Graduate film set for international animation festival

Calvin Dyson and Jonathan Tolson created the award-winning 15-minute stop-motion film, The Bride of Vernon, for their final year degree project when studying BA (Hons) Film and Moving Image Production at Leeds Met's Northern Film School in 2012.

Since then, the animation, which will be screened on Monday 12 August as part of the six-day Anibar International Animation Festival in Kosovo, has gone from strength to strength winning the Cobbetts UK Short Film Award at the Manchester Film Festival 2012 and the Leeds Young Filmmakers Festival 2012.

Calvin, who wrote and directed the film, said: "The Bride of Vernon is an animated romantic comedy about Vernon Van Dyke, a young scientist trying to create the perfect bride with his Frankenstein like experiments.

"We are thrilled that the animation, which took 18 months to create, is repeatedly being recognised and is doing so well on the festival circuit. When we were making it, we just wanted to get a good degree - we had no idea that all the time, hard work and creativity that we were putting into it would pay off like this. I'm so proud of the film and what we continue to achieve with it."

The Bride of Vernon stars Dan Clark of BBC3's How Not to Live Your Life, Katherine Parkinson of The IT Crowd and David Schofield of movies including Gladiator, Pirates of the Caribbean and An American Werewolf in London.

Calvin, who after graduating undertook an internship with Disney, added: "When we were casting for the film we really wanted to make sure that we had actors that would put in great performances. We aimed high and sent the script to Katherine's, Dan's and David's agents and were so excited when they each got in touch to say they wanted to do it. It wasn't a paid job for them, they did it because they loved our script and they believed in the film we were making. We couldn't have been happier for them to be a part of it."