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- The Smeds and the Smoos was nominated at the International Emmy Awards.
- The film has already won the Audience Award at the New York International Children's Film Festival, and the Rockie for Children's Animation at BANFF.
- The film was adapted from Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler's bestselling children's book.
- For more lifestyle news, go to the News24 Life front page.
The animation film, The Smeds and the Smoos, is the gift that keeps giving to its creators, who are among the nominations at the International Emmy Awards ceremony in New York City, which will be held on Monday.
Produced by Magic Light Pictures, the film is nominated for Best Kids' Animation, up against the likes of Moominvalley.
It's co-directed by South Africans Daniel Snaddon and Samantha Cutler, who worked together on the Bafta-winning The Snail and the Whale.
READ MORE |'Receiving the recognition they deserve': The rise and rise of African animation
South African Julia Smuts Louw (Snaddon), who co-wrote Aau's Song for Star Wars: Visions Volume II, adapted it from writer Julia Donaldson and illustrator Axel Scheffler's bestselling children's book.
The film, now streaming on Showmax, is based on the book partly inspired by Brexit and dedicated to all the children of Europe.
Chatting to News24, married couple Daniel and Julia Snaddon shared their excitement about seeing their work garner so much recognition.
"It's extraordinary for me. I've seen Dan working on a few of these films now, and they're always very highly awarded, but I've always been cheering from the crowd
“This is the first one I've been involved with. So I’m chuffed to see it doing so well," said screenwriter Julia Snaddon.
"The film is a special one for me on several different fronts. But I'm thrilled that the team we made it with was a mixture of some of our old comrades from Triggerfish Animation, who have since moved on from Triggerfish. But most of the team was new. So it was almost like being in a new little business with many new talents. And a lot of that time, it's very young and, hopefully, the awards will be a wonderful starting point for some of their careers.
''It's a vast advantage that we're making adaptations of these trendy books to know we have an excellent starting point with Julia Donaldson and illustrator Axel Scheffler's book. We intended to tell a story we would want to see.
"All of us who worked on the film, for the most part, are real fans of animation and family viewing. So we were thinking about what we like to see and then also thinking about a family watching something together, as well," said director Daniel Snaddon.
Julia said screenwriting for this book was challenging for a couple of reasons.
"The one is that it's a switch in perspective halfway through the book from the youngsters who are kind of Romeo and Juliet figures in the story to their grandparents, who are searching for them.”
She said they knew it would be tricky to get it right, so they had to make sure they balanced perspectives of the Smeds and Smoos, something she said was essential to Julia Donaldson and the producers because the book represents a comment on Brexit.
She said:
The star-studded voice cast of the 2022 film includes narration by Sally Hawkins, Adjoa Ando, Rob Brydon, Meera Syal, Bill Baile, Daniel Ezra and Ashna Rabheru.
The Smeds and the Smoos have already won several prominent awards: the Audience Award at the New York International Children's Film Festival, the Rockie for Children's Animation at BANFF, and the NHK Japan Prize for Best Preschool Media.
"I'd say if you look at it from one lens, it is an advantage that we love the source material, but in another sense, it's a challenge because people feel invested, and they feel ownership over those books that they've already read so many times to their kids, they've got their idea of how the story should go. One of the big tricks and challenges is to expand it without making it seem like it's being developed, so it's a short story that takes about seven minutes to read, and we have to turn that into a 25-minute special.
"So you have to add quite a lot to create the kind of sort of three-act structure that you would see in something you're watching on TV. But if it's done well, it should feel invisible, like it shouldn't feel like the adaptation has added anything,'' added Julia.
"So with production and past ones, you know you've gotten it right when the tweeps or X' say it was so true to the book, or say 'they brought it to light in the way they were so true to the book, and then you're like, oh, they didn't notice we've added so much, but it was a satisfying experience for them," said Julia.
A rewarding experience
The creatives said working together was a rewarding experience.
“We had quite a similar vision for how we saw the project panning out and we were able to polish the best ideas together and discard the ideas that weren't working, and there was never anything big that we disagreed on,” said Julia.
"But, generally, we were on the same page as to what was important try and keep.
"It was an excellent and exciting test for the marriage. We've worked together when we were in the ad industry: I've been a client and a service provider for Dan and vice versa, but this is our first time working on a film together. It went pretty well, so hopefully, we'll do it again at some stage."
The film will join the likes of other South African projects that are also in the running.
Two Sides in the Best Sports Documentary category. The SuperSport series explores the British Lions and Springbok rugby tour, which saved SA Rugby from financial ruin during the 2021 Covid-19 pandemic lockdown.
The Mandela Project is nominated in the Best Short-Form Series category for the awards; Takalani Sesame is the Best Kids Factual nominee; and The Dreamer – Becoming Karen Blixen, which is produced in collaboration with South Africa's Stage 5 Films.
READ MORE | From rugby to Nelson Mandela's legacy: See the local productions up for a 2023 International Emmy
