Hello I'm Felix...
I'm a filmmaker hailing from the North-East coast of Ireland, with a speciality in modelmaking and stop motion animation.
I’ve been making films on and off since I was about 9 years old, when I was given a small digital camcorder for Christmas, I was shown how to shoot rudimental stop motion animation with it (1 frame every 3 seconds or so) and I became instantly hooked on making my own films!
Quite a few things have changed since then but my passion is still there, only now I have the knowledge and skills to explore the worlds in my head in ways 9 year old me only could have dreamed of.
When I left secondary school at 16, I decided to finally try to turn my hobby into a future for myself and went and studied "Film & TV" at the Belfast Metropolitan college. I learnt how to edit, shoot, write scripts and so much more, but the most important thing it inadvertently taught me was to always try and push the envelope in regards of what can be achieved within the parameters of a project, and not just settling with what is expected, if I felt I could rase the bar.
One of our final modules was an animation project and having had prior experience, I was eager to push myself to take the opportunity to not only create an ambitious film with my team but to also help, to the best of my ability, my other classmates create their visions. We had one week to fabricate, shoot and edit the film, but by the end we had a complete film. It was by no means a masterpiece but it ended up being nominated for a Northern Irish RTS award and was featured in a couple of local festivals, which was mind-blowing to me at the time.
Following Belfast Met I took a year off whilst I worked out my next move, I went to America to work as the media coordinator for a summer camp in New Jersey for 3 months and then explored the east coast of the states for another month before returning home to the emerald Isle. I had never really considered university, but after ruminating on the idea for a while I eventually decided to apply for the Bristol school of Animation at UWE, and It was probably the best decision I've made so far in my life.
University caused me to fall back in love with stop motion in a major way, and also allowed me to experiment with a variety of different forms of filmmaking, such as CGI, 2D, cameraless filmmaking on 16mm stock as well as regular shooting with super8 and 16mm motion picture film. It also surrounded me with likeminded individuals that shared my passion for filmmaking, things were going great!
Almost exactly halfway though my studies however, the world shut down due to the pandemic and we all entered a bizarre few years. For me, aside from the very obvious issues at the time, I had an additional problem, I had a graduation film to make. After a good bit of strategizing I decided that if I really pushed myself I could still make the film I wanted to, so over the next year I turned my student bedroom into a 8ft x 8ft movie stage and with occasional trips to the local hardware store between lockdowns combined with creative set extensions I was able to tell the story I had envisioned all along...
Flotsam & Jetsam
It went on to be screened at quite a few festivals such as "Animation Dingle" (where it was nominated for both "Best student Stop motion" and "best student music/sound design") and The "Belfast Film Festival" and even won a few awards, including a West of England "RTS craft award for production design", Directors choice award at "Film Devour" and "Best student stop motion Film" at the "Jane Austen International Film Festival".
Despite the success of the project I realised that due to missing a year and a half of the course, my fabrication skills were still underdeveloped, so in the Autumn of 2022 I began a year of studying at the National Film and Television school where I joined the "Modelmaking for Animation" course ran by industry legend (and very nice bloke) John Lee. At the NFTS I was able to further expand my knowledge of not just modelmaking but the whole world of filmmaking. It also created great connections and friends who I've had the pleasure of continuing to work with post graduation, and also opportunities to work with companies such as Netflix and Aardman.
I'm currently working on my second short film from my home studio in NI and am looking forward to seeing what the future holds.
It's great to hear from you! I'll email you as soon as I can.