ITEM PHOTO BY OWEN O’ROURKE
Michelle Madar and John Prudent won a bronze medal at the 38th Annual Telly Awards for a stop-motion animation.
By BRIDGET TURCOTTE
SAUGUS — A miniature two-dimensional version of Saugus and a technique that dates back more than a century helped Saugus TV score a bronze medal in a national competition.
Saugus TV, which is operated and overseen by Saugus Community Television, Inc., took third place in the Public Interest and Awareness category in the 38th Annual Telly Awards for its two-minute, stop-motion animation “Saugus TV Stop-Motion Promo.”
Stop-motion animation is a technique in which items are slowly moved in tiny increments while being photographed continuously. When the photographs are flipped quickly, it creates the illusion the items are moving on their own.
The style dates back to the late 1800s. In 1897, director and producer J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith created “The Humpty Dumpty Circus,” an animated short film using stop-motion animation.
Saugus TV’s winning video follows a cardboard figure as she travels home, turns on the TV and watches actual footage of the network’s programing, including Teen TV Workshop, a wrestling program and a talk show. The girl is impressed with what she sees and decides to drive to Saugus TV’s headquarters to get involved.
Executive Director Bryan Nadeau said a second part to the series is in the works.
The piece was produced by Michelle Madar and John Prudent to serve as a public service announcement for the station, encouraging residents with great ideas to use the public access station to make those ideas come to life.
“Hopefully it brings awareness to the town that anyone can produce something special,” Madar said.
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Madar, a graduate of the New England Institute of Art’s digital film and video production program, said her interest in the field wasn’t realized until she, literally, walked into the wrong classroom.
As a freshman in high school, her class was instructed to join a different classroom in the teacher’s absence. She chose the video production class solely to spend time with a friend.
“I went there and I fell in love,” she said. “I ended up taking four years of video production and I created the first annual film festival for the school.”
She was reminded of how exposing children and teenagers to videography can help inspire them when she attended a conference in Boston called Alliance for Community Media.
“I got the idea that I wanted to get youth more involved with stop-motion,” she said. “I experimented for a little while by myself to see if this was something I could do. Then we started out. We made a mini world of Saugus.”
Prudent, who has a degree in art from Salem State University, said he had always wanted to create a stop-motion animation but hadn’t had the opportunity.
The pair hopes to offer a summer program to teenagers this year to teach them about clay-mation, two-dimensional animation and pixilation. Then they’ll explore editing with Final Cut X and putting the videos together.
“Now we can say we’re an award-winning station,” Madar said. “Hopefully they’ll come see us.”
The Telly Awards was founded in 1979 and is the premier award honoring outstanding local, regional and cable TV commercials and programs. Entries are judged by a panel of more than 500 accomplished industry professionals, each a winner of the award.
Fewer than 10 percent of entries are chosen as winners of the Silver Telly, the highest award, and about 25 percent receive the Bronze Telly.
Bridget Turcotte can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @BridgetTurcotte.