Alison de Vere

(1927-2001)

Alison Frances de Vere was born in Peshawar, on 16 September 1927, the daughter of Reggie de Vere (George Reginald Johnstone de Vere), an NCO in the Tank Corps (his father had added the "de Vere" to his family name of Johnstone at the start of his own military career) and his wife, Alison Frances Mansfield. In 1930, after the birth of Alison's brother Anthony, the family returned from India to the UK, living in various Army camps.

After the War, Alison studied art in Brighton before completing her education at the Royal Academy in London. In 1948 she married Karl Martin Weschke, a recently released German prisoner-of-war, who had been encouraged to paint as a boy and had studied art during his internment, and they set up home in Holland Park, London W11.

While she looked around for suitable work she earned some money cel-painting. (According to Geoff Brown and Paul Wells in the book Directors in British and Irish Cinema - A Reference Companion, edited by Robert Murphy, she was a painter and tracer on Paul Grimault's cel-animated film La Bergère et le ramoneur, but I have not been able to corroborate this. The French cartoon had overstretched the resources of the Paris studio, and some scenes were completed in the UK by Anson Dyer Studios, whose Technicolor camera at Stroud was being used for the production.)

Alison became interested in the animation process, and in 1951 began work as a background artist for Halas and Batchelor, and is credited as designer on several industrial films.

Karl enrolled at St Martin's School of Art, but after a year he grew restless and felt the need to travel. In 1953 he spent the late summer months in Spain, and spent the winter of 1954-5 in Sweden. In 1955 he left London to settle in Cornwall as part of the Penwith Society, a splinter group from the St Ives Society of Artists. In 1956 Karl and Alison's son Benjamin was born. The marriage had collapsed, and they later divorced, but remained on good terms. Alison raised Ben in London but he spent the school holidays in Cape Cornwall with Karl, along with a half-brother Lucas and later a half-sister Lore, from Karl's other relationships.

In 1955, in response to the introduction of commercial television in the UK, the Film Producers' Guild formed Guild Television Services, and in 1957 Alison was hired as head of the animation department, designing and directing commercials.

During the 1960s she worked freelance for various studios, painting backgrounds, directing or animating, as required. In 1967 she designed and directed a short anti-drug film for the World Health Organisation called False Friends, depicting the physical deterioration and eventual cure of a man addicted to opium, which prefigured her later personal work in its evocation of convincing emotion with limited animation.

She did backgrounds for TVC for some episodes in the third series of The Beatles TV show, and was invited to join the production team on the subsequent Yellow Submarine feature film as a background supervisor. Animator and camera effects specialist Charlie Jenkins, who included photographs of de Vere in the opening Eleanor Rigby Liverpool streets sequence, called her "the most luminous interpreter of Heinz's illustration and artwork," according to Robert R. Hieronimus, Ph.D. on the Animation World Network website.

Designer Heinz Edelmann, Jenkins and de Vere subsequently formed their own studio, Trickfilm Workshop, and one of their first commissions was The Transformer, a film made to be used as the programme-opener for the shows in the second Cambridge Animation Festival, held in November 1968. The (non-competitive) festival included the premiere of Alison's first personal film, Two Faces, a series of graphic paintings of pairs of faces, mixing one to the next and depicting their relationship, accompanied by music and her own blank verse, which she had made while with Guild Television Services. Several websites give the production date as 1960: the mute master negative held by the BFI has the stock date of 1962.

Trickfilm Workshop broke up in 1970 and the trio went their separate ways. Alison returned to freelancing, and was recruited by producer Lee Stork to join his unit at Wyatt-Cattaneo, where she worked on commercials with fellow female animators Chris Randall and Diane Jackson..

Lee encouraged Alison to work on another personal film in her spare time, Café Bar, and acted as her producer for Wyatt-Cattaneo. Revisiting the subject matter of Two Faces, a couple's relationship, Cafe Bar is a funny, surreal and perceptive cartoon: a man and a woman meet for coffee in a café bar but we do not hear their conversation. Instead we see their wandering thoughts, self-images, lack of communication, and finally, connection. Made in 1974, the film won one of the Special Jury Awards at the 1975 Annecy Animation Festival.

