By about this time in the lead-up to Christmas, you may well be suffering from a sugar overload.
Not because of the mince pies, chocolates, shortbread and other sweet nonsense you’ve been putting in your mouth, but because of all the sweet nonsense that you’ve been putting in your head.
You’re old enough to know that the Christmas Day family get together will not go down without a hitch. That the Boxing Day sorries, resulting from the Christmas Day hitch, will just keep said hitch going, probably until next Christmas. And that the joy and peace that everyone has been wishing everyone else for weeks will never be heard by the world’s leaders, who are still hell-bent on proving who has the biggest…power play.
So Anomaly has messed with one of the sweetest Christmas traditions – the song, 12 Days of Christmas that’s meant to celebrate Christmas joy, Christmas giving and Christmas romance.
Anomaly’s 12 Days of Christmas (sub-title, A Tale of Avian Misery) is the story of what would really happen if a woman received all the things from the traditional song. (This woman also happens to live in a one bedroom flat.)
You can’t help but feel yourself align with the sardonic attitude of the woman, narrated by Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Bridget Jones style, to her lover’s generosity. It’s so wickedly real. And Christmas is so awfully fantastic.
The film was written, animated, produced and directed in-house at Anomaly.
Why? Oli Beale, executive creative director, explained, “At Anomaly, if we find something interesting or funny or entertaining or bird-related, we just like to make it. And we have the people here needed to bring almost anything to life. (Within reason. We’re not going to, like, invent a new space ship or something. But production wise, we can do the full shebang.) This is our gift of entertainment to the nation this Christmas.”
Credits:
Written, directed, animated & produced by Anomaly
Writer: Craig Ainsley
Directors: Ben White & Craig Ainsley
Assistant head of family planning – Oli Beale
Producers: Mich Bradfield & Daisy Mellors
Animators: Ben White, Douglas Pledger & Tom Malins
Illustrator: Robert Hunter @ Blink Art
Typographer: Kerry Roper
Sound Design – Mark Hellaby @ 750MPH
Composer: Courage @ BMG
