Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/13405
UNKRICH:“It kind of is in that the editor is one of the first on the crew and is one of the very last to leave.That’s true of live ac- tion too, but the editor in an animated film is much more deeply and creatively involved in the initial story development.” POST: Tell us about the editing process. UNKRICH: “The film is edited by Ken Schretzmann, with whom I’d worked with first when I co-directed Monsters, Inc.He went on to edit Cars with John Lasseter, and I asked him to do this. I’ve continued to edit myself on every film from the start, and I think of myself first and foremost as an editor. Even though I did direct this, ever since USC film school I’ve seen myself as an editor.That’s my true passion, and I love the process. “In live action, the editor is reactive. He’s given all the footage from the set and has to swim through it and make sense of it all and bring out the best. In animation, there’s some of that too, but there’s also a lot of work that happens before we even create the images. The editor’s very involved in helping to shape the structure and pacing of the film before we do the animation, and because the animation’s so expensive and time consuming we need to be sure we know exactly what we need for every single frame before we even start animating.” POST: All the technology has progressed a great deal since you did the firstToy Story. UNKRICH: “There have been huge ad- vances.The first Toy Story was 1995, and I’ve used the Avid since way before that. I was the assistant editor on Silk Stalkings, the first network TV show to cut on Avid, so over the past two decades I’ve seen the full gamut of change in terms of nonlinear edit- ing. But the basic technology hasn’t changed that much, although it’s changed to accom- modate new formats such as HD and 3D now, but at its core, the system’s very similar to what it was 20 years ago. “The big change is in storage capability. There were limitations back then, since we could only listen to a few soundtracks at a time, now that’s all changed for the better. The other huge change is that computers are now so much faster, and that’s allowed us to have much more dense visual detail and do far more complicated images. In fact, if you compare scenes from the first and third Toy Story films, the original almost looks like a videogame.We always used to joke back then that, ‘This is the ugliest film we’ll ever make,’ since we knew all the technology would only get better, and it has. Toy Story 3 is really gorgeous visually, although at the same time we hope people feel it fits into the design world of the first two films.” POST: Is most of the technology you use proprietary? UNKRICH: “Mostly. Our animation soft- ware package MENV was developed years and years ago for John Lasseter to animate his Pixar short films, and over time it’s be- come very complicated software. All our lighting tools, animation and rendering tools are proprietary.The tools we use that aren’t are things like Photoshop and After Effects. We use Maya quite a lot now for previs, so we use a lot of off-the-shelf soft- ware when it’s the smartest thing to do, but when it comes down to the heavy lifting of actually making our films we’ve developed the soft- ware that does exactly what we want and which gives us the con- trol we need.” POST: This will also be out in Eighty animators worked on 90 minutes of animation. IMAX 3D. Does that entail anything different in terms of post? UNKRICH: “No, as we’re keep- ing the same aspect ratio. They have their own specific needs for their pro- jection and screens, so I think there’s some degree of image processing that’s going on, but other than that they’re just showing our film.” POST: How important is the music and all the sound effects? UNKRICH: “Extremely important, as with any film.When we do our story reels we do very expensive soundtracks using li- brary sound effects or our own that we record, coupled with temp music. “I try to use as much Randy Newman music as possible, as we knew he’d be the composer, and most of the temp soundtrack was created using his music, which really helped him when it came time to actually spot the music.The same holds true for the sound design.We did all the temp work in- house at Pixar; all the sound design and our final mix was done at Skywalker Ranch.”[See our Audio for Animation feature on page 32 for more on Skywalker and Toy Story 3.] POST: It seems as if Hollywood has gone 3D-crazy now? UNKRICH: “Yes, and it seems to be from a marketing and bottom-line perspective. From an artistic perspective, Pixar has al- ways loved 3D, and we’ve done a lot of tests and experimenting over the years.The prob- lem was always exhibition, and digital cinema and 3D exhibition finally got things moving.” POST: What’s next? Are you going to do number four? UNKRICH: “It’s very flattering that peo- ple want another one.With this one, it was very important to me that we didn’t make a film that just felt like another sequel. I wanted it to be of a piece with the first two, and it brings that whole story to a close. Is there a new story out there? We’ll have to wait and see.” www.postmagazine.com July 2010 • Post 13 In addition to proprietary software like MENV, Pixar often calls on off-the-shelf tools such as Photoshop, After Effects and Maya.