Her next personal film, Mr Pascal, a gentle fable about an elderly cobbler sitting alone on a bench outside a church and reminiscing about his past life, whose act of compassion in taking down the figure of Christ from a crucifix and tending his wounds results in an evening of communal cheer, and the dawn of a new day, was again produced by Lee Stork for Wyatt-Cattaneo, and won the Grand Prix at the 1979 Annecy Animation Festival (along with with a Canadian entry, Afterlife, by animator Ishu Patel).

Channel 4, an independent TV channel to be funded by ITV, was being set up in late 1979 to begin broadcasting in the autumn of 1982, and Lee Stork was quick to take advantage of its remit for animation, selling them the broadcast rights for Mr Pascal and interesting them in further commissions. Other producers were also alert to the opportunities offered by Channel 4 and the new interest in animation in the UK. Independent film and TV producer Nicole Jouve, whose company Interama was based in New York, and who was interested in promoting women animators, saw parallels between Alison's work and the novels of George Eliot, and commissioned her to make a 30 minute animated version of Silas Marner, making a deal with Channel 4 to broadcast it in the UK.

Tired of working on commercials, Lee's unit at Wyatt-Cattaneo broke up and went their separate ways. Alison freelanced from her London home and traded as Alison de Vere Animation. Silas Marner, completed in 1983, is a sensitive and beautifully drawn depiction of Eliot's characters, but to fit into the half-hour length it consists of a succession of cameos, telling the story in a rather truncated way. A literal depiction of the novel, it is true to the characters but lacks the imaginative touches that bring magic to her personal films. It aired on Channel 4 on 27 December 1983, and was shown at Annecy in 1985.

Alison and her son Ben Weschke incorporated Alison de Vere Animation Limited on 9 December 1986.

Yorkshire TV's Head of Children's Programmes, Joy Whitby, commissioned Alison to provide animation for The Giddy Game Show, a series of 10-minute episodes containing four puzzles designed to challenge the skills of pre-school youngsters. She provided the opening and closing title sequences of alien Giddy, scientist Gus and assistant ape Gorilla and additional stock footage, primarily of Gorilla revealing the number of each game, which were then re-used throughout the 52 episodes. The puzzles themselves were created by the studio graphics department, and an animated serial, The Thrilling Adventures of Princess Galaxzena, was produced by John Marsden and animated by Digby Turpin.

Lee Stork organised Channel 4 backing for Alison's next personal project, The Black Dog. 19 minutes long, the journey of a young woman though the strange complexities of a surreal landscape while guided and protected by the black dog of the title, is perhaps Alison's best, and most personal, film, and won two prizes at Annecy 1987 – the Award for a Television Film and the International Film Critics Award – and First Prize at the 1989 Odense International Film Festival.

Joy Whitby, working with writer/performer Neil Innes via her own company, Grasshopper Productions, tendered a children's series of seven half-hour episodes, based on Terry Jones's book Fairy Tales, to Channel 4. The series, to be called East of the Moon, was to consist of one live-action story per episode, plus a shorter animated tale and a song by Neil Innes. Lee Stork arranged for Alison to provide the animated sequences. The first episode was broadcast on 10 April 1988. Grasshopper released the animated segments as a VHS, under the title Stories from East of the Moon, and this package was later re-released on DVD.

Alison worked on further projects for Grasshopper Productions, starting with The Angel and the Soldier Boy, a 25 minute TV Special, with music by Clannad, based on the textless picture book by Peter Collington, shown on BBC 1 on 27 December 1989.

Alison's final, and perhaps most ambitious film for Channel 4, the 29 minute Psyche and Eros, is the Greek legend as told in Apuleius's Latin novel The Golden Ass, and is based on drawings reflecting the classical Greek style by Alison's former husband, Karl Weschke. (Commonly, references to the legend put Eros' name first, but since Apuleius's story focuses on Psyche – and sets a precedent for later fairy tales from Snow White to Bluebeard – the title reversal is entirely appropriate.) Without dialogue, the story is acted out against a background of Greek-style music and song. It is skilfully done, but as with Silas Marner the concentration on following the given plotline precludes Alison's more imaginative touches. It was finally completed in 1994.

While she was working on Psyche and Eros Alison moved to St Just, near Penzance, Cornwall, with her mother, who was suffering senile dementia, and set up a studio with the assistance of her son Ben Weschke. Her work was the subject of a documentary in the Big World Animators series, made by HTV West and shown on Channel 4 as part of its Four-mations season. The Alison de Vere episode aired on Channel 4 on 19 April 1992.

