Dave Alex Riddett: Director of Photography

Dave-Alex Riddett is a director of photography at Aardman Animations. Whilst his focus was in stop motion animation, he also talked about all of the work he had done prior to Aardman and it was really interesting to see all of the different kinds of stuff he had dabbled in. His focus wasn't particularly in animation, but more film. however, I still learnt a lot from him in terms of camera direction and how to think dynamically and creatively when thinking of shot framing within my own work.

During the talk Dave spoke about how we should't be afraid to experiment, because even if something turns out worse than we anticipated, remember you 'can't polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter'. Putting the fact that this was an extremely funny comment aside, it was nice to hear that he himself had made plenty of mistakes throughout his career, but he has still ended up on top. This is something that I struggle with quite a bit, as I can become quite fixated on making things look perfect, which can often lead to me focusing more on the visuals over everything else, ultimately leading to my work not being very strong in some of the more important areas. Hearing that Dave himself has done his fair share of experimenting and made numerous mistakes has made me realise that it's okay for something not to work and that it doesn't mean it's a failed attempt, but rather it is a learning experience and it is something that develop me as an animator.

On a different note, it was really interesting to see the inventive solutions that Dave had come up with during his career to get over particular hurdles during production. For instance, in Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers Dave showed us some bend the scenes footage of how they had set up the camera to track the characters, back when camera rigs and cameras were huge things that reduced accessibility to sets and characters. Lighting was also touched upon, it is important to light a set correctly and think about all the subtle details, like how light would react when shining through a window and so on. The right camera placement and the right lighting can help to create a much more dynamic and interesting shot.

I feel that there were definitely some helpful tips that I took way from Dave's talk that I will be able to apply to all of my future work and I really enjoyed hearing what he had to say.