If Hothouse were a person, it would be having its quarter life crisis right about now, wrestling with self-doubt and wondering where all its friends are. Fortunately, it is not a person. But inside this incubator – now one quarter through its cycle – are 6 budding filmmakers, each tackling their own demons (be they remote access, silicone cooking, virtual graffiti, impatient FedEX guys, heckling tomatoes or skin shortages).

Read about it from the filmmakers themselves on our production blog at nfb.ca/hothouseblog.

We are thrilled to announce this year’s 6 filmmakers, selected out of more than 140 applications:

Aimée Drimmelen (Qu’appelle Valley, Saskatchewan)
Andrew Hicks (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
Candace Couse (Calgary, Alberta)
Eva Cvijanovic (Montreal, Quebec)
Paula Gillgannon (Montreal, Quebec)
Tabitha Fisher (Toronto, Ontario)

Thanks to the talented composers responsible for the music demos:

Eric Sen aka Kid Koala (tracks 1 & 8 )
Kyle Bennett, Austin Milne, and Devon Welsh aka Pop Winds (tracks 2 & 10)
Darren Fung (tracks 3 & 5)
Rebecca Foon (tracks 4 & 7)
Carrie Haber (tracks 6 & 9)

And introducing the Mentoring Director for Hothouse 7, animator, composer and sound designer Luigi Allemano.

And we’re off!

Submissions for Hothouse 7 are now closed with a final tally of 146 applications. Thanks to everyone who took the time to share their stories and ideas with us.
Applicants will be notified by the end of the week. Good luck.

The Hothouse 7 call for submissions is now officially open! See details here.

And it will be upon us faster than ever before! Hothouse 7 will take place March 14 – June 03, 2011. The call for submissions detailing this year’s parameters will be announced in early February. Though the basics remain the same (1-minute animated film produced in 12 weeks), there will be one or two interesting new twists this year which will impact your proposal (hint: prepare to HEAR all about it in CYBERSPACE. Can’t say more).

We will not accept proposals until the submission is officially open, but given the exceptionally tight timeline we wanted to give you some advance notice and hopefully get the early trickles of creative juices flowing.

Note: Hothouse is open only to Canadian Citizens and Permanent Residents.

Hothouse 6 is a wrap and, my, what strange fruit it has born! And with only 3 months from idea to release, it was over before you could say  ’stereoscopic three dee’. The filmmakers brought a tidal wave of energy, creativity and professionalism to their work and surprised everyone with their quick grasp of 3D filmmaking techniques. Ranging from stop motion to digital drawings to CGI and SANDDE™ animation, each of the films takes a unique approach to 3D storytelling, not to mention the very-short format (1min), and we can’t wait to unveil them to you. The strategy for distribution is now the burning question and we are considering all the options (based on the holy trinity of quality, access and cost). As soon as there is any news we will let you know. In the meantime remember that the blogs this year were posted not here but on the central NFB Blog; be sure to check out posts from the filmmakers and recent interviews by web writer Carolyne Weldon.

After a record-breaking number of submissions and several days of enthusiastic review and heated debate, we have our “Hothouse Six”, all of whom will be producing their first ever auteur stereoscopic 3D film over a period of 12 intense weeks in the NFB’s Animation Studio in Montreal. They are:

Kiarra Albina, Calgary/Montreal
Fred Casia, Montreal
Zane Kozak, Toronto
Greg Labute, Montreal
Megan Turnbull, Winnipeg
Marie Valade, Montreal

We pulled in a whopping 186 proposals from across the country, a 124% increase over last year! As always, the bulk of proposals came from Montreal or its suburbs. It’s clearly easier to think about 12 weeks in Montreal if relocating from somewhere else isn’t a factor. Ontario and Alberta had the next largest bunch of submissions, but happily, we got a hefty handful from Newfoundland this year – maybe a result of the recent CBC podcast. We probably shouldn’t have been surprised, but a slight majority of proposals this year came from men, maybe because of the somewhat techy, geeky stereoscopic 3d emphasis. Or maybe the stars aligned in an XY pattern instead of XX. Who knows. We don’t do sociological analyses of the submissions; we just read them the way we read every proposal that comes to the NFB.

Congratulations to the six filmmakers who will be joining us – and mentoring director Ann Marie Fleming from Vancouver – for twelve amazing, terrifying and hopefully gratifying weeks of animated stereoscopic 3d creation. Wish them luck; they’ll sure need it!

The Hothouse 6 submission deadline is fast approaching. Make sure your proposal reaches us by 5pm next Friday Feb 19. And remember to read the submission information very carefully. All you need to know is in there

Thanks to everyone who pointed out the broken Watch Films link. This should all be working now. Some of the links to last year’s podcasts are still buggy but we’re working on this right now.

And for all of you who are still hungry for more insight about what this project is all about and why we do it, check out this  recent interview with Hothouse producer and co-inventor Michael Fukushima with CBC Newfoundland.

http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/nlwamgaloot_20100203_26888.mp3

Tell it in a minute. Do it in 3 months. Make it Stereoscopic 3D.

After a lot of hard work to put the pieces in place, we are thrilled to announce that Hothouse 6 is open for submissions.

A new dimension this year — and a giant experiment — Hothouse 6 will be produced in stereoscopic 3D!

The theme is “Inside Out“. Deadline to submit is February 19. See full submission details here.

Vous avez raté la première de la Journée mondiale du cinéma d’animation la semaine passée, et vous vous en mordez les doigts? Consolez-vous en visionnant le mini-doc Inside the Hothouse 4 qui vous amènera dans les coulisses de la toute dernière édition du Hothouse.