She began working on another Peter Collington book, On Christmas Eve, but was unable to proceed with the production, and Joy Whitby passed Alison's storyboard over to the team at Cosgrove Hall Productions to animate the film, which aired on BBC1 on 24 December 1992.

Alison's mother, Alison Frances de Vere (née Mansfield) died in February 1993. There is a bench dedicated to her memory in Holland Park, London.

At the age of 67 Alison decided to step down from film production, and closed down her company in 1995. She worked as a freelance animator on Telemagination's TV series The Animals of Farthing Wood and in 1996 Joy Whitby persuaded her to direct, animate and supervise a children's TV series of 5-minute episodes for Grasshopper.

The episodes of Mouse and Mole were adapted by Joy from the books by Joyce Dunbar, and Alison meticulously recreated the style of the illustrations by James Mayhew, with rendered trace and paint work by the team who had worked with her on East of the Moon. The charming, gentle and beautifully drawn stories are enhanced by the voices of Richard Briars as Mouse and Alan Bennett as Mole, and it is sad that of the 26 episodes written and recorded only 19 were completed. Joy Whitby had planned on two series of 13 episodes each, which in traditional scheduling would mean one episode a week for three months, but she was unable to raise the money for the second series. Grasshopper Productions put up the money itself for the first six episodes of series two, hoping to secure a deal to complete it, but when this did not happen the last seven episodes were put on hold. In 1997 BBC1 aired the first series in the 3.30pm slot of their children's programming on Tuesdays and Fridays, from Friday 4 April to Friday 6 June (the episode for Fri 2 May was cancelled to make way for the General Election results). All 19 episodes aired on BBC2 on Thursday mornings from 4 September 1997 to 22 January 1998. The first 13 episodes were shot on the rostrum camera, but for the second series the artwork was scanned and the frames compiled on computer by Ben, using the Animo system recommended by his friend Morgan Francis, who was then the Technical Director at Telemagination.

It was always intended that the second series should be completed, and Joy Whitby got Joyce Dunbar to write the story for a half-hour TV special, Mouse and Mole at Christmas Time, which Alison storyboarded. The final episodes remained shelved, but in 2013 Grasshopper produced the special for the BBC, with Briers and Bennett reprising their roles (it was one of Briers' last recorded performances), as well as voicing other characters along with Imelda Staunton, and animation by Studio Liddell for Laughing Gravy Media from Alison de Vere's original storyboard.

Alison created the opening and closing animated sequences of The Drollteller for How Madge Figgy Got Her Pig (1997), Three S Films' pilot episode for a proposed TV series featuring life-sized live-action puppets and telling Cornish folktales. The series was not taken up, but the film won the children's prize at the 1998 Celtic Media Festival.

In 1998 Alison animated The Princess and the Pea, for Honeycomb Animation Enterprises' series Wolves, Witches and Giants, with Ben acting as Production Manager for the episode.

In the latter part of 2000 Joy Witby approached Alison and Ben with a third adaptation of a Peter Collington picture book for Grasshopper Productions, A Small Miracle.

Alison de Vere died on 2 January 2001, aged 73. She had been working on the storyboard and layouts for A Small Miracle and Ben subsequently directed the 25-minute film with the aid of Morgan Francis, now running his own London-based animation company Spider Eye, which subsequently relocated to St Just. Using computers, Spider Eye blended traditional 2D animation, and background artwork by Milly McMillan, who had worked on backgrounds for East of the Moon and Mouse and Mole, with 3D generated layouts, creating a rich and charming film that was first screened on ITV on Christmas Eve 2002, and is dedicated to Alison de Vere.

Filmography

Links to Other Sites

The Guardian Obituary: Alison de Vere Biography and review of her work.

BFIPlayer Two Faces Video of Alison de Vere's first personal film.

BFIplayer The Transformer Video of Trickfilm Workshop's programme starter for the 1968 Cambridge Animation Festival.

YouTube Mr Pascal Video of Alison de Vere's second personal film.

BFIPlayer Café Bar Video of Alison de Vere's third personal film.

YouTube The Black Dog Video of Alison de Vere's forth personal film.

YouTube Psyche and Eros Video of Alison de Vere's fifth personal film.

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