The day began with another much-anticipated event, and things only got more much anticipatedey from there. Which is a shame, because it’s not as fun to write about nice and good things, but stick with me, I’ll try to be as unnecessarily sarcastic as possible.
First off the blocks was Disney Making of: The Art of Traditional Animation. This was a big one for me, as traditional animation is my medium, and the main focus of the talk was the recent Disney masterpiece ‘The Princess and the Frog’.
The audience was introduced to Ron Clements and John Musker, the two guys responsible for many great Disney features, from the Fox and the Hound, the Little Mermaid and Aladdin through to Hercules.
Elderly gents, both greying and clearly seasoned, they still maintain a great close working relationship and a twinkle in all four of their eyes. Musker is a fairly wirey fellow, Clements a bit stouter by comparison. In my notebook I referred to Clements as ‘Beard’, and Musker as ‘No Beard’. Although that’s probably not very helpful for you.
Having worked together so closely on so many projects over a matter of 25 years the chemistry between them was very sweet to witness. They would finish off each other’s sentences and slip into jokes with each other in the blink of an eye, although Musker seemed to be ‘the talker’, and clearly enjoyed telling the audience his wonderful stories about his involvement on the ‘Princess and the Frog’, many of which were made more colourful by his employment of a great New Orlean’s accent. When asked if they ever had fallen out, Clements professed that they have never argued, instantly Musker exclaimed “Yes we do!”, and they started a little mock argument (before admitting that yes, they do in fact argue quite a bit).
They guys told us all about their work on ‘the Princess and the Frog’, from intial concept of working with the ‘The Frog Prince’ tale, something that, by pure coincidence, Pixar had also toyed with. By further coincidence both sets of creative’s had also hit upon the idea of basing their tale in New Orleans. When Lasetter was brought over to Disney he instantly got the pair in, and when he discovered they wanted to work on the fairy tale was more than happy to give the project his full support and ‘green lit’ it. Green light being very appropriate for a film about frogs. Presumably the Disney prostitute fairy story got red lit.
The early pre production took the guys a year to produce, and involved three trips to New Orleans, for which we were treated to a long slideshow. You know when a relative comes back from a holiday and offers to show you their snaps and your heart sinks as you agree to see them and mentally strap yourself in for a boring three hours of nodding, going ‘uh huh’ and hoping over hope that the next photo will be the last? Well this was nothing like that all.
Starting off with a gag, the first pic was of Ron reading a copy of ‘Voodoo for Dummies’. Once the laughs died down we were off into some glorious photo treats. The guys photographed everything, and it all was recognisable from the film. From the buildings and the palaces, the interiors of busses and street cars, to Mardi Gras, voodoo masks and alligator heads. Their research was thorough and all of it paid off in fine style and was evident in the final film. I half expected to see a snap of a bucktoothed firefly with a big lightbulb arse.
Generally they had the quality of holiday snaps to them, which made it very entertaining when the instantly recognisable round red face of John Lasseter cropped up, fooling about in a Mardi Gras mask.
Not just was it the trip that rewarded the animators visually. As it turned out, most of the people they met somehow influenced the story or the characters in some way or another. Mama Odie was a real person they met. An 80 year old bassist turned restauranteur was the influence for the lead character, Tiana. And although there were no snaps of a buck toothed firefly, it transpired that the animal handler whom the pair had employed to get them closer to the alligators and other Bayou wildlife was the buck toothed inspiration for the love struck bug.
When asked about the food in New Orleans, Clements admitted it was good, saying that they both gained weight, but, acknowledging the size difference between the pair conceded, “he gained more than me”. The slimmer Musker retorted, “he gained for both of us, which was good!”
The big surprise for me, was that this film was truly traditional. The backgrounds were hand painted, the film makers trying to capture a look somewhere between ‘the Lady and the Tramp’ and ‘Bambi’. The animation drawn on paper, with a pencil, held in a hand of a person. More delights were presented to us, in the form of early working pencil tests, gloriously dirty and grubby. It’s a strange thing, but these crude works are, in a way, more impressive than the final cleaned up seamless animation, as you can really see the work that goes in, in it’s warts and all ugly gloriousness.
The only concession made to paperless animation was to be for effects. The guys admitted that it was very important for them to keep this film as traditional as they could, and had actively seeked to make the style as close to the look of ‘Disney’ as they could. Bear in mind these same guys are not adverse to new styles, getting in Gerald Scarfe to work on the concept design for Hercules.
Having said that, the film does contain some really interesting visual flares, as seen in the 1920’s art deco style employed for Tirana’s dream sequence. We were treated to more sumptuous visuals, this time from Aaron Dougals, illustrating the important aspects of art deco design that were incorporated in this wonderful sequence.
Speaking more generally about animation, and their experiences, the pair admitted that as they once were newcomers to the art and learnt from the veterans, they now are the veterans teaching the kids, employing fresh animators in their twenties to work on the film alongside the seasoned professionals.
