London Short Film Festival 2018

Following a successful campaign in 2017, Sundae returned to lead the press and publicity for the 15th annual London Short Film Festival in 2018. Celebrating its 15th anniversary, LSFF is a vital moment in the UK film calendar, a beacon of inclusive and ground-breaking film-making from a diverse range of backgrounds. The festival shows a huge selection of UK and international short films across music, culture, and politics.

As part of our strategy we created a bespoke publicity campaign based around the festival’s individual strands – Politics, Music, Culture, Brexit, BAME, LGBTQ, international, Industry and the With Teeth bi-annual commissioning award from LSFF supported by Arts Council England

With the programme boasting particularly strong and diverse content, something we’re extremely passionate about, and wanted to shine a bright light upon.

A key highlight was a legacy screening of pioneer of Black British cinema Ngozi Onwurah’s rare works, followed a panel discussion with Ngozi , producer Simon Onwurah, Hilja Lindsay-Muwonge (actress, Flight of the Swan) and Sian Ejiwumi-Le Berre (actress, The Body Beautiful).

Ngozi Onwurah was the first Black British woman to have a feature film released in UK cinemas (Welcome II The Terrordome,1995), and was of huge interest to the press with pick up from British Blacklist and Run Riot among many. Plus despite a tight schedule and LA time difference, we also secured an interview feature with Don’t Panic London, it’s an amazing, insightful piece and something we are incredibly proud to have been part of.

Sundae x

Launching Factory’s Creative Engine

We have some wonderful clients, but our longest standing is Factory, the BAFTA-award winning animation house, home grown from the ground up right here in Manchester – they’ve been with us since day one!

Factory told us over the summer that they were going to be launching a dedicated state of the art studio, Factory Creative Engine, which would mean they could bring every aspect of animating in-house, sets, puppets, costumes, the lot!

We were so excited to support them on this launch – its a huge leap for the company, allowing them to make great headway with their business strategy to create more and more of their own self-initiated creative content and intellectual property.

The incredible new workshop consolidates the production of sets, puppets, and models, synthesising cutting edge technology, including 3D printers and CO2 laser cutters with traditional methods, all under one roof. The new technology means that all the lengthy processes involved in creating worlds and characters in animation can be slashed, streamlined, and executed much more quickly!

The studio was opened by Keith Chapman, creator of Bob The Builder and Paw Patrol, whose production company Chapman Entertainment was formed alongside MD Phil Chalk, and based at the Altrincham site which went on to become Factory!

Not only will the new workshop allow Factory a whole world of creative freedom, the opening means that the animation studio is creating upwards of 40 jobs in Manchester, in the North West’s thriving animation sector rich with talent.

We had coverage in online and print editions of the Manchester Evening News, with further online coverage in television trades Televisual, and Broadcast Magazine, and animation trade outlets including Animation Magazine, and Animation World Network. Major licensing trade publication Kidscreen also ran an announcement piece.

The ‘A Week In My Life’ feature with Prolific North gave some insight into the daily routine of Jon Kershaw, Factory Creative Engine Manager, and they also ran an announcement piece on the day.

ITV Granada Reports came along on the day and filmed an amazing package for the 6 o’clock bulletin that Friday evening, which showcased the entire studio and its capabilities, with a refresher of the Factory’s impressive back catalogue!

Manchester Animation Festival

The Manchester Animation Festival launched in 2015, and in 2017, we were delighted to deliver the festival’s press and publicity for the first time. We’d met the team through our work with our animation clients and with a team of huge animation fans at Sundae, we were delighted to be part of such an up and coming event.

The festival is a three-day celebration of all things animated. From short film competitions, feature films, retrospective screenings, workshops, networking events, panel discussions, masterclasses and talks from the industry’s best and brightest.

With animation really taking flight in the North West with the likes of Factory, Mackinnon & Saunders, and CHF producing and creating a huge chunk of the UK’s animated output. The BBC and ITV have now moved to the thriving Media City, making Manchester a significant UK hub for creativity and media.

We wanted to really capitalise on both the strength of the festival’s incredible programme, and the emergence of the North West as an animation powerhouse with our messaging. We spread the word about the Manchester Animation Festival UK wide, and were able to amplify the 2017 festival, with an impressive national broadcast campaign.

