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The Itch of the Golden Nit: Tate Movie Project

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Moving on to the fantastic film The Itch of the Golden Nit. What led you to take on such an ambitious project which allowed children to take the reigns? The reason for doing this was to obtain subtlety in the characters and their relationships – in their facial expressions and movements – I just don’t think I could do that with drawings. Some people can but not me.

I would love to but the opportunity I had was a kind of perfect storm that doesn’t come along very often.The cultural Olympiad funding, the Tate’s support and Aardman asking me to be involved. It would be difficult ( but not impossible ) to do something on the same scale. I do have loads of ideas about how we could develop the idea though – doing a live action approach, or a series or a feature and we are looking at ways to develop the concept. In 2002, Sarah left Picasso Pictures and set up her own production and animation company Arthur Cox, with Sally Arthur and has since directed several commercials in France and has been increasingly involved as a producer on many film projects. These include Emma Lazenby‘s BAFTA award winning film, Mother of Many, and the forthcoming live action film, iFeature’s Eight Minutes Idle.David Walliams, Miranda Hart, Catherine Tate and Rik Mayall lead the stellar cast providing the voices for the children’s characters from Evil Stella to Captain Iron Ears. Funded by Legacy Trust UK and BP, with additional support and resources from the BBC, the film has been brought together by Tate and the creative magic of Aardman Animations. The cream of British comedy has provided additional voices for the film including Sanjeev Bhaskar, Ralf Little, Miriam Margolyes, Lucy Montgomery, Vic Reeves and Alexei Sayle. Two children will provide the voices of Beanie - Bobby Fuller, known for his role of Jake on CBBC’s Sadie J - and his older sister Beryl - Rachel Rawlinson. Throughout your career in animation you have balanced working as a commercial director with directing your own short films. Do you feel you are able to have creative freedom in your commercial work or do you find that it always comes with a compromise? Since then Sarah combined her love of animation with teaching, working as a lecturer at Humberside University, then The National Film and Television School and as Head of Animation at Savannah College for Art and Design, in Georgia, USA. The Tate was the perfect partner for the project ( along with CBBC of course) because they gave the whole thing a really strong environment. The workshops were framed in the context of looking at art works and they had a massive influence and what the children drew and wrote. Much of the initial story came from a workshop in Tate Liverpool where we showed the children Picasso’s Weeping Woman ( which was there as part of the Picasso Peace and Freedom exhibition), we asked why they thought she was crying and within the context of a script workshop – where they shouted out ideas, developing on each other thoughts; we got an amazing story chain about a girl called Diana whose hair grew 5 meters every 5 seconds, it grew so fast she had to wash it in the Mersey, one day a dead kitten fell out, her only friends were the nits that lived in her hair etc etc…quite dark but quite brilliant material. The main thing I learnt from the project was that children really soak up the visual world around them so it is very very important to expose them to good design early on… even if they don’t speak about it – it definitely has a massive effect we could see it clearly in the drawings.

The Itch of the Golden Nit has been a huge success. Are you considering making another film collaborating with children in this way?The stellar cast has provided the voices for the lead characters chosen from the many drawings submitted by children aged 5- 13 the result of over 250 workshops and individual uploads to The Tate Movie Project’s online movie studio. The online studio has had more than 500,000 hits since it went live last July and a touring Movie Studio has spent months on the road visiting galleries, schools and festivals across the country encouraging children to use art as inspiration for their drawings and story ideas. Arthur Cox continues to develop and expand, often working closely with Aardman Animations, as seen with the road safety series The Peculiar Adventures of Hector, which won a British Animation Award in 2007, and the more recent The Itch of the Golden Nit, 2011. The film followed a unique production process. For those who don’t know could you explain a little bit how about the project came together?

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