Basil’s Trump is a short animated 8mm film I made as a student with my good friend Roger Smith, way back in the 1980s. I’ve talked about it on this blog before, so I won’t bore you by repeating myself (for a more detailed description – and to watch the film itself – use the link below).
I say it’s an animated film, but I guess that’s not entirely true. While Basil’s Trump does contain a fair amount of stop-motion, lack of both time and budget encouraged us to devise as many ways as possible to avoid that time-honoured and time-consuming technique, resulting in an ingenious collection of manually-operated rigs and tricks that Rube Goldberg would have been proud of.
I recently unearthed a set of photos Roger and I took during the making of the film. Apart from transporting me into a cosy nostalgic haze, the pictures also show in some detail how we made some of the puppets, sets and visual effects that feature in the movie – I hope you enjoy them!
Graham Edwards 