Smith & Foulkes direct animation for Motorola

Multi award-winning directing duo Smith & Foulkes of Nexus Productions have created one of their trademark captivating animations for ‘The Grand Classics’ series, presented by Motorola and in collaboration with The Fish Can Sing.
The audience are transported at lightening speed through the different eras of cinema from early flickering simplicity to modern digital complexity. Following the hero, a big-eared blue rabbit, we race from the stroboscopic animation of a zoetrope to the screen of a mobile phone, via some of the pivotal moments in cinema. These seminal movie images range from Frank Sinatra twirling round a lamppost to John Travolta strutting on a multi-coloured dance-floor until we finally join Maximus as the Saviour of Rome.
The Grand Classics series celebrates the power of film while benefiting motion picture preservation through contributions to the American Film Institute (AFI) and the British Film Institute (bfi). Motorola is supporting the Grand Classics event to embrace the history of moving image that precedes technology’s latest advances and as a platform to highlight the relevance of 3G to the film industry.
Directors Alan Smith and Adam Foulkes said: “The only brief we had was to show an entertaining ride through the history of the moving image, ending on a phone! We just had to decide on which films and how many and try to get an even spread of cult films, blockbusters, European art-house, etc, then arrange them chronologically and find a fun route for our main character to take. Even though we’ve said we wouldn’t use one again, I’m afraid the ol’ Smith & Foulkes rabbit once again seemed the best solution. It works well in the animated parts and it has got a great silhouette. There’s something about watching a rabbit in Apocalypse Now that makes it funnier than if it was a human.”
(GB)