ASIFA-Hollywood: The International Animated Film Society
Friday, November 05, 2004
PR Machine Pulls Brad Away
I got this e-mail last night. I think we can all understand just how busy this opening has made Brad Bird.
Dear Fellow Animation Lovers:
I was really looking forward to participating in the ASIFA screening and Q&A for "The Incredibles". It is a rare to get direct feedback from an entire room full of people who are as passionate about this art form as I am, and I was very excited to hear all of your comments and reactions following the screening.
As we all know, opening a film is both a blessing and a curse: A blessing because you are finally delivering the vision that's taken so long to bring to life. A curse because things like schedules tend to get so stacked up that things become a bit crazy.
THE INCREDIBLES will be opened virtually everywhere in the world by the end of the year (the most condensed release schedule Disney/Pixar has ever done) and that has been a monster to deal with.
Unfortunately, I just found out that I will have to depart a day earlier than expected for an international press tour for this film. Both we and your ASIFA-Hollywood scheduling team scrambled to see about moving this presentation one day earlier. However, there wasn't a theater that could accommodate us on such short notice.
That said, I have asked fellow Pixar director and animator, Pete Docter to moderate a panel with two of my great INCREDIBLES animators, Dave DeVan and Mike Venturini in my place.
With Pete's great passion for animation along with Dave and Mike's endless hours put in to making "The Incredibles", I think and hope you will find this an interesting event that can address all of your questions. I know that they are all looking forward to the evening and being able to discuss the film with all of you.
When I return from the tour (and my mouth has recovered from excessive yakking), I would love to have an opportunity to schedule a follow up evening with you all.
Until then, I really appreciate your support and hope you enjoy viewing the "The Incredibles" as much as we enjoyed making it.
Enjoy the screening!
Brad Bird
Dear Fellow Animation Lovers:
I was really looking forward to participating in the ASIFA screening and Q&A for "The Incredibles". It is a rare to get direct feedback from an entire room full of people who are as passionate about this art form as I am, and I was very excited to hear all of your comments and reactions following the screening.
As we all know, opening a film is both a blessing and a curse: A blessing because you are finally delivering the vision that's taken so long to bring to life. A curse because things like schedules tend to get so stacked up that things become a bit crazy.
THE INCREDIBLES will be opened virtually everywhere in the world by the end of the year (the most condensed release schedule Disney/Pixar has ever done) and that has been a monster to deal with.
Unfortunately, I just found out that I will have to depart a day earlier than expected for an international press tour for this film. Both we and your ASIFA-Hollywood scheduling team scrambled to see about moving this presentation one day earlier. However, there wasn't a theater that could accommodate us on such short notice.
That said, I have asked fellow Pixar director and animator, Pete Docter to moderate a panel with two of my great INCREDIBLES animators, Dave DeVan and Mike Venturini in my place.
With Pete's great passion for animation along with Dave and Mike's endless hours put in to making "The Incredibles", I think and hope you will find this an interesting event that can address all of your questions. I know that they are all looking forward to the evening and being able to discuss the film with all of you.
When I return from the tour (and my mouth has recovered from excessive yakking), I would love to have an opportunity to schedule a follow up evening with you all.
Until then, I really appreciate your support and hope you enjoy viewing the "The Incredibles" as much as we enjoyed making it.
Enjoy the screening!
Brad Bird
Thursday, November 04, 2004
This morning after election let us look at the 3 great questions of life;
The first two questions are easy, the answer is 42. The last one is a problem mainly because of Norman McLaren of the Canadian Film Board.
One of the lectures I take a real joy in delivering to my History of Animation classes depends heavily of Mclaren`s work to drive home this very question of what truly is and what is not animation.
Last week I delivered this lecture to my Cal State Fullerton class on the night of a quiz thus assuring a full house. (I do not give make up tests and missed deadlines is my one intolerance)
I started the class with Begone Dull Care Norman Mclaren`s 1949 masterpiece scratched and painted straight onto raw film stock and masterfully synced to the up tempo, almost ragtime, score of Oscar Peterson.
One of my favorite parts of the film is when Mclaren forces the perception of the audience to the view that 5 or 6 moving white dots on a totally black screen are the lights of living beings striving against same primordial darkness.
It is a masterfully done manipulation showing a true understanding of the minds of the audience and the power of the music. It never fails to spark controversy. When the lights come up all I have to do to get a heated class discussion is ask is;
And so on and so forth, on down to a bold pronouncement of a definition by one student who knows for a fact just what animation is. I smile to myself as my student firmly states;
Rarely have I had a class play so totally into my hands. I quickly start the video again playing Mclaren`s Pas de Deux. The film in which Mclaren uses live action footage of two ballet dancers and a film recorder to create a lyrical work where thousands of images dance, freeze, spin, and superimpose across time at an artificially established rates of speed within a high contrasted world of light and dark.
My student, of the defining statement of just what is and what is not animation, firmly states that because this film uses live action it was therefore definitely not animation but some kind of special effects!
The night is going well for me. The animated cinema gods are smiling on my endeavor. I quickly put on Mclaren`s 1952 Oscar winning short animation Neighbors in which the filmmaker uses actors as stop motion models making them float in the air and slide on their bellies in a manner impossible at that time without the frame by frame creation techniques that can only be called animation.
