Daniel Jeannette, who served as animation director and visual effects supervisor on the recently released Spike Jonze-directed feature film Where The Wild Things Are, has embarked on a directorial career, joining San Francisco-area production house Hoytyboy Pictures for spots and branded content.
Jeannette is no stranger to commercialmaking, having been an animator on select ad projects, including a cel animation Kellogg’s job for the U.K. market back when he was at Passion Pictures, London. Years later, upon moving stateside and hooking up with Industrial Light+Magic (ILM), San Rafael, Calif.–where he enjoyed a 10-year tenure, primarily in feature films–Jeannette was animator on a CGI/visual effects/live-action combo spot for GMAC.
“Short form allows for a distinctly different creative opportunity and that’s a big part of why I decided to move into commercial directing,” related Jeannette who added that he gravitated to Hoytyboy for several reasons. “It’s a house that doesn’t limit itself–the company does work representing a variety of styles and disciplines. They have expertise in animation, visual effects and live action and they show the ability to figure out different ways to tell stories by using different techniques. I’m interested in mixing animation and live action but in unconventional kinds of ways. I’m interested in creating characters but not necessarily always relying on the same techniques.”
Jeannette also cited his personal affinity for the work of director Steve “Spaz” Williams, a founding partner in Hoytyboy along with executive producer Clint Goldman. Jeannette was at ILM during the time that Williams and Goldman were there. “I didn’t get the chance to work with them directly back then but I knew of them and their work and now feel excited to be working with them at Hoytyboy,” said Jeanette.
In some respects, joining Hoytyboy parallels past moves by the director in that they have been motivated by the desire “to try something new and spread my wings into new areas.” For example, after a successful 10 years at ILM–which saw him progress from computer graphics animator on Jumanji to character animation supervisor on 101 Dalmatians, lead digital character animator on The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and animation supervisor on Mighty Joe Young, The Mummy, The Mummy Returns and Van Helsing–Jeannette decided to go independent. “ILM was a great place to work at and gave me a tremendous constant education. But I wanted a bit more freedom to choose my projects.” This eventually led him to director George Miller whose filmmaking over the years, said Jeannette, “ranges from Mad Max through Lorenzo’s Oil to Happy Feet–stories that are as different as different can be.”
Jeanette was animation director on Happy Feet, which won the best animated film Oscar in 2007. (Animation/VFX studios on the film were Animal Logic, Rhythm+Hues, and Giant Killer Robots.)
Happy Feet also helped Jeannette develop a relationship with Warner Bros, which in turn reached out to him for another project in the pipeline, Where the Wild Things Are, beginning a collaboration with Jonze.
“I knew of Spike, including his commercials and video work but had never met him before,” related Jeannette. “He was great to work with, the biggest challenge of the project being to make it totally true to the book. Our concern was how do you expand the story of Where The Wild Things Are without adding on unnecessary story and elements. We set out to make a movie that relied on the emotional truth of the book and its characters. We wanted to develop characters that reflected the book, making sure they didn’t become some technically driven visual effects creations. We didn’t want the characters to call attention to themselves that way. This was a location movie. There wasn’t a lot of studio shooting. We had the physicality of people in costume on location, some performing stunt work, yet there was still a gestation period in postproduction where the movie had to come together, with faces being animated and moving to match the physical performances and all the creative choices made during the shoot.”
Jeannette oversaw the creative direction and management of the visual effects and animation for Where The Wild Things Are, working closely with the VFX studios that produced the work (Framestore, Iloura, Jim Henson’s Creature Shop).
Traditional roots
Jeannette started some 25 years ago studying animation in Paris at the famed Gobelins School. “There was not much CG then,” he recalled. “It wasn’t mainstream but experimental, so I found myself with a more traditional animation education–studying animation, editing and film, cutting on film and putting soundtracks together. There was no Avid, no Final Cut, but in many ways that was an advantage in terms of being able to grasp and get involved in the very basics of traditional animation filmmaking.”
In those days, though, upon his graduating, there wasn’t the range of animation opportunities in France to which Jeannette aspired. “It was pretty much all in TV animation and I did some of that work but I saw there were more opportunities in the U.K. and moved to Manchester for a year and a half to work on a feature.”
Jeannette returned to Paris for some low-budget feature fare. There he paradoxically found benefit to an animation talent pool that wasn’t all that deep. “Feature producers couldn’t rely solely on French talent. They had to call on Spanish, Canadian, British and American animators. “It was like creating a unique community of people with different backgrounds and experiences, and I think that helped to re-energize animation in Europe–a lot of those people went on to work on Roger Rabbit in London when it came in the late 1980s.”
Jeannette then himself relocated to London to work for the Amblin Entertainment/Universal animation studio (Amblimation) where he served as animator on such animated feature projects as An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (the sequel to the original Fievel movie) and Balto. It was in the U.K. where he got the chance to diversify into the alluded to commercials via Passion Pictures.
Computer animation then started to pick up momentum. “Shorts like Luxo Jr. started to emerge, showing the face and promise of computer animation,” recollected Jeannette. “Yet there were still many traditional animation people in denial, branding computer animation as great but mechanical, contending that nothing would come of it. I didn’t feel that way at all. I’ve always been open minded and progressive about art. I felt like cel animation was on a path to self-destruction if this denial continued. I started to seek out projects in Europe but found more was happening in the U.S. I heard ILM was looking for people to do a dinosaur movie, which turned out to be Jurassic Park. I didn’t get the job but when the movie came out, it represented a huge reinforcement of what I believed. I’ve always been fascinated by the mix of live action and animation. Animation brings characters that don’t exist to life. When you add live action to the mix, it can become magical. So around 1994 I moved to the U.S., joining ILM where I learned the ropes about computer technology. I climbed up the ladder there, using my skills as an animator.”
The big break came when Jeannette got the chance to do a scene in which a stampeding elephant crushes a car in the movie Jumanji. “That was one of my first pieces of computer animation and thankfully it turned out well and sort of drew attention to me at ILM and translated into opportunities on other films.” That filmography spanned such pictures as 101 Dalmatians, Mighty Joe Young, The Mummy, The Mummy Returns and Van Helsing, with him serving as animation supervisor on the latter four movies.
“They were great experiences,” said Jeannette. “On Van Helsing I was shooting second unit visual effects plates, working extensively in live action. That was concrete, valuable experience.”
Still the big picture VFX grind also entailed some repetition from one project to the next. “I wanted to explore other kinds of things which led me to go on my own, and eventually to working with George Miller,” said Jeannette.
Beyond the fruitful collaboration with Miller, which encompassed Happy Feet, Jeannette also garnered a piece of advice from the filmmaker. “He told me not to rush into anything just because it has the word ‘director’ attached to it,” said Miller. “I’m taking that to heart now as I look to break into directing. George told me to never engage in directing something you don’t believe in. You have to feel a project’s meaning from a story point of view and aesthetically if you are going to be successful as a director.”