Their openness and eagerness to see new work was really pleasing to see. They acknowledged new animators, in particular mentioning the brilliant Goeblins Academy shorts that precede the programs here at Annecy. They even gave a namecheck to both Bournemouth and Falmouth’s animation courses, so it was thrilling to hear such luminaries lending their seal of approval to UK based courses. Hopefully in 25 years we might see a British director delivering such an inspiring talk on behalf of Disney traditional animation.
The only way that you can possibly follow a talk by the guys from Disney is with a talk by the guys of Pixar, and by coincidence, wouldn’t you know it, that’s exactly what was up next.
Teddy Newton, the director of the new Pixar short bounded on stage to present the whole film to the audience – another Annecy world premier. ‘Night and Day’, the short in question, was yet another bar raiser from the Pixar bar raising factory. If these people raise the bar any further then it’s going to escape the Earth’s pull of gravity and float off into space.
Newton, in true Pixar over-enthusiastic manner hilariously milked the applause, triumphantly punching the air and gesturing to the audience to cheer even louder. It’s a stark to contrast the vast majority of animators here, who meekly take to the stage, awkwardly wave a bit and look generally as uncomfortable as I’m going to be in two days when I step on board my Easyjet flight home.
Without anymore fannying about, Newton gave the audience exactly what they wanted, and hit the play button. The lights dimmed, the younger members of the audience excitedly started to make the popping noises and farmyard crows that are amusing the first time you hear them, but by day five have become tedious in the extreme, and the so the elder, more jaded audience members all hissed for shush. One excited man yelled out “Let’s go!”, and some people wet themselves and fainted with the anticipation. One mans head simply fell off, such was his eagerness to see a new piece of work from Pixar.
This six minute long film is notable for many different reasons, the main ones being that it is the first pre feature short to contain traditional animation, as well as the first to be made in stereoscopic 3D. The trad 2D element sees two similar looking, very simple, UPA style characters, with beautifully rendered, deep stereoscopic CG making up their textures, the characters themselves being staged against a black background.
Although they occupy the same space, and their textures depict the same scenery, one of the character’s backgrounds, Night, is set at night, and the other character Day, is set at, wait for it, wait for it… Day. The film is mostly dialogue free, the sound scape being supplied by clever use of the contrasting scenarios being played out within the shape of bodies, making it both naturalistic and expressionist (The only dialogue being a strange sample of a talk show radio host delivering some cod philosophy, which underlines the film’s underlying message for the benefit of the characters, and those of us who couldn’t work it out for themselves).
The characters initially start off wary of one another, each believing the other to be a show off, before they realise that they can in fact educate one another, introducing them to things they have not seen previously – Night can show Day fireworks, Day can teach Night about rainbows – and ends with the pair discovering what they have in common.
Of course, this being Pixar, these high concept ideas and concepts are put across in a very witty and clever manner, and the film is an utter delight to watch, which you should do as soon as you can without me spoiling it for you anymore, so I’ll stop talking about the content now, especially as its a film that is impossible to do real justice to unless you have actually seen it.
Once the film ended, and the rapturous applause died down, Newton took to the stage once again and started to explain all the difficulties that the film makers encountered attempting to convey his grand ideas to screen.
This is a short that required a whole new pipeline to be introduced to Pixar, and their methods of working on this pipeline were completely changed three times over during the course of production. The film had a total of eighteen sets, a stark contrast to the modest two or three basic sets that make up most Pixar shorts. The combination of 2D with the 3D backgrounds rendered in both night and day meant the technical guys considered the short to be three films in one, and the animators struggled, animating in the dark, eyeballing each others work, unsure of which medium to work on first before then discovering more issues with staging when it came to compositing the two together. Newton likened the job as tackling a five-sided rubix cube. It sounds like the production was a complete headache, yet the final piece looks effortless and graceful, and visually flawless.
Pixar always produce the most delicious books to go with each film, crammed full of pre-production artwork. Here we got see not only these flat images, but also some exciting animation tests. We were shown great ideas and gags that were produced during the concept stage of this film which had to be sadly dropped for several different reasons – an ambulance sequence chopped for framing difficulties; a marching band scenario cut for cost.
Amusingly, Newton also played an early test he had created for himself to see if this film would work in 3D. As he didn’t have the facilities to produce stereoscopic work, the test comprised of two separate animations played side by side, and so the audience had to cross their eyes in order to blend the images together, creating the optical illusion. Pixar might be a technical goliath, but it is great to see the artists working so crudely, and then getting a packed cinema to sit crossing their eyes at the screen.
This presentation was a treat for the animators it was squarely aimed at, yet ultimately Pixar are all about family. You can relate aspects of each member of your family back to them. They are smart, like your dad. They are loving, like your mum. They are funny, like your uncle (but not funny in that “don’t go near your uncle, he’s a bit funny” way). They are as kind and caring as your grandparents and as trustworthy and reliable as your best friend. My little sister is annoying though, so in this analogy you are an only child.
