We would like to invite you to join us and contribute to a new and exciting animated film project.
We have gathered a group of Sydney based animators and film professionals to create a short animated film trailer – derived from an online award-winning screenplay (Los Angeles Cinema Festival of Hollywood 2011 “Best Script”) written and devised by Ivar Kants. Welcome to...
MACBETH for the Second Millennium
A dark, gothic, animated modern parable.
Based on Shakespeare’s great psychological thriller. The script for this trailer won the International Movie Trailer Festival “best trailer script” in 2011. You can read the script further down the page and look at the IMTF link here.
Get a taste of what we’re aiming for by watching this video teaser above. Hopefully it will excite you, and make you want to be part of it.
OUR TRAILER
This trailer is aimed at the main international film audience of 20-40 year olds who are steeped in the world of graphic computer games, and the revival of the Gothic comic genre over recent years. There is also the possibility of opening a vast education opportunity, to make Shakespeare accessible to students in many countries. Animation transcends many barriers.
OUR AIM
Our aim - is to use this trailer to sell the project on, to a production studio and/or internet platform - and realise it as an animated feature based on the full screenplay.
THE SCRIPT
Please click here to read the script in its entirety.
OUR CREATIVE TEAM
IVAR KANTS
Writer/director/producer
Search for Ivar on IMDB for film and TV credits and Google him for credits and images. His career spans four decades as an Australian actor in film, TV and theatre. Over a third of his 72 theatre productions were Shakespeare or Jacobean. “My great passion“.
DWAYNE LABBE
Chief animator & conceptual artist
Dwayne is an award winning animator with a career spanning well over 35 years. He has worked for most the major animation studios such as Walt Disney and Nickelodeon with household titles such as Aladdin and Ren & Stimpy under his belt. He won an Emmy award for his work on Disney's Winnie the Pooh.
ANGUS ROBERTSON
Audio
Angus is the head of sound at “Huzzah Sound” / Spectrum Films, one of Sydney’s major film post-production studios. Audio is crucial in this project. The text (as adapted by Ivar Kants) drives the images, and will be recorded first.
JAKE KANTS
Co-producer on this campaign
Jake has a fine arts background and has done extensive work in illustration. He is absolutely instrumental on the campaign.
ANDRIAN KOTIK
Co-producer on this campaign
Andrian is a senior graphic/web/motion/ux/ui designer with experience in a number of design disciplines. He directed, coordinated and executed this campaign.
The “world” of this film concept
Our “Macbeth” is set in this era, as the Millennium roll over. It focuses on the aspects of greed, ambition, and the pursuit of power which drive Shakespeare’s great thriller. The price two people pay for that.
The pact between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth, cemented with sexuality, that binds them, as with many serial killer partnerships. The psychology of evil. Although Lady Macbeth has “given suck”......we should feel, at the time of our story they are childless. If she were to concieve - a dose of certain herbs would eliminate any obstacle to their “vaulting ambition”.
The ultimate power of the story, is in Shakespeare’s beautifully rivetting text - which allows us to see the horrors they commit....yet feel for them. It is the prototype of all great thrillers and moves at break-neck speed.
The film is essentially set in a City. The visual style drifts between polluted, high-tech exteriors of “Blade-Runner” and the deco interiors (wood panel and chrome) of “Sunset Boulevarde.” Light and Shadow......the only colour in the film should burst onto the screen. The flames of an oil rig in the opening coroprate function. A red cloth holding a chrome pistol. It is un-ashamedly “film noir” derived. Macbeth’s end, resonates with Howard Hawke’s “Scarface”.
To the audience who know the story we are saying "we’re playing games to entice you". To those that don’t – the real world will sadly provide enough reference.
The world of globalisation - a world divided between those who control technology and the rest. The grinding poverty of the third world and within the economically strong countries themselves. The shaky markets in Europe and Asia. The political chaos and lawlessness of Eastern Europe, ,the dark and internecine violence in the Balkans, the drug cartels of Latin America.
In one week CNN reports that while financial markets struggle for confidence, luxury hotels in Paris and London report a “bumper year.” In the same week a pro-democrat journalist is gunned down, outside her apartment in St. Petersburg.
The world’s coral reefs crumble, due to global warming, as do the great “twin towers” of commerce.......fueling political/religous wars, and global terrorism that erupts from the cauldron of the middle-east. Millions fleeing violence flood into Europe. Our Macbeth and Lady Macbeth breathe in such a world. They, like the “ baby-boomers” face the new millennium, and their own racing mortality...and this... is their final chance to make it.
