Sask.-raised animator's work up for Oscar
Last Updated: Wednesday, January 26, 2011
6:01 PM CST Comments7Recommend12.
CBC News
The hand-drawn animated film The Illusionist is nominated for an Academy Award. (Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics) An animator and filmmaker originally from Yorkton, Sask., will be schmoozing with Hollywood elite after learning the movie he worked on, The Illusionist, is up for an Academy Award.
Paul Dutton, who now works in Calgary, was animation director of the film and learned of the Oscar nomination Tuesday morning.
"My wife and I were set up in the kitchen, watching ... and woke all the kids with the shouting," Dutton told CBC News in an interview Wednesday. "It was good to be the centre of attention for a day. Lots of fun."
The animation for The Illusionist was unique, considering the advent of computers into the genre, in that each frame was drawn by hand.
"It's quite a difficult way to make a movie," Dutton said. "We were set up on the top floor of a space in Edinburgh, Scotland.
"It was a small international crew on a tight budget, working long hours," he said. "The process required each and every frame be done by hand."
"When we started, we had a difficult time finding people," he added. Dutton solved that problem by embarking on a recruitment drive across Europe, "which was a lot fun. But I saw a lot of hotels and airports."
Some of the talent had other jobs, such as bus driver, and were animating in their spare time. "It was very difficult to find our crew," he said, adding that some came from previous well-known projects, such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
The story of The Illusionist follows an old music hall performer whose career is fading but, as he travels from gig to gig, finally captures a receptive audience in a remote part of Scotland.
Jacques Tati inspires main character
The production paid extra attention to the lead "actor" for the story, which is based upon Jacques Tati.
In France Tati was a beloved live-action filmmaker, who might be equated with Charlie Chaplin. Tati's movies came after the silent era but also eschewed dialogue. His on-screen mannerisms were well known to his audience.
"We really had to study, to get those [movements] right," Dutton said. The team watched his movies, including the seminal work Mon Oncle, and interviews.
"We drew pictures from anything we could [find] to get his mannerisms," Dutton explained.
The story for The Illusionist was written by Tati in the 1950s, but never produced until now.
While the majority of the scenes were drawn from the imaginations of the artists, Dutton said some sequences relied heavily on reference material shot to guide the artists, including a segment featuring a Scottish dance.
"I took a camera out to a small amateur group who enjoyed doing traditional Scottish dance and played them the [music] track. They choreographed something and we captured it on video," Dutton explained.
The result was edited and provided to an animator as a visual guide. "It took that animator probably eight months to do those two scenes," he said, noting the results appear on screen for about 45 seconds.
"It's a labour of love," Dutton said.
Dutton's animation career was inspired as a youngster watching Saturday morning cartoons with his grandfather and fostered by a insatiable desire to draw.
"I drew and I drew and I drew," he said, recalling a time in high school when he met an animator, from Yorkton, who was working in Australia. "I figured if he could do it, I could do it." Dutton said that, so far, he has carved out a niche in the hand-made animation genre and has resisted the lure of Los Angeles and computer rendering.He currently runs a production company called Rough House Animation, with a number of works in progress.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/2011/01/26/sk-animator-the-illusionist-110126.html#ixzz1CF6Vs5ql
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