Phew. Okay, finally, on to the Shorts in Competition. Today was the final Shorts program, day six of the festival powers down a bit as juries make their decisions, and count the audience ballots that were cast as secretively as a Northerner voting Tory.
Two Rooms
A crudely animated stop motion piece from Japan. The simplistic animation style belies an advanced eye for cinematography. There are some excellent choice of shots employed here to drive the dialogue free narrative, which is simply a story of a couple who grow apart. There is no twist at the end here; it is a slice of life, a typical, sad story of an ultimately doomed relationship. While the style of animation is as far from typical Japanese anime as you could imagine, the visual aesthetics owe a dept to Eastern films, with worm eye views of towering buildings, or shots of static heads with flowing hair. Aided by a simplistic acoustic guitar soundtrack, this is a refreshing animation to come out of Japan.
Monstre Sacre
From the opening frames, this is an instantly snappy, hilarious cartoon. Initially a twisted take on the Ugly Duckling tale, only with a dinosaur in the place of a cygnet, the film wittily transforms into a monster movie, the unloved witless dinosaur becoming the star of big Hollywood movie hits. Culminating with the dinosaur lifting an Oscar, it’ll be interesting to see if this consistently entertaing short wins an award in it’s own right.
Once There Was a Fly
The medium used to make this film about a young fly, gives it a rich oil pastel feel, making it difficult to distinguish much detail out from the blurry images. I guess as the audience struggles to make sense of things, it helps us relate to the young fly as he struggles to understand the world around him. A nice running gag sees the fly constantly, obliviously narrowly avoid death, but in the end he has to face death himself and come to terms with reality.
Playground
A brilliant, abstract animation on offer here, created with felt tip pens and other children’s art tools, evoking a real sense of childhood. The imagery range from epileptic seizure inducing Pollock-esq splats to Aboriginal style amoebas under a microscope, and indeed is flanked by a very Aboriginal sounding soundtrack .
Who’s Bleeding?
What with the title, and coupled with simplistic cutesy cartoon animals, initially I suspected we were up for some Happy Tree Friends type hilarious graphic violence. Instead the story was in fact a quite sweet tale of some anthropomorphic friends who are building a punch and judy type puppet show booth. There is the occasional bit of comedy slapstick pain infliction, but it never tips over into the gleeful dismembering seen in the Mondo shorts. A lovely, funny film for kids with a heart-warming ending.
Love Patate
It is no surprise to discover that the filmmaker is a graduate from Goeblins, as this film has the style of the French animation academy, as seen in the pre program idents, stamped all over it. Supposedly about the love triangle between a man, a woman and a potato, this short is not as funny as that description makes you imagine. There is some interesting imagery used effectively – backgrounds are real photographs, or photomontages, and the occasional shot is in fact live action, expertly woven in to the general style so as to fit perfectly and not feel at all jarring. This short thinks that it is a metaphor for something or other, however it’s not made clear enough what. I took this short at face value – a film about a bloke falling in love with magic potato.
Teclopolis
Every year at Annecy the festival select a country whose output they focus on. This year the country in question is Argentina, and this, Teclopolis, is an example of Argentinean animation. However, this film has not been allowed into the selection simply for it’s place of origin – it is a wonderfully imaginative, strong slice of work.
The story, a warning about the advances of technology contains a message about us becoming slaves to the machine, until ultimately nature fights back and reclaims it’s place in the infrastructure. It uses found, familiar objects, as previously seen done so well by the genius Pez. This serves to make the film even more impressive, as we clearly recognise the sheer scale the sets must have been to create a bustling metropolis fashioned from old used computer keyboards, stacks and monitors. This is a fantastic, fantastical film with a strong message and a great wit displayed. Argentina can be proud.
The Silence Beneath the Bark
A nice looking short, with a Marc Craste influence hiding away somewhere inside the character design and acting. It tells the tale of two… um… creatures, possibly children, or saplings or trees or something, that discover the delights of snow. It looks great, but I had trouble investing a real interest in these strange creatures, having no real idea of what they were supposed to be.
Love & Theft
This is Festival luminary Andreas Hykade’s lastest offering, and it’s a smasher. Starting simple, with a bare white screen featuring lines and circles, Hykades stock in trade style, we build up to an explosion of bold colour, as we are treated to a constantly morphing image that rattles through a ton of iconic animated characters, with a few obscure ones thrown in for good measure (and to make the nerds feel momentarily superior). Hykade’s film is a triumph, and an especially nice touch is the ending, a simple title reading “Thank You All”, a message that can be taken as Hykade thanking his audience for their support, but also for the animators that have influenced him and whos work he has loved – and thieved – to create this work.
A fitting end to the Shorts program of the 50th anniversary festival.
And now an end to this blog. I’m off to have some fun. I’ll post up a list of winners from the closing award show soon, along with a more general overview of the festival as a whole, but cheers for reading this. From me – Thank you all!