Oliver Harrison

Oliver Harrison is an English filmmaker, artist and animator. His films have been shown at film festivals around the world including Cannes Film Festival, New York Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival and the London Film Festival. His feature film The Fallen Word premiered at the BFI Southbank in 2013. Influential in motion graphics, particularly in kinetic typography, Harrison's work has been featured at Tate Modern, The Barbican Centre and the Institute of Contemporary Arts.

Following his graduation from St Martins School of Art in 1988, Harrison's student film Amore Baciami - set to a 50s Italian pop song sung by Nuccia Bongiovanni - received much critical acclaim. The film featured animated typography closely syncopated with the voice, a technique that would come to characterize Harrison's work; described as 'the beautiful precise and unparalleled marriage of sound and picture'. Harrison later said of Amore Baciami:

"I wanted the type to be the star, the letters: the heroes. This was not a film-title-sequence, type was not playing second-fiddle to live action, it was not a sequence in a pop promo, It was a new way of thinking about type and about graphics"

When David Puttnam introduced Amore Baciami on Thames TV's First Run he said of the film: 'I think it's quite brilliant'. Nominated for 'Best Animated Film' and 'Best Student Film' in the 1988 British Animation Awards, Amore Baciami was shown around the world in festivals including Hong Kong International Film Festival and the Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation in Los Angeles. Excerpts of the film were also shown on MTV's Liquid Television in the US.

Amore Baciami was bought by the advertising agency DMB&B. Part of the film was adapted for a long 90 second commercial called Letters of Love - a national campaign for The Royal Mail (Valentine's Day 1989). This cut down version of the film went on to win a Gold Lion at Cannes, a Gold Arrow at the British Television Advertising Awards, a D&AD Pencil and the Epica d'Or.

Following this success, Oliver was commissioned in 1992 to shoot the titles for Merchant Ivory's film Howards End which subsequently won a host of Oscars . The same year, Harrison signed up with Acme Filmworks in Hollywood and continued to make commercials throughout the 1990s, creating spots for Nike, Inc., Marie Claire, P&O Ferries, The Independent newspaper, Molson Beer, Toyota, IBD and MTV to name a few. Harrison's Toyota Rav 4 commercial, an experimental shoot combining motion control footage with live action, became 'Top spot of the Week' in Shoot magazine in 1996.

Despite his flourishing advertising career, Harrison was keen to continue making his own films. In a departure from his rostrum-based animation he chose to make his next film using a motion control rig. Spirit of Place (1992) was one the first films to take advantage of the relatively new technology, picking up an award at Cork Film Festival for its 35mm cinematography (D.O.P Doug Foster). Later - in 2015 - Spirit of Place featured in the Institute of Contemporary Arts' exhibition: Poetry FIlm Parallax curated by Zata Banks. In 2016 the exhibition was invited by the Bauhaus Film-Institut to play at the Backup Film Festival in Weimar.

Love is All (2000), a 'three-minute epic' notable for its use of multiple exposures, was shot on 35mm film using a 1917 Bell and Howell camera. The film was shown in over 70 festivals around the world and was selected for the Cannes Film Festival Director's Fortnight in 2000, also receiving the Jury Prize at the New York Expo of Short Films and the Jury prize at the Oberhausen Film Festival. The film went on general release in cinemas with various films in 2000; Time Out described Love is All as 'an ineffable sweet ode d’amour'. The film was screened at Tate Modern London has part of Thresholds of the Frame and was featured in the Barbican Centre exhibition: Passionate Obsessions.