Marta Ribeiro, Tiago Pimenta, Laura Pires and Alice Afonso sowed, with “A Semente que Palpita”, the beginning of their paths in animation cinema. The four young students of the University of Algarve, now graduated in Animated Image, were the great award winnersSophia Student" in the category of Best Animation Short Film, whose results were announced on the 5th of March.
«It is very gratifying to have our work recognized. We made this happen and, getting to this point, having an academy recognize our work, is very good and is a big boost for us», confessed Marta Ribeiro to the Sul Informação.
But, both for the 23-year-old, as for Tiago Pimenta, 22, «the most important thing is not the prizes», but the quality of the work they develop.
“A Semente que Palpita”, a 4-minute short film that tells the story of a character who falls in love with the moon, is an example of just that, they believe.
The work began to be developed within the scope of the Curricular Internship that the four students of the University of Algarve had to complete in order to complete the course. It all started with a pitch, presented to Glue, an international production cooperative specializing in bringing handcrafted film content to life, which turned out to be the mentor of young people in this period.
For two months, they all lived together in a house in Porto, and it was there that they developed most of the initial work for the short film. The internship was monitored online by the Cola producer, who mentored the project.
«It was a very good experience, because we were all present and it was much easier to pass the work on to everyone», explains Tiago Pimenta.
However, two months were not enough for the young people to finish the work they wanted and, even after the internship ended, they continued to work to achieve the final product with which they competed for the Sophia Student awards.
«It's a four-minute job, but it takes months and months to complete. During the internship, what we developed the most was pre-production and a little bit of production, the rest came later», says Marta Ribeiro, referring that Cola made itself available to continue helping them, even financing the film's sound.
Despite not having finished the work with the prizes in sight, the young woman admits that the idea was to compete for festivals.
«The purpose of competing is also to be able to share our work. We are doing a project for months and then, at the end, being able to show people what we have been doing is a really good feeling. In animation, production is painful because there are many hours of work, always closed in the same place, and when we go out and show what we've done, it's really good», continues Marta.
Now, with the first prize in hand, the UAlg alumni aim to continue working in animation cinema, joining other teams and projects.
«We want to be professionals in the industry and, for that, we have to have experience and know what a studio environment is. Learning to work with other people and on other projects is very important, because the course only gave us the foundations, now we are going to start our path», he says.
Asked about what they feel about the opening of the public to this type of production, Marta and Tiago consider that «there is more and more interest»: a path that also opened with the nomination of João González for the Oscars, they say.
«There is still a lot of the idea that animation is only for one type of audience, but animation is for everyone and that is also what we want to show with our work. Everyone has their own perspective and interpretation of what they see on the screen», concludes Marta.
After winning the “Sophia Student” award, the young people are now awaiting nominations for the final phase of the Sophia Awards, which will take place in Lisbon.
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