Conversations with filmmakers selected to the festival.
Making commercial content isn't always easy but when it came to working on Katy Perry's "Harleys in Hawai’i," directors Hoku Uchiyama and Adam Bolt really felt like they were living the dream.
We spoke with the creative team about working for hire, the creative process, and the challenges of making a music video that was fun, beautiful, and culturally sensitive.
SPEAKERS
Hoku Uchiyama
Director, Writer
Cannes Young Director Award winner Hoku Uchiyama is a lover of fantasy films, horror and animation. His directing work has garnered tens of millions of online views and has been screened in festivals in the US, Europe and Asia. The work has also been featured at the LA County Museum of Art and in a series produced by the Modern Art museum Centre Pompidou of Paris.
Hoku broke ground with his award-winning music video for Jason Webley and Amanda Palmer’s “Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn?” He and his sometimes directing partner, Adam Bolt, have made a name crafting high energy, fun, technical commercials under the moniker “Hoku & Adam.” Their clients include Starbucks, Google, Lenovo and FedEx. They’ve also created award-winning spots for National Geographic, Wilkinson Sword (by animating facial hair), and YouTube (using 18 styles of animation in one film).
Their 2020 music video for Katy Perry’s “Harleys in Hawai’i” won the Webby People’s Voice Award for Best Music Video. Hoku also directed the 2014 documentary Upaj: Improvise which was broadcast nationally in the US on PBS World.
Currently, he’s developing Third Floor; a horror series, The Good Sister; a horror-fantasy feature, and Vicarious; a sci-fi feature.
Website // Twitter // Instagram
Adam Bolt
Director, Writer
dam Bolt discovered as a little kid that drawing a sequence of images in a notepad made magical moving pictures. Around the same time, he probably caught a monster movie on TV that he shouldn’t have, and was never the same.
Now he splits his time between making huggable animated content seen by millions (for clients as varied as National Geographic, Starbucks, and Google), and heinous horrible horror films that have been featured at festivals across the globe.
He often collaborates with Hoku Uchiyama as part of the team called “Hoku & Adam” under Partizan.
He’s currently developing a number of feature projects with Vanishing Angle, including A Place in the Dark (a haunted house horror/thriller), and Hivemind (a near-future sci-fi/horror).
MODERATOR
Marina Antunes
Festival Director, Film Critic, Podcaster // Spark CG Society
Marina joined the Spark Computer Graphics Society as Festival Director in 2014. Throughout her tenure, the festival has grown into Western Canada’s premier animation festival, featuring a number of specialty programming including the “Made in Canada” program celebrating Canadian creators, “Mother of a Medium” featuring works from female filmmakers, and “Spotlight on France” which celebrates the best of French animation. In 2019, the SPARK ANIMATION FESTIVAL became Academy Award ® accredited, the only festival in British Columbia to hold that distinction.
Marina is also a writer and podcaster with over 15 years of experience, first on a personal blog followed by a decade-long tenure on the now-retired Row Three. In 2008 she joined the writing staff at Quiet Earth, becoming Editor-In-Chief in 2014, a role she still holds. Over the years, she has also produced and hosted a number of podcasts including Before the Dawn, a long-running podcast on the Twilight franchise, Girls on Pop, a podcast on film and popular entertainment from women’s perspective and After the Credits, a bi-monthly film podcast with nearly 300 episodes.
Marina is a member of the Online Film Critics Society, Alliance of Women Film Journalists, and the Visual Effects Society is the President of the Vancouver SIGGRAPH chapter, and has served on juries for several film festivals including the DOXA, St. Louis International Film Festival, and the Whistler Film Festival.
Website // Twitter // Instagram // LinkedIn
Conversations with filmmakers selected to the festival.
Making commercial content isn't always easy but when it came to working on Katy Perry's "Harleys in Hawai’i," directors Hoku Uchiyama and Adam Bolt really felt like they were living the dream.
We spoke with the creative team about working for hire, the creative process, and the challenges of making a music video that was fun, beautiful, and culturally sensitive.
SPEAKERS
Hoku Uchiyama
Director, Writer
Cannes Young Director Award winner Hoku Uchiyama is a lover of fantasy films, horror and animation. His directing work has garnered tens of millions of online views and has been screened in festivals in the US, Europe and Asia. The work has also been featured at the LA County Museum of Art and in a series produced by the Modern Art museum Centre Pompidou of Paris.
Hoku broke ground with his award-winning music video for Jason Webley and Amanda Palmer’s “Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn?” He and his sometimes directing partner, Adam Bolt, have made a name crafting high energy, fun, technical commercials under the moniker “Hoku & Adam.” Their clients include Starbucks, Google, Lenovo and FedEx. They’ve also created award-winning spots for National Geographic, Wilkinson Sword (by animating facial hair), and YouTube (using 18 styles of animation in one film).
Their 2020 music video for Katy Perry’s “Harleys in Hawai’i” won the Webby People’s Voice Award for Best Music Video. Hoku also directed the 2014 documentary Upaj: Improvise which was broadcast nationally in the US on PBS World.
Currently, he’s developing Third Floor; a horror series, The Good Sister; a horror-fantasy feature, and Vicarious; a sci-fi feature.
Website // Twitter // Instagram
Adam Bolt
Director, Writer
dam Bolt discovered as a little kid that drawing a sequence of images in a notepad made magical moving pictures. Around the same time, he probably caught a monster movie on TV that he shouldn’t have, and was never the same.
Now he splits his time between making huggable animated content seen by millions (for clients as varied as National Geographic, Starbucks, and Google), and heinous horrible horror films that have been featured at festivals across the globe.
He often collaborates with Hoku Uchiyama as part of the team called “Hoku & Adam” under Partizan.
He’s currently developing a number of feature projects with Vanishing Angle, including A Place in the Dark (a haunted house horror/thriller), and Hivemind (a near-future sci-fi/horror).
MODERATOR
Marina Antunes
Festival Director, Film Critic, Podcaster // Spark CG Society
Marina joined the Spark Computer Graphics Society as Festival Director in 2014. Throughout her tenure, the festival has grown into Western Canada’s premier animation festival, featuring a number of specialty programming including the “Made in Canada” program celebrating Canadian creators, “Mother of a Medium” featuring works from female filmmakers, and “Spotlight on France” which celebrates the best of French animation. In 2019, the SPARK ANIMATION FESTIVAL became Academy Award ® accredited, the only festival in British Columbia to hold that distinction.
Marina is also a writer and podcaster with over 15 years of experience, first on a personal blog followed by a decade-long tenure on the now-retired Row Three. In 2008 she joined the writing staff at Quiet Earth, becoming Editor-In-Chief in 2014, a role she still holds. Over the years, she has also produced and hosted a number of podcasts including Before the Dawn, a long-running podcast on the Twilight franchise, Girls on Pop, a podcast on film and popular entertainment from women’s perspective and After the Credits, a bi-monthly film podcast with nearly 300 episodes.
Marina is a member of the Online Film Critics Society, Alliance of Women Film Journalists, and the Visual Effects Society is the President of the Vancouver SIGGRAPH chapter, and has served on juries for several film festivals including the DOXA, St. Louis International Film Festival, and the Whistler Film Festival.
Website // Twitter // Instagram // LinkedIn
