Fantasy/Animation

Fantasy/Animation
Fantasy/Animation

Christopher Holliday is Senior Lecturer in Liberal Arts and Visual Cultures Education at King’s College London (UK). Alexander Sergeant is a Lecturer in Digital Media Production at the University of Westminster (UK), specialising in the history and theory of fantasy cinema. Each episode, they look in detail at a film or television show, taking listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation.

  1. 5 DAYS AGO

    Footnote #58 - Wonder

    In this latest Fantasy/Animation Footnote, Chris and Alex wonder about wonder - a term that emphatically traverses both fantasy and animation as fields of study, yet with alternate meanings and connotations related to everything from mid-1990s cultures of special effects appreciation to fantasy’s historical links to the so-called “wonder film.” Topics include the “wonder years” of special effects production and reception during the 1990s via what Michele Pierson calls a growing “connoisseurship” of effects technologies; histories of the effects-laden ‘wonder film’ as an industrial category and links to the ‘wonder tale’; wonder itself as both the aestheticization of thought and/or thought induced by aesthetics; wonder’s role in fantasy scholarship to describe distinctions between fantasy, horror, and science-fiction; and more recent turns towards expanded animation and the spectatorship and ‘siting’ of wonder in the digital age. **Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo** **As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

    14 min

  2. FEB 10

    ABBA Voyage (2022-) (with Ian Comley)

    For this brand new podcast episode, Chris and Alex are delighted to discuss the spectacle and staging of virtual holograms with Ian Comley, VFX Supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic and part of the creative team that brought the ABBA Voyage (2022-) musical experience to life. Over three years in the making, ABBA Voyage uses computer-generated imagery to (re)imagine the long-retired Swedish group for 21st century audiences. The show combines sophisticated de-aging techniques to craft the illusion of the band’s 1979 selves, combined with re-recorded vocals and a contemporary light show. Topics include the fluctuating role of nostalgia in the ‘retro’ creation of ABBA’s virtual ‘abbatars’ and the speculative aesthetic of contemporary musical concerts; the ethics of virtual holography when combined with digitally-mediated posthumous performance; the myth of the photographic ‘close-up’ rendered in computer graphics; questions of likeness, liveness, and duration in the construction of an immersive concert; and the complex status of ABBA Voyage as a feature-length animation that negotiates the musical star as a computerised base asset. **Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo** **As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

    1h 4m

  3. FEB 3

    Footnote #57 - Disney's Nine Old Men

    The Fantasy/Animation Footnotes continue with this look at Disney authorship and the industry of animation via a turn to the celebrated Nine Old Men, a core group of directors and artists involved with the consolidated of the Disney aesthetic and a key component of its hyper-realist visual style. Listen as Chris maps some of the Nine Old Men’s key personnel and their contribution to the refinement of animation’s illusion of life credentials; questions of labour and the historical celebration of cel-animation’s best practice; the highly gendered image of technological development and occlusion of women from Disney’s production hierarchies; and the ongoing mythology that surrounds the Nine Old Men as masters of the medium. **Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo** **As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

    13 min

  4. JAN 27

    Live @ Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2024

    Episode 150 is another Fantasy/Animation podcast special, this time recorded live at the recent Annecy International Animation Film Festival back in June 2024, where Chris was invited to speak on a panel as part of the Annecy International Animation Film Market (MIFA). Created in 1960, Annecy is one of the most popular and prestigious events in the animation calendar, and stands today as an annual celebration of all things animation, from features and shorts to animated television, advertising, and student films. MIFA is the more industry-leaning arm of the festival, and a place where attendees can meet exhibitors, buyers, and investors, and make contact and discuss animation projects and productions with industry professionals. This episode features a recording of the Animation Without Borders: Navigating the Imperative of Global Appeal panel, moderated by Juliette Rogasik (founder and creative director of Story Critters) and featuring both Sarah Cox (Chief Creative Director at Aardman) and Peilin Chou (Producer at Netflix Animation). Listen as the panel offer their own perspectives on the cross-cultural challenges and opportunities faced by animation productions in reaching global audiences, and what it means to preserve cultural specificity and authenticity in light of increasing internationalisation. **Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo** **As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