Key national broadcast activity included an interview on BBC Breakfast with Will Becher, Animation Director of Early Man, who hosted a talk at the festival, and brought two of the puppets direct from the set for an exclusive view.

We also achieved a piece on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row around the Ivor Wood retrospective event. Ivor Wood expert Joseph Wallace, and Ivor’s widow and sometime animation partner Josiane Wood both appeared for a talk through the magic of the late animator.

This was bolstered by a fantastic regional broadcast coverage, with a TV piece going out on ITV North West Tonight, exploring the relationship with sponsors (and another of our clients!) Factory and the festival. Additionally, we had TWO interviews on BBC Radio Manchester, with Will Becher, and festival director Steve Henderson, plus A Week in My Life for Steve on Prolific North.

We also secured a profile of The Simpsons writer Josh Weinstein in print, with Broadcast Magazine, one of the major television trade outlets. Josh is responsible for Strange Hill High, a CBBC programme that we also had the pleasure of working on and is currently working on Disenchantment.

The festival’s lineup announcements was covered in the bulk of the animation trade outlets, including Animation World Network,  Creative Boom and Animation Magazine, amongst others, and we had listings coverage in the Manchester Evening News, Sight & Sound, and many more.

The festival teamed up with the BBC to host a family day the weekend ahead of the animation festival’s launch, which we announced and was covered by Manchester Evening News Online, as well as parenting bloggers What To Do With The Kids and Daddy Daydream.

We generated almost 65,000,000 opportunities to see, and we helped cement the Manchester Animation Festival’s reputation as the go-to for everything animated, and the biggest and best animation festival in the UK.

Creating a buzz about Bee in the City

In November we had the privilege of managing media for a special launch for Wild In Art, announcing that a giant colony of super-sized bee sculptures would be winging its way to Manchester in the summer of 2018 for one of the biggest public art exhibitions the city has ever seen.

Wild in Art is one of the leading creative producers of spectacular, mass-appeal public art events, which connect businesses, artists and communities through the power of creativity and innovation.

Each super-sized bee sculpture will be decorated with its own unique design, created by regional professional, emerging and amateur artists – making an unforgettably stunning spectacle when the trail goes live. After the trail the bees will be auctioned to raise significant funds for The Lord Mayor’s We Love MCR Charity to improve the lives and life chances of Manchester people.

The Bee In The City launch took place at the monumental Manchester Town Hall, which on the night was buzzing with dozens of opinion formers, press and VIPs from across the city who gathered in anticipation to witness the unveiling of the first giant bee sculpture. Beautifully handed painted by Manchester artist, Jodi Silverman.

We had the pleasure of inviting television crews from BBC North West Tonight, Granada Reports and That’s Manchester along to capture Jodi’s final finishing touches to the bee and to also interview Manchester City councillors and the founders of Wild In Art about the project. All of the television coverage was broadcast on the six o’clock news that evening and was also repeated at ten o’clock, reaching an audience of millions across the North West of England!

Other press that attended included BBC Radio Manchester, Creative Boom, Manchester Confidential, I Love Manchester and the Manchester Evening News. It was amazing to see such a wide spread of coverage the following morning, with an added bonus of a lovely front page mention and full page in Friday’s print issue of the Manchester Evening News.

The Bee in the City trail will be on display throughout the city for nine weeks between July and September 2018 for Mancunians and visitors to enjoy whilst taking in the city’s landmarks, cultural gems and areas they may not have explored before.

If you would like to find out more about Bee in the City, please visit: beeinthecitymcr.co.uk

MC x

(Images: David Oates)

The journey to Be//Longing

This is a surprise project, the one you don’t expect and didn’t imagine, but then becomes a defining moment that opens a whole world of new possibilities.

Earlier this year the University’s of Manchester’s new Migration Lab got in touch with the brilliant, but ambitious, idea of using writing, theatre, and live events to ignite and inform debate in local, national and global communities to support and communicate its work. You can read more about this here.

After a good deal of thought, we decided that of course the arts are a form of communication, and why can’t we bring in some brilliant partners to collaborate and tell this important story.

Manchester Migration Lab was formed in January 2017 and brings together more than 70 researchers across the University’s Schools and Research Institutes that focus on migration issues as part of the University’s research expertise in addressing global inequalities.

