The Briefing Room

The Slamdance Film Festival, established in 1995, has made it their mission to create a forum for auteurs to come together sans the glamour that often surrounds other well-noted festivals. The Slamdance committee looks to elevate the creative works of artists from around the world, and this year the committee felt the need to elevate the look of the Slamdance brand, itself.

Directing collective, Bitstate, found themselves in a position to provide the film festival with a dash of their creative ingénue. The festival is evolving from year-to-year, keeping its focus on building a community of artists across a variety of mediums.
According to Bitstate’s Creative Director, Pete Circuitt, the identity of the festival was open to interpretation
and the basic premise of the festival coupled with the energy that it carries was a great starting point
for them to begin to develop their creative angle. The executives behind the festival wanted to open the festival with gripping imagery, reflective of the work ofetn showcased in Slamdance.“We used this as our starting point for a
world built from stretched concrete and buildings, and a landscape pulsing with abstract characters and wildlife. The trailer is meant to play before each event at the festival, so we wanted to make the animation dense enough to hold up to multiple viewings while giving us more opportunities for interesting animation.�

In terms of the execution of the work, Bitstate put the Adobe family of products to use creating entirely in Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects. When it comes down to finding the passion in the work, it isn’t hard for them to do. Art Director, Bill Sneed, excitedly states that even “though it sounds ridiculous, it was actually a lot of fun to create the various frame
by frame elements which were done in Illustrator and brought as sequences into After Effects. For the camera animation, we wanted to keep consistent with the roughly edited and hand drawn animation, while keeping it
heavy and bombastic!â€? Slamdance founder, Peter Baxter, properly places the artistry of Bitstate into perspective by saying that, “Bitstate has created an exceptional animation work that encapsulates the spirit and identity of our
organization and due to its mass appeal has provided Slamdance greater international popularity.”