Peter Sohn

As usual Annecy 2009 was a blast and once again there wasn’t enough time to see all the great short films and features or attend all the parties but one of the highlights was to see “Partly cloudy” and get to know what went into the making of the short film which was presented by Peter Sohn, the director himself.

I also managed to ask Peter few questions about storyboarding and I could have asked him few more if only I had thought about preparing some. Something interesting is that he kept talking about showing the emotion the character is going through when storyboarding. I am not sure what he exactly meant but that was still an interesting little chat and I will go through Ratatouille again to try to figure this out. […]

His presentation was a bit unexpected. Instead of going into the technical side of things he explained where the story came to him using Beat boards illustrating his childhood and his relationship with his mother then how he pitched the story to the Pixar “Braintrust” and the technical guys.

Just like Doug Sweetland last year, he showed us an animatic from “UP” while doing the voices and FX. The chosen sequence was the one when Carl escapes from the two guys who were escorting him to the retirement home. One of the shots had the house flying over the guys minibus and I was surprised they didn’t have the house flip the minibus over, Pixar story guys are known to thing about everything so I asked Peter about it and he replied with a big smile “well…. I didn’t think about it but you know what ….. we eventually put it in the final shot!”

Few days later we had an other presentation with “Up” codirector Bob Peterson who is … “really funny” as Peter Sohn kept saying but I didn’t take any notes and I only remember that …. it was really funny 😉

An other great Pixar meeting was the one regarding how to get a job at Pixar. I wanted to hear what they had to say about Animation Mentor showreels and they admitted that they are a bit tired of seeing the same character all the time. We were suggested to “download some other characters from internet”. I am guessing they meant the naked Bishop and wouldn’t mind some crazy Bishop mod. We were also told that they have very good lawyers when it comes down to Visas but if Dreamworks didn’t manage to get a Visa for one of my friend, I am sure it is exactly the same for Pixar.

Well this was a quick summary from Annecy. Let’s see if I find the time to talk about how well received was my friend Babass shortfilm “Madagascar” (he was out of competition and managed to win a prize!). Ohhhhhh Studio AKA “Lost and found”!

Man I nearly forgot to talk about that one! I loved it! This is a brilliant short film, I kept laughing throughout the short. All those nice little touches. The premise itself is too funny.”It’s about the friendship that develops between a boy and a lost penguin who shows up at his doorstep”. Check the trailer here:

http://www.studioaka.co.uk/studioaka_files/movies/Lost and found

and some pictures on Cartoon Brew:

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/cgi/studio-akas-lost-and-found.html

Aka posted a link to Amazon where the DVD can be bought for only £6!
Amazon link

That’s it for now!