Sometimes we teachers get what is called in the trade a teachable moment (a lucky break) and we can come away from a class feeling that we have done something to change the minds of our students and maybe even open them up a little.
It still doesn`t make it any easier to face that stack of papers and tests I have waiting for me this morning from 5 different classes on this my so called day off.
larry@agni-animation.com
- What is the meaning of life?
- How many angles can dance on the head of a pin?
- What is animation?
The first two questions are easy, the answer is 42. The last one is a problem mainly because of Norman McLaren of the Canadian Film Board.
One of the lectures I take a real joy in delivering to my History of Animation classes depends heavily of Mclaren`s work to drive home this very question of what truly is and what is not animation.
Last week I delivered this lecture to my Cal State Fullerton class on the night of a quiz thus assuring a full house. (I do not give make up tests and missed deadlines is my one intolerance)
I started the class with Begone Dull Care Norman Mclaren`s 1949 masterpiece scratched and painted straight onto raw film stock and masterfully synced to the up tempo, almost ragtime, score of Oscar Peterson.
One of my favorite parts of the film is when Mclaren forces the perception of the audience to the view that 5 or 6 moving white dots on a totally black screen are the lights of living beings striving against same primordial darkness.
It is a masterfully done manipulation showing a true understanding of the minds of the audience and the power of the music. It never fails to spark controversy. When the lights come up all I have to do to get a heated class discussion is ask is;
Is it animation?
No, it is a light show. Anybody could create it with a computer editing program!
In 1949? There were no graphic computer programs. And what difference does it make if a work can be easily created or recreated?
And so on and so forth, on down to a bold pronouncement of a definition by one student who knows for a fact just what animation is. I smile to myself as my student firmly states;
These are sequential moving images on film that are not live action
therefore this is an animation!
Rarely have I had a class play so totally into my hands. I quickly start the video again playing Mclaren`s Pas de Deux. The film in which Mclaren uses live action footage of two ballet dancers and a film recorder to create a lyrical work where thousands of images dance, freeze, spin, and superimpose across time at an artificially established rates of speed within a high contrasted world of light and dark.
My student, of the defining statement of just what is and what is not animation, firmly states that because this film uses live action it was therefore definitely not animation but some kind of special effects!
The night is going well for me. The animated cinema gods are smiling on my endeavor. I quickly put on Mclaren`s 1952 Oscar winning short animation Neighbors in which the filmmaker uses actors as stop motion models making them float in the air and slide on their bellies in a manner impossible at that time without the frame by frame creation techniques that can only be called animation.
Sometimes we teachers get what is called in the trade a teachable moment (a lucky break) and we can come away from a class feeling that we have done something to change the minds of our students and maybe even open them up a little.
It still doesn`t make it any easier to face that stack of papers and tests I have waiting for me this morning from 5 different classes on this my so called day off.
larry@agni-animation.com
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Headless on All Hollow's Eve
As darkness falls on All Hollow`s Eve and my kids try to talk me into going out trick or treating with them, and I look fruitlessly for my latex severed head from my special effects slasher film days, my mind turns to one of my favorite animations from the Ub Iwerks studio, The Headless Horseman, 1934.
Headless Horseman
Last year I included it is my silent animation screening at San Diego Comic Con even thou it was created with a sound track and in Cinacolor. Ub helped create the first synchronized sound cartoon. What is he doing creating a silent film after being there at the birth of sound cartoons?
Sound cartoons would not have worked without his genius. He worked out the system of visual clueing for the conductor that made the second Steamboat Willie recording session successful, a system that is still used, with little modification, to this day. But 6 years later he created what amounted to a silent film with musical soundtrack accompaniment.
Ub Iwerks Studio
Why? I`ll tell you why. It works. Just like Charley Chaplin`s Little Tramp still silent after the coming of the talkies, it works and wouldn`t have worked with speech.
There is, sadly, a real inconsistency in the product of the Iwerks Studio. Some, like the 1932 Flip the Frog`s The Bully and What A Life are almost unwatchable. Others like Balloonland and The Headless Horseman are real gems. If you haven`t watched them lately, you should.
Cinacolor 1934
Happy All Hollow`s Eve and be sure to vote. I may have lost my head but not my mind!
larry@agni-animation.com
Headless Horseman
Last year I included it is my silent animation screening at San Diego Comic Con even thou it was created with a sound track and in Cinacolor. Ub helped create the first synchronized sound cartoon. What is he doing creating a silent film after being there at the birth of sound cartoons?
Sound cartoons would not have worked without his genius. He worked out the system of visual clueing for the conductor that made the second Steamboat Willie recording session successful, a system that is still used, with little modification, to this day. But 6 years later he created what amounted to a silent film with musical soundtrack accompaniment.
Ub Iwerks Studio
Why? I`ll tell you why. It works. Just like Charley Chaplin`s Little Tramp still silent after the coming of the talkies, it works and wouldn`t have worked with speech.
There is, sadly, a real inconsistency in the product of the Iwerks Studio. Some, like the 1932 Flip the Frog`s The Bully and What A Life are almost unwatchable. Others like Balloonland and The Headless Horseman are real gems. If you haven`t watched them lately, you should.
Cinacolor 1934
Happy All Hollow`s Eve and be sure to vote. I may have lost my head but not my mind!
larry@agni-animation.com