We’ve worked with Hope Mill Theatre since they opened, and they have gone from strength to strength, winning awards, 5* reviews, and putting on definitive shows in a versatile and beautiful space they made themselves.

Next up, and essential to the success of the project was the inspirational Take Back Theatre collective, a company set up by actor Julie Hesmondhalgh, writer Becx Harrison and visual artist Grant Archer as an artistic response to the politics of austerity.

With the perfect team in place, and a solid comms strategy to back them up, we set about turning research into a piece of theatre.

The essential first step was to arrange a meeting of minds, orchestrating a fascinating combination of academia and creativity; a development workshop took place at Hope Studios, a rehearsal space in the Northern Quarter also part-owned by Joe and Will from Hope Mill Theatre.

There the team was joined by MML coordinator Dr Cathy Wilcock, a selection of Manchester Migration Lab researchers from across the University, in addition to the Lab’s co-convener, Dr Tanja Müller. The session opened with a showcase from Take Back, performing a selection of scenes show us what they do; and they grabbed the room with a passion that made us all realise the potential of this project.

The next step was to look at the research and stories the Lab is keen to share widely and create conversation around. We settled on the theme of ‘crossing borders’ a concept that has so much meaning, and made the decision to create a multi-media piece that looked at all types of emotional, physical and societal borders expressed in many different ways.

Take back listened hard, went away and came back with a plan… Be//Longing was born.

The immersive production will run from Tue 31st Oct –Sat 4th Nov with proceeds going to migration charities, and it will use installations, an exhibition, music and video alongside scripted theatre, to create an experience that will boldly address perceptions of migration and expose myths.

Throughout the run, Hope Mill Theatre will be completely transformed to resemble a warehouse on the edge of a border, and after making their journey to the theatre, audience members will reach an arrivals area where their tickets will be checked and processed, and they’ll cross the border to Be//Longing.

We’re now beginning our bespoke communications campaign, using specially created social channels to engage with targeted accounts on a peer to peer level whilst putting the initial story in all of the right hands.

As you can imagine, we are incredibly excited to see and promote the production. Do come and see it.

Tom x

Factory goes Off The Leash

It has been a very busy summer season here at Sundae and this year we had the pleasure of working with our good friends at the award-winning animation studio, Factory, to announce a whole host of new and exciting plans!

One of the first projects to be developed this year is a lovely fun-filled collaboration with critically acclaimed cartoonist and writer, Rupert Fawcett to launch his first ever animated YouTube channel for his wonderful canine cartoon brand, Off the Leash (OTL).

The development of OTL’s new animations came as Factory announced its new licensing and brand management division, Factory Rights, following the acquisition of Rollo Rights, reported here in Kidscreen. The deal transferred rights to a catalog of brands including Rupert Fawcett’s Off the Leash, David McKee’s Mr Benn, King Rollo, and many others.

Most famous for his creative and humorous comic strips, Rupert Fawcett, is the original creator of OTL cartoons, a selection of drawings, featuring the secret thoughts and conversations of dogs of every size, shape and breed. The series aims to celebrate the nation’s favourite belly scratching, tail-chasing, bed-stealing canine friends for dog lovers everywhere.

As an office full of animal lovers, the campaign for the OTL YouTube channel has been a lot of fun to work on and one of our biggest successes so far was landing a partnership and social campaign with the RSPCA for National Dogs Day on 26th August.

To celebrate National Dog Day, Rupert Fawcett released a special RSPCA cartoon to encourage people to consider taking on a rescue dog and to also help the charity to spread the ‘Adopt Don’t Shop’ message with a special charity edition.

Factory supported the ‘PAWFECT’ partnership by dedicating the first premiering OTL episode ‘Bedtime Barker’ to the RSPCA’s #FindEachOther campaign which has now gained nearly 10k views on YouTube and 17k on the RSPCA Facebook page and Instagram since launching.

The campaign has been extremely well received by doggy lovers across the nation and OTL fans old and new. So far, the OTL YouTube channel has gained 1200 subscribers in just a few weeks and the RSPCA partnership has gained coverage in ATV Today and one of the most popular dog publications in the country, Dogs Monthly.

