A seven minute film which took three years to make, about an old rabbit that climbs into an oven and goes to heaven, may win an Academy Award. And Chris Wedge couldnt be happier.
This is something that, as a filmmaker, you dream of, says Wedge, VP/creative development at bicoastal Blue Sky|VIFX, about his movie, Bunny. The short, written and directed by Wedge, has received an Oscar nomination in the category, Best Animated Short Film. The computer-crafted piece tells the story of an old, widowed rabbit who battles with a moth which plagues her in the kitchen. It is funny, poignant, and amazingly real in its technical trickery. The lighting, movement, and expressiveness of the characters make it hard to believe that the rabbit and her environs only exist in a computer-generated world.
I couldnt get this idea out of my head for years, recalls Wedge, who traces it back to 1987 when he and five others co-founded Blue Sky. What got it started were ideas about what I would like our images to look like. So I designed it to take place in a storyboard setting, with rich, natural lighting and cozy details. Making it gave us an opportunity to do entertaining character animation and still tell a story that was funny and had emotional value.
Bunny is one of five films chosen from a field of over 50 for an Oscar nomination. (The other nominated films are: The Canterbury Tales by Christopher Grace and Johnathan Myerson, More by Mark Osborne and Steve Kalifer, Jolly Roger by Mark Baker and When Life Departs by Karsten Kiilerich and Stefan Fjeldmark.) The movie is part of a growing trend among CGI/effects houses to encourage the development and creation of short projects. Lucas Digital Independent Projects Program at Marin County-based Industrial Light+Magic currently has 15 such projects in production, nine of which are CGI-related. Pacific Data Images (PDI) in Palo Alto, and Pixar in Richmond, Calif., also encourage artists to pursue short films.
Although there is no obvious financial reward for such projectsathe three-year gestation of Bunny does not exactly make good business senseathere are many reasons why effects houses are developing shorts.
Radiosity Heads
From a technical point of view, the projects allow houses to test new software and hardware. Bunny, for instance, is the first to use an advanced computer rendering technique known as radiosity, which mimics the properties of natural light, giving the movie a warm, filmic style. It offered us a chance to test software without the crunch of production deadlines, explains Dave Walvoord, senior technical director at Blue Sky and the digital effects supervisor on Bunny. Whenever there was downtime, that gave us something to focus on. It became a great teaching tool.
Wedge envisioned a specific look that would be difficult for a computer to create; he had been inspired by rich, three-dimensional, very detailed childrens storybooks. I wanted to make a computer-animated film that did not expose the technique at all, he says. And I think it would be difficult for an untrained eye to know it is computer-generated. There is so much visual information there; we wanted it to look beautiful and move beautifully.
The fruits of such work can be directly applicable elsewhere, either in features or commercials. Pixar employed techniques it had developed in its short films for the full-length features Toy Story and A Bugs Life, and, in fact, used its shorts as an entree into feature work. It has since gotten out of the commercial business.
Developing short subjects also gives technical artists the chance to explore new ideas during time between jobs. That is one reason, for instance, that Lucas Digital set up its Independent Projects Program a little more than two years ago. In it, an employee with an idea may put together a proposal, including a creation schedule and the costs. These are submitted to the companys president and chief operating officer, and then approvals are given.
The objective is really to let employees have an opportunity to explore personal creativity, says Vicki Dobbs Beck, director of digital production operations at ILM. The approval process does not involve creative judgments. We think doing this is a win-win situation. Artists are happy and feel creatively challenged, and we benefit because theyre happy and are broadening their skill set.
Pixar has a similar program, in which ideas can be pitched by anyone in the company. We do short films for two reasons, says Jan Pinkava, animation director at Pixar. It gives people who have good ideas the ability to direct and secondly, occasionally, we push technology and do R&D [research and development] with it.
For last years Academy Award-winning short, the Pinkava-directed Geris Game, the company developed a surfacing technology that made the faces of characters very flexible and expressive. We needed great acting, so we wanted to do better faces, he explains. And the second thing we did was create a cloth simulation software which allowed us to clothe a character in jackets and pants. Then the computer calculated all the wrinkles and folds of the clothes as the character moved. Thats a tough thing to do in the virtual world.
Creating shorts keeps up morale and engenders an even greater loyalty and passion for the company and its projects. As a company, we would like to be able to support and encourage the employees, observes Beck. Its a growth opportunity and creates a positive environment.
We hire any number of creative talent from all backgrounds, notes Carl Rosendahl, founder/chairman of PDI. A lot are fantastic artists who have great creative talent and time between jobs. From early on, we have encouraged people to take advantage of those resources. The processes help in our commercial work by pushing technology and it really pushes the creative skill sets of the people here. They develop into better animators, better effects people, and better producers by working on something that is longer format than a 30-second commercial. Its a great experience for everyone and they all come out stronger from it.
Shortfalls?
But shorts are costly and many dont do them. They are not worthwhile financially, admits John Hughes, owner/president of Los Angeles-based Rhythm & Hues Studios. Good animation costs about a million dollars a minute, so if youre going to do a four or five-minute film, you are investing four or five million dollars in them. Theyre only useful as a marketing tool to get feature work. Pixar did very very well by doing shortsaIm very impressed by their workabut they did those at an enormous loss.
Nonetheless, those who create the projects have no complaints. We see it as investing in the company, in the people, in technology that directly feeds into features, says Pinkava. They are a way to set ourselves a goal. Instead of doing it in a lab, we are really making a short film that has to work, and doing everything to make sure it does work.
And touring festivals and winning a few awards doesnt hurt, either We believe in the creative talents of the people we employ and feel they should use them as much as possible, explains Rosendahl. Its good for morale. It does push R&D, but, most importantly, it gets people excited about playing with the effects. We leverage off that. We enter the shorts in festivals and competitions and try to get shown worldwide. Our latest, Millennium Bug, has been at the Ottawa Animation Festival, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Slamdance Film Festival, and the New York Underground Film Festival. Appearing like that is a great marketing tool.
Or, as Bunny-man Chris Wedge puts it: I cant imagine an Oscar nomination will do our commercial business any harm.1
