The Itch of the Golden Nit: Tate Movie Project

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Throughout her time lecturing she also managed to maintain her career as a commercial director in animation; creating MTV idents and music promos with John Parry, before joining Picasso Pictures in 1994. Here, she began directing huge campaigns for Boots No7 and Avaya Communications, as well as commercials for big name brands such as Sanatogen and Virgin Megastores. David Walliams, Miranda Hart, Catherine Tate and Rik Mayall will lead the stellar cast of The Tate Movie Project’s film, The Itch of the Golden Nit, voicing the characters devised by children. The Tate Movie Project is the first of its kind – an animation made by and for children. The half hour animation has been created from thousands of drawings, sound effects and story ideas by children from across the UK . Ha – well surprisingly sometimes I think I get more creative freedom in commercial projects than with the films. You are never entirely free if someone is funding you, but certainly with Tate all the direction came from the kids not from the top- whereas when we made 8 minutes idle we had 4 or 5 executive producers to convince at every stage. With TV commercials I learnt a long time ago that its really not about ‘creative freedom’– you are helping your client sell a product and you can offer your best advice to help them create a fantastic and memorable commercial – if you expect to have total creative freedom you will always be disappointed. Anyway I like to have something to rail against.

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.Aided by his shouty older sister Beryl, who has been shrunk to the size of a doll by one of Stella’s electric bubbles, Beanie sets out on a crazy adventure to rescue his parents and save the universe. But this is no ordinary nit. The Golden Nit is the battery that powers the sun and if Beanie doesn’t get it home by sunset the sun will die and the universe is doomed. Burton admiited that with so many children involved it could have been a recipe for disaster. "I was quite nervous at the outset that we might end up with a soup of disparate parts – but that, I think, is where the genius of Aardman comes in."

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? The ideas, drawings and sounds were uploaded by individuals and also the huge tour of workshops that toured the country so we were literally swamped by brilliance. The whole complex project was held together by the amazingly organised Helen Argo ( producer) and Heather Wright ( exec producer). 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 tens of thousands of 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 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. Children did everything from inventing brand new superhero gadgets to spending a whole afternoon drawing planks for the pirate ship. The Tate Movie Project has given thousands of children across the UK the opportunity to bring their creativity and imagination to life. At CBBC we aim to produce entertaining and engaging programmes for children, which is exactly what this project is about and I am thrilled that we have been able to support it.” Damian Kavanagh, Controller of CBBC As it was lots to do and remember we were glad we practised before everyone arrived. We did this by interviewing some of the facilitators who had run the Tate workshops.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. Sarah Cox, the film’s director, recognised children’s ability to work with animation some time ago. After studying for an animation degree at Liverpool, she began working with the community film collective ‘Open Eye’, running animation workshops with children in deprived areas of Liverpool. She then moved on to the Royal College of Art and, a year after graduating, completed the film 3 Ways to Go, which was commissioned as part of the ANIMATE! Scheme and won Best Film under 10 Minutes at the British Animation Awards. 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? You walk into a little booth, they say 'read these words', you read the words and then they put the animation to it" Dom said.

We caught up with Sarah to learn a bit more her and her role in Arthur Cox, as well as discover more about the process of working with children to create the fantastic film, The Itch of the Golden Nit. Interview Then, fortunately, we were told we were allowed to sneak into the cinema - we sat down with all the special guests just as it was about to start. It was great to be some of the first people to see it. 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. The drawings submitted went through a similar process and every week myself and Emma Lazenby (Art Director) would feature a selection of drawings and sounds in a Voting Gallery and the kids would vote on their favorites – every vote winner HAD to go in the film. The same with the sounds submitted and much of the dialogue that came in went straight into the film completely unchanged. 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.

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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.