    1h 19m

  5. JAN 20

    Footnote #56 - Prequels

    Inspired by the recent podcast episode discussing movie musical Wicked (John M. Chu, 2024), the first Fantasy/Animation Footnote of 2025 takes on the politics of film prequels, and how these curious entries into film series and the reflexive gestures that it often makes to earlier moments in a broader narrative offer up a way of understanding processes and theories of adaptation. Topics for this episode include the prequel’s relationship to sequels, midquels, and remakes, and its broader fascination with chronology, history, and origin; the commercial value of prequels and the threat of temporality; cultural transference and how such adaptations highlight differences between media products; and the prequel’s status as an evolving industrial category as much as a device used to tell a story. **Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo** **As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

    13 min

  6. JAN 13

    Wicked (2024)

    The Fantasy/Animation podcast is back after the festive break with Episode 149, and as a belated New Year treat offers up a closer look at a film still playing at cinemas across the globe - the movie musical Wicked (John M. Chu, 2024), a big-screen adaptation of Stephen Schwartz’s 2003 theatre production that was itself based on Gregory Maguire’s earlier 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. For this first instalment of 2025, Chris and Alex tackle the links between this first part of the Wicked story and the mythology of both L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel and celebrated 1939 Hollywood adaptation, and what it is about the broader world of Oz that lends itself so well to large-scale visual spectacle; the ‘obvious’ register of Wicked’s racial politics and narrative equivalences between greenness and otherness; Cynthia Erivo (Elphaba), Ariana Grande (Glinda), and gestures that the film makes to white privilege; the possibilities for queerness and the tensions with Hollywood’s pervasive heteronormativity; stylistic mobility, long takes, and the reflexivity of a virtual camera that defies cinematic gravity; and the magic by which Wicked creates its impossible spaces and how this feeds into a broader discourse of fantasy characters that are “done accepting limits.” **Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo** **As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

    1h 13m

  7. 12/16/2024

    The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - Part 2 (with Nathalie Dupont)

    Episode 148 concludes Fantasy/Animation’s two-part special focusing on C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia book series with this examination of the 2005 big-screen adaptation The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Andrew Adamson, 2005), with special guest Dr Nathalie Dupont. Nathalie is Associate Professor in American Studies at the Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale (ULCO) in France, and is the author of Between Hollywood and Godlywood: The Case of Walden Media (Peter Lang, 2015), which focuses on the history of Walden Media - a unique American company financed by a conservative Christian and a producer of The Chronicles of Narnia big screen franchise. Topics in this instalment include the history of Walden Media and industrial definitions of ‘Godlywood’; the importance of Narnia’s wartime context and the influence of its evacuation narrative on the other-wordly drama of its hide-and-seek fantasy; links between Andrew Adamson’s adaptation and the post-Harry Potter and post-Lord of the Rings climate of contemporary Hollywood; and Narnia’s situating of children within the film’s complex set of relationships, arguments, and tensions.

    1h 11m

  8. 12/09/2024

    Footnote #55 - Lewis' In Defence of the Fairytale (with Terry Lindvall)

    Fantasy/Animation welcomes back special guest Professor Terry Lindvall to the podcast to continue the discussion of C.S. Lewis, this time with a focus on Lewis’ own work on fairy stories and the value the writer places on the importance of the ‘unexpected’ in fairytales as a mode of narration. Topics include Lewis’ professional history and views on the crafting of child curiosity within the literary imagination; how Lewis’ own students were directed to bring back enchantment via side stories and personal images of haunting; Lewis’ use of female characters, storytelling, and questions of empowerment; distinctions in worldbuilding and world creation between Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien; and the qualities that make Lewis such a seminal writer of popular fantasy. **Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo** **As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

    13 min
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4
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

Christopher Holliday is Senior Lecturer in Liberal Arts and Visual Cultures Education at King’s College London (UK). Alexander Sergeant is a Lecturer in Digital Media Production at the University of Westminster (UK), specialising in the history and theory of fantasy cinema. Each episode, they look in detail at a film or television show, taking listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation.

Information

  • Creator
    Fantasy/Animation
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2025
  • Episodes
    220
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2018 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Fantasy/Animation

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