‘The Smeds and the Smoos’: SA animation directors up for iEmmy, win NHK Japan Prize

The South African team behind multi-award-winning children’s film The Smeds and the Smoos is counting down to the International Emmy Awards ceremony in New York City on 20 November 2023. Produced by Magic Light Pictures, The Smeds and the Smoos is nominated for Best Kids’ Animation, up against the likes of Moominvalley.

ABOUT ‘THE SMEDS AND THE SMOOS’

Narrated by Oscar nominee Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water), The Smeds and the Smoos tells the story of two warring families whose children, Bill and Janet, fall in love and run away together.

Hotly pursued by their grandparents, Grandfather Smed (comedian Bill Bailey) and Grandmother Smoo (Adjoa Andoh from Bridgerton), the two young aliens (Ashna Rabheru from Sex Education and Daniel Ezra from All American) lead their families on a chase across space, giving them the opportunity to find out they have more in common than they think.

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PARTLY INSPIRED BY BREXIT

Dedicated to all the children of Europe, the book was partly inspired by Brexit. 

Co-director Daniel Snaddon and writer Julia Smuts Louw are married, so the lines between work and home life became rather blurred during the project. “We have a five-year-old (Frank) and a three-year-old (Sonya) so they’re right in the drop zone for the books,” says Dan. “Over the years we’ve picked up some of the plush toys and merch, which Sam helped design, so we’re inundated a little bit… These sorts of films tend to be more than a nine to five; they kind of end up being like a third child constantly demanding attention.”

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Frank was about four years old during filming, making him a perfect test subject for early storyboards. “Just to see if he could follow and where his attention was wandering,” says Dan. “He got to see a couple of builds of the film and one of the animatics went down well, because he asked to see it again.” 

From reading the book to Frank, Dan and Julia knew what to highlight on screen for kids, too. “We knew we had to make the reveal of the rocket quite a thing,” says Dan. “So you don’t see the rocket until you do. We don’t have it parked in the background.” 

“We were reading the book to them often,” says Julia. “We’ve got these copies of Julia Donaldson’s books that are quite special because of the movies that Dan has worked on, like Stick Man, Zog and The Snail and The Whale. They’re marked up with production notes, so they’re like artefacts from the films as opposed to just being kids’ books. I love these production volumes that are so intertwined with the process that lasts for a year of our lives.”

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With The Smeds and the Smoos in production in 2021 during lockdown, Dan, Sam and the animation team collaborated daily via Zoom between South Africa, where they were leading the project, and the UK, where the majority of the crew were based at Blue Zoo – a switch up from the days on earlier adaptations like The Highway Rat, when Dan, Sam and the team at Triggerfish were the crew in South Africa and the project leads were UK-based for Magic Light Pictures.  

“With the pandemic, a lot of South African artists have had the opportunity to work for overseas studios for the first time because people can work remotely,” says Dan. “So a couple of our old comrades from Triggerfish made the move over to the UK for this project and other projects. Annike Pienaar was our animation supervisor, James Mann was our shot supervisor, Tamara Polonyfi was our head of surfacing, and Shannan Taylor came on as our art director at the end. It was so comforting to have these long relationships that we could trust.”

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