2024KDIAF

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Industry Lecture II

From Creation to Venture Capital

The 2023 Kuandu Animation Festival has entered its fifth day. Today (26th), we are honored to invite Director Liu Bang-Yao, an outstanding alumnus of Taipei University of the Arts, to serve as the keynote speaker of the special lecture "From Creation to Venture Capital" to share with the audience every bit of experience he got on his path to film and television creation and directing.

Liu Bang-Yao became a sensation on the internet and in the animation film and television communities with his post-it animation "DEADLINE." He was recognized by many awards, such as the American Student Oscar nomination and the New York ADC Awards gold medal. Later, he continued to work in the field of visual communication and design and impart his experience. He is currently a film director and a part-time lecturer at Shih Chien University.

Liu Bangyao first shared his artist-in-residence program during his master's degree. He guided 720 students from Dunhua Elementary School to work together to complete a one-minute loop animation work by filling in the colors to explore the relationship between frame-by-frame images and continuous videos.

In 2008, Liu Bangyao got the opportunity to study at Savannah College of Art and Design in the United States through the Ministry of Education's intensive training program. While in school, the need to use sticky notes to memorize words became the inspiration for the stop-motion animation "DEADLINE," which also marked the beginning of his video creation journey. "It changed my life," Liu Bangyao described this work. After returning to Taiwan, he received business invitations, such as the Golden Globe Award and Nth Post He produced large and small stop-motion animation short films, which also built up his confidence in image creation.

After graduation, Liu Bang-Yao decided to set up his own business and set up an animation advertising studio to accept commission work; he later started making video advertising shorts, which also received many positive responses. After that, he was unsatisfied with the current situation of accepting advertising commissions and decided to start his own film creation - writing scripts and shooting shorts - which was also recognized by foreign film festivals, and he continued to develop on the path of feature film creation.

Liu Bang-Yao also shared the actual situation of proposals and the venture capital industry. Facing the market and investors, you must clarify the type and tone of your work, understand the possible audience for your work, and find successful cases that can be used as references for benchmark films. He encouraged all enthusiastic young creators to actively strive for and try the program subsidies provided by various institutes, clarify their position, original intention of creation, and issues of concern, and establish their own "filmography" during the student stage, that is, work resume and achievements can help you obtain better resources and move towards further goals.

During the question-and-answer session at the end of the lecture, the audience asked: "What are the differences in execution when directing or producing works of different lengths and scales, such as animated short films, commercial short films, or feature-length films, etc." Liu Bang-Yao believed in this regard, each type of film has its own look: commercials are shot quickly; feature films require months of intensive work; documentaries require more time to observe the environment or characters. He also pointed out that no matter what type of work, pre-planning is the most important. Another audience member curiously asked: "What makes the director think that making movies is what he wants to do?" From Liu's answer, we can find that movies are a storytelling medium for him, and he values the narrative of movies and the connection between people. In the end, Liu Bangyao did not forget to mention his family, believing that his wife is an indispensable and important support on his way to pursuing his dreams.

Bang-yao Liu

Bang-yao Liu is a Taiwanese director who has been engaged in creating and researching of narrative visual media such as theater and animation. He has more than a decade of teaching experience in higher education institutions. He received a scholarship from the Ministry of Education to study in the United States and their work, "Deadline," a post-it note animation, was nominated for the 37th Student Academy Awards. Their short film, "No Pets Allowed," was nominated for four categories, including "Best Television Movie" at the Golden Bell Awards. Their in-development film, "The Cave," received funding from the Golden Horse Film Project Promotion and the China Film Foundation.