Looking ahead, Factory has proudly sponsored this year’s Manchester Animation Festival which takes place in November. Factory’s Managing Director, Phil Chalk will be hosting a special ‘in conversation’ event with Rupert Fawcett himself, to chat all about the journey of strip to screen! You can fetch your tickets here.

You can also watch all of the latest Off the Leash episodes here.

It’s time to Head for the Hills

This year, Ramsbottom Festival became Head for the Hills, with a gorgeous re-brand from our partner design agency Instruct Studio, and an incredible line up, bringing Beth Orton, Maximo Park and The Stranglers to headline this year’s event at Ramsbottom Cricket Club.

We couldn’t be happier to head to Bury to meet the team at The Met who organise the festival and hear all about the varied programme of fun, family friendly strands and the creative art performances that sit perfectly next to the incredible headline acts, other huge stars such as the Neville Staple Band and Alexis Taylor (Hot Chip), plus brilliant new music from across the UK and stellar home-grown talent including Dutch Uncles, Larkins and Cassia.

We formulated a multi-layered press and publicity strategy, highlighting every strand of the festival to its own audience. First up was the announcement of the new name, and where better than the BBC 6 Music News on the RadMac afternoon show, where Head for the Hills went down a storm with Bolton born Mark Radcliffe, alongside a fab interview with the inimitable Beth Orton.

Next up we looked to the nationals, folk press, parenting press, what’s on press and the arts press and were proud to see coverage appear in the Independent, Manchester Evening News, the Bury Times, the Bolton News and Creative Tourist to name but a few.

Making the occasion extra special Mancunian poet Tony Walsh, widely known as Longfella, has penned a typically rousing piece celebrating those personal and collective moments that only happen at your favourite festival with your favourite people. Tony will be performing the festival live on the main stage and it promises to bring a tear to the eye… in a good way.

Another one of our hobbies here at Sundae is craft beer so you can imagine our reaction when we found out that local keg fillers Silver Street Brewing Company have come on board to create the festival’s very own personal brew named after the festival with our mega talented friends at Instruct Studio designing the bespoke label.

This is no new partnership, more of a long standing friendship. The Head Brewer at Silver Street, Craig Adams, has been involved in the festival from the very beginning holding a number of different positions along the way; from being a sound engineer looking after the technical side of things to headlining the Big Top with his own band Thugs on Wolves and now supplying the official beer, Craig really is a part of the journey.

Not only is it an awesome idea and a downright great beer, the partnership with a local brewer conveys the community, all inclusive ethos of the festival that we and everybody else is already in love with.

There’s loads of press still to come, festival director David Agnew was on BBC Radio Manchester on Monday (at 2:45pm), we’ve got some artists chatting to the MEN, BBC 6 Music and much much more.

We literally cannot wait to Head for the Hills this week; it has been a pleasure to be involved with and, no doubt, it will be one helluva weekend that will last in the memory for years to come.

(Images: Tierney Gearon / Sebastian Matthes / Andrew Allcock)

Sundae’s Summer Holiday – Britain on Film Coast and Sea

Every now and again a project comes along that really lights up the office and the BFI’s latest ‘Britain on Film’ online collection, Coast and Sea has done just that. With 21 projects and 190 screenings between May and October in some of the most beautiful coastal areas across the UK, working on this has been like a summer holiday.

Unlocking film and TV history for new audiences, ‘Britain on Film’ is a major digitisation project drawn from the BFI National Archive, Regional and National Archives and rights holders from across the UK, revealing new and unseen stories of our lives through the history of film. The BFI Film Audience Networks summer programme of screenings and events has allowed audiences to discover, explore and engage with the UK’s diverse coastline and local stories in their area.

Innovative events like Celluloid Sail; a stunning tall ship, transformed into an outdoor cinema where audiences can climb aboard and explore secret spaces in the bowels of the boat and discover footage about life at sea as light and projection will animate the ship’s sails have made this into a project like no other and allowed us to gain varied features on BBC News and the Irish News amongst others.

Another flagship event comes from STUDIOCANAL; the premiere of a new restoration of Leslie Norman’s classic wartime epic Dunkirk (1958) at Screening on the Beaches on the very beaches of Camber Sands on the South Coast of England where the film was shot later this month. Again, the historical nature of this event allowed us to target different sectors of the press and we have secured coverage in publications such Classic Boat and SAGA.

