NOVEMBER 2013
The
Price 50p
The Voice of Balquhidder, Lochearnhead, Strathyre & St Fillans
BLS – Where Business Does the Talking or
A Focus on Local Business...
Not only do we live in such a beautiful rural location, but our community is full of innovative and diverse individuals who manage to establish and run successful businesses based locally. Over the next few months, this new column intends to interview the owners of several of these businesses, gaining insights into how they see the various challenges as well as advantages of being based in such a location. In our first interview, I had the privilege of talking with Leslie Mackenzie de Arkotxa, of Tuarach Farm, Balquhidder. She showed me around her recentlyopened, 12-bed Loch Voil Hostel, as well as her impressive West Highland Animation studio, the source of her many animated creations in Gaelic. When did you first move to Balquhidder? We’ve been here since 1979. And when did you start West Highland Animation? That was about 1984/85. What made you decide to open an animation studio? Well, I didn’t really open the studio at that point. What I did was I started making an animation film because there was somebody who had come up from Bristol, which even then was considered the home of British animation, and they had a deal where you could make a film and get paid for it. So I made a first film, a silhouette film, all on 16mm film. We were all pre-digital in those days. And how would you say that things have changed in filmmaking since then, in terms of animation films specifically, now that everything is digitalised? Is the process totally different? It was a big change, because what also happened at the beginning of the ‘90s was that Gaelic TV began, so it was ideal that I had already made Gaelic animation
Leslie at Balquhidder Gaelic Playgroup
films in Balquhidder, Lochearnhead and Killin Primaries. I was able to make films in Gaelic with beautiful Gaelic singing because our Primary teacher Joan Mann and her mother Margaret Bennett (Peigi Stuibhart) were so good at teaching children singing. They were a great little partnership who, along with Alison Whyte at McLaren High and the secondary Gaelic pupils there, made it possible for me to make Gaelic animation. And then the Gaelic TV channel was opened, which meant it was possible to make a living from it.
film – old style. It was all multiplane, very elaborate, very slow production. In terms of school projects the film I made at Lochearnhead Primary was a good one. It involved a lot of heads being cut off – it was a very funny little film and popular internationally too! Over 70 animation films were made through those years - usually humorous child-friendly revamps of traditional stories from our oral tradition. Now I’m not doing either school or studio projects though the work continued for a while with digitisation and publishing spin offs.
Which projects and/or animated films have been your favourites or have been the biggest success stories? I had a sort of double animation strategy. One year I would make a Series in schools – in the Gaelic Medium Units which were being started then, and the next year would be a studio-made production at West Highland Animation. So obviously the studio films were better-made, they had what are called ‘higher production values’. But they did take an awful lot longer to make! So I would say that of the studio productions the Scottish Urisk/Uruisg na h-Alba was my favourite because the films were the most carefully made and they were all shot on 16mm
What projects are you working on at the moment? Before I started doing animation, I was working on etchings and etched-books with my husband Juan, (continued on p14)