BAFTA winner visits UCA days after Oscars
Five days after appearing on the red carpet at the Oscars, BAFTA Award winner Grant Orchard spoke to students at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA).
Grant gave a special presentation to those on the BA (Hons) Animation degree at UCA Farnham, which he graduated from in 1995. The lecture included a screening of his award-winning short film A Morning Stroll.
Grant said: "It's nice to return to Farnham and see how things have changed since I left. I went on autopilot when I got out at the station and walked straight up to the university as though I'd never left. It all looks strangely familiar but it's fresher and zestier which is great to see."
Having won the BAFTA for Best Animated Short Film on 12 February, he returned from Hollywood without an Oscar at the 84th Academy Awards a fortnight later.
He continued: "The past week has been an unrepeatable experience. The BAFTAs were a really good, classy affair but the interest in Los Angeles with the Oscars was phenomenal – I didn't expect it at all.
"We were invited to speak and meet with the top people at all of the big studios including Disney, Dreamworks and 20th Century Fox. We got to do things that only Oscar nominees would ever get to do, for example we went to the Animation Research Laboratory at Disney which only employees usually get to see.
"The highlight for me though was meeting all of my animation heroes including Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Ratatouille), David Silverman (The Simpsons, Monsters Inc), Andreas Deja (The Lion King, Aladdin) and John Musker (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin)."
A Morning Stroll tells the story of a New Yorker's encounter with a chicken. It was produced by Sue Goffe and made at Studio AKA in London during down-time.
UCA has produced four Oscar winners to date. UCA Farnham alumni Suzie Templeton (2008), Michael Dudok de Wit (2001) and Daniel Greaves (1992) all won Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film, while UCA Canterbury alumnus, Arnold Schwartzman OBE RDI, won Best Documentary Feature in 1982.
"The temptation now is to think about making a film that could win an Academy Award, but you can't think like that - you've just got to keep doing your own thing," Grant added.
Grant, who visited UCA Farnham on 2 March, is one of several major filmmakers who regularly give guest lectures to students at the University.
He added: "UCA used to be the only university in the country that offered an animation course so learning and speaking with 50 other like-minded people every day was really beneficial to me.
"It was also the first place that I learned about narrative and how important it was to animation rather than simply focusing on learning how to animate – I still use those skills today."
For more information contact:
David Reilly, Press Officer, UCA
T: 01252 892939
E: dreilly@ucreative.ac.uk
