Local animator Jarrod Prince has been recognised by the Best Film Awards, winning the GOLDEN ANIMA: Micro Short Film (Under 5 Mins) for his 2023 animated short film, The Wizard’s Hat.
The fantasy short film about a young, exhaustingly optimistic wizard’s hat named Harriet was released in February last year via Nouns Stories, an open-source brand that raises funds by selling one NFT (non-fungible tokens) per day at auction where 100 per cent of the proceeds are used to support a wide range of products.
“All of my animation friends really liked it. It was really nice to get their praise, for sure,” Mr Prince told the Barrier Truth.
“I didn’t put any less energy into it than what I would have my own personal art which that’s what I’m proud about because I wanted to make something that was a nod to vintage Disney stuff and it was really fun to do that. I think my peers got that out of it as well which is cool.
“I think some of the NFT backlash has dropped off a fair bit so that’s good. When we finished it I was worried about the NFT attachment to it so it’s nice to see it doing well in film festivals and stuff because it’s just a bit of validation which is nice, despite the NFTs.”
Mr Prince has entered The Wizard’s Hat into various other festivals since its launch and hopes to take that same momentum into 2024 while also already working on his next short film, Olive Place.
“I uploaded The Wizard’s Hat onto this site that allows you to apply to different competitions, and it’ll just inform you about all the ones that are popping up. I’ve applied for about 20 of them and fingers crossed I get as many of them as possible,” he said.
“It got into Lift Off Film Festival in Los Angeles, which was pretty cool – that was an online thing. It recently screened in a little private film festival in Tasmania [and] we got asked to be in a film festival (Poco Film Fest) this year in Ballarat.
“I’ve almost finished my next short film and that one’s completely independently funded and I’m hoping that makes it into Annecy, Chitose in Japan, and Pictoplasma in Berlin. I would like to get to those three, but I’ve got to have that finished before the end of February before I can apply to those things.”
To watch The Wizard’s Hat, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRktvk_uB8A.
