ANIMAFEST PRO | BOOK PRESENTATIONS

Croatian animated films storyboards: Manivald & Morana, ed. Matija Pisačić

04/06 WED 17:00 KIC

The ‘Western’ feature-length film intended for a broad audience has a long and rich tradition of added content, the so-called merchandising, which includes lavish print editions of visual concept analyses and detailed visual storyboards. At first glance, one might say that such content is reserved exclusively for American blockbusters, popular franchises often from the field of speculative fantasy, but the fact is that the tradition of making and then publishing storyboards has been present for many decades, regardless of the film genre or type, including the so-called art-house films of incomparably lower budgets.

Feature film in Croatia doesn’t have the practice of making storyboards (with a few exceptions), this job is always done by animation filmmakers alone. The idea of this project is to honour and reward filmmakers for their thorough preproduction work and present this somewhat hidden aspect of film work with students, fellow filmmakers and general public.

Storyboards are attractive as a visual/literary form which, if published in print, intersects two artistic disciplines; it is to a certain point similar to comic book narrative, but essentially subjected to specific rules of cinematic language. A storyboard reveals how an idea acquires a visual expression.

Storyboards themselves can vary in their complexity – from a sketchy ‘casual’ setting to visuals with lavish details. For the first round of this edition, the editorial board decided to print the working materials of four Croatian hit films. These are: Manivald by Chintis Lundgren, Morana by Simon Bogojević Narath, Her Dress for the Final by Martina Meštrović and Note by Marko Meštrović. The storyboards are bilingual (Croatian and English), printed in colour and, in addition to the storyboards, there are sketches of the visual concepts, synopses, screenplays and directors’ statements. Each book is furnished with a QR code taking the reader to online visual materials such as interviews with the authors and the final versions of the films, unlocked for free viewing. A small bonus is also a paginated flipbook animation.

The books are printed with the financial support of the City of Zagreb and the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, and the editor-in-chief of the edition is Matija Pisačić.