Scotland played host to another project highlight with the 80th anniversary screening of Michael Powell’s The Edge Of The World at the University of Edinburgh’s remarkable FloWave Ocean Energy Research Facility – a unique circular wave tank.

We have absolutely loved telling people about these amazing events and helping to grow the target audience on a national level but the part of the project that we have particularly enjoyed is working closely with all of the project leads, establishing the communications support that they need and providing them with bespoke resource packages that have enabled them to move forward independently and gain their own regional coverage; it’s been an extremely satisfying experience.

This is project that resonates with us as a team here at Sundae and represents everything we stand for as a company. We all love summer holidays and it’s even better when you get to go on one at work.

Donmar Warehouse Presents: Julius Caesar

Sundae was thrilled to be asked to handle the publicity campaign for Donmar Warehouse’s Julius Caesar. This was the first in the on-screen versions of their phenomenally successful, groundbreaking all-female Shakespeare Trilogy, both directed by Phyllida Lloyd. The film was released in cinemas on 12th July, and had its World Premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, where it was nominated for two awards.

The diverse all-female cast was a unique and important angle for the trilogy, one that we were really keen to emphasise throughout the campaign. The meta element of the play, with the cast assuming the role of prisoners who were acting in the Trilogy, came about as a direct result of the Donmar Warehouse’s association with the remarkable prison charity Clean Break, which aims to rehabilitate female prisoners and women with experience of the criminal justice system through the restorative power of theatre.

The three plays were recorded in October 2016 at the Donmar Warehouse’s pop-up theatre at Kings Cross with Phyllida Lloyd directing. The on screen version was shot  live over two nights, and used separately shot hand-held material to break up the formality of the live camera ‘capture’, and GoPros hidden in the stage or worn by the actors.

The critical reception for the original theatre run gave us a fantastic foundation to build on. We secured a wide range of fantastic film reviews, with 4* reviews from outlets including The Stage, and Screen International.

We delivered a targeted campaign reaching the national film and entertainment press, whilst harnessing the Donmar’s Young + Free  which offered reduced price tickets to under 25s , was carried through to the cinema release, intended to diversify Shakespeare’s audience. The cast was led by our greatest living Shakespearean actors Dame Harriet Walter, with Jade Anouka, Karen Dunbar, Jackie Clune and Jennifer Joseph.

We achieved a great spread of interviews, including a major double page spread interview with Dame Harriet in the Radio Times, leading to print and online pickup in the Guardian, an interview with Phyllida Lloyd on Monocle 24 Radio and a feature with Shiloh Coke for British Blacklist,

A junket at the EIFF gave us an opportunity to really amplify the regional ties to the film, namely through Scottish comedian and actress Karen Dunbar, winning coverage on BBC Radio Scotland and a double page spread in The Sunday Mail.

The first phase of the campaign was a huge success, with 64 pieces of coverage achieving a total potential reach of over 460 million.

(Images: Julius Caesar by Helen Maybanks)

Emancipation of Expressionism: an 11-minute hip-hop dance from Boy Blue Entertainment

We are mega excited to be working on Emancipation of Expressionism, an 11-minute hip-hop dance, from Boy Blue Entertainment, that is being captured on film by, the one and only, Danny Boyle in a staged performance at London’s Barbican Theatre.

The dance, choreographed by Kenrick Sandy with music composed by BBE co-founder and fellow artistic director, Michael Asante, is performed by a diverse 17-strong company led by Kenrick.

Team Sundae was lucky enough to be on set, at the Barbican, as the performance was captured and directed by Danny Boyle and what an amazing experience it was; popping, locking, waacking, breaking, hip-hop and krumping, all specialist hip-hop and street dance styles we witnessed first hand through Kenrick’s genius choreography.

We couldn’t help but feed off  the infectious energy of the work and it was a completely uplifting experience. The emotion generated by the dancers was quite incredible and the performance levels were like nothing we’ve ever seen up close and personal.

The taste of the production that we got from our time on set will stay with us for some time and we can’t wait to see the final capture. This journey is one that we are hugely honoured to be invited on and it’s already causing a stir with coverage in The Times, the Evening Standard and British Blacklist for the project announcement.

Watch this space for the next stage.

Tom x

(Emancipation of Expressionism by Boy Blue Entertainment image credit: Nicole Guarino)