By Suzie Templeton (director/co-writer) and Hugh Welchman (producer) of Academy Award-nominated film Peter and the Wolf
(February 2008)

The journey from finishing the film to the Oscars has been as much a roller coaster as making the film, which was, in itself, a five-year epic that took us around the world, deep into Russian forests, into the lair of wolves, and even took Suzie to the wrong side of a Russian prison (she was arrested and interrogated for taking pictures of a power station. They thought she was an eco-terrorist, and were very skeptical of her protestations that she was, in fact, researching for a children's animation!).

The film had a frenetic birth. Our world premiere was at London's 6,000-seater Royal Albert Hall, where it was to be accompanied live by the Philharmonia Orchestra. We booked this event before we started the film. The good news one month before the premiere was that the event was going to be sold out; the bad news was that we still had a quarter of the film to shoot, and it had taken us the previous nine months to do the other three-quarters! If we didn't deliver the film to the Royal Albert Hall, the film and our company would have collapsed! After a month of no sleep by our crew of more than a hundred, we delivered the film to the Royal Albert Hall at 6.30 p.m. for a 7.30 p.m. start. The film was full of temporary stitch jobs, and our hearts were in our mouths as we sat there in the dark, and then all of a sudden there were a few giggles, and then a few more, and soon we had 3,000 children squealing with delight and the same number of adults belly laughing. Then we could breathe a sigh of relief; we knew it was going to be OK.

Suzie Templeton

One of the casualties of our tight finish are our credits - they are terrible, embarrassingly long, slow and big, and, worst of all, as we first delivered it for live orchestral, we had no music over the credits. But at Annecy, the world's biggest animation festival, that didn't matter. We received a five-minute standing ovation from the 2,000 animators that lasted the whole credits. That was definitely a high. We went on to win the Annecy Cristal and the Audience Award. The jury prize is great, but the audience prize from the largest gathering of animators was really heartwarming.

It's been a longish road from our world premiere to the Oscar nomination. The first consequence of the nomination for the BreakThru office was that the server went down because, overnight, we got so many emails of congratulations! Producer Hugh Welchman says of being nominated, "It is a bit like how my friends describe having their first baby. At first you are euphoric, and the world seems brighter and better, but then, when you realize you have twice as much to do as before and you become deprived of sleep, the shine wears off a bit, but life has definitely irreversibly changed!"

Suzie is less understated about it. "Personally, for me it has been really low-key since we were nominated, but coming to be on the Oscar Showcase Tour has been amazing. I mean, we are currently at Pixar showing our film to Brad Bird (director of The Incredibles and Ratatouille) and meeting Ed Camutel; that's pretty special! Oh, and I was also lent a dress by Percy Irausquin, a red-hot young Dutch designer, who actually wanted to make me a dress specially for the occasion but he had such lovely dresses that I chose one of the ones he had already. He ironed it personally!"

When asked which character from Peter and the Wolf she would nominate to take her place Suzie nominated Grandfather. "He'd drink vodka, and behave disgracefully, and cause a scene. He'd make the news!"

Photos courtesy of the filmmakers.