International Animation Festival, which is a huge animation festival and thanks to the British Film Council I got to go, and ended up winning the Graduation Cristal. I was surprised to be even in the festival, let alone win that prize. That picked me back up and I've been feeling good since, and have got plenty of ideas to be working on now.
How have the accolades affected things for you work-wise?
You get more emails that's for sure. It has definitely raised my profile, but not a huge amount, work wise has resulted from these accolades, but what it has done is motivate me to work very hard on my own projects. Every job I get paid for, means more time to work on my projects and I'm starting to find a balance between those two things which is really fun for me.
What’s next for you?
I am currently working on two new films, both at very early stages. I'm really excited about them starting to take shape, one will be a completely new direction for me and is going to be about all the angry people I have met during my time in London. It's going to be a fun one. The other is a more serious topic, about the struggle between compassion and doing your job in the police force. These projects are for myself and commercially I never know what's round the corner, but I have just finished some animation for the Stoptober Campaign which is online now in various places.