Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1277231
e d i t i o n 2 , 2 0 2 0 c g w 1 9 according to Rubio, was the feature film E.T. Rubio's team mainly used tools from the Pixar box to cra the short. The biggest technical hurdle, according to the director, was the child's hooded jacket when the hood was pulled over Alex's head. "We didn't have a huge budget, so we tried to cheat as much as we could. We showed a little bit of a hand going over the head, but we didn't go completely over the head. Also, I wanted the dad to take off the jacket completely, and that was difficult. We cut corners for that, too," says Rubio. "You see dad start to take the jacket off and then it cuts to another shot, and we come back and the jacket is completely off of Alex." Creating the tears Alex sheds aer his father's outburst was quite the challenge, as well. But, there were just some elements to the short that were too important to skip, despite the difficulty they presented. "They were really important pieces of the film, and I am super grateful that Jane Yen, supervis- ing technical director, and her team were able to pull them off," says Rubio. Completing the short in the given time period required cutting a full minute from the film. "That was a tough one. We went right down to the wire. But I feel like we were successful," Rubio adds. "I still miss that one minute. Maybe there will be a director's cut some day," he says wistfully. As for the float animation, the timing couldn't have been better to tackle that, as many of the animators were just coming off Incredibles 2, in which Jack-Jack flies. "We were looking for more of a graceful Peter Pan type of gliding across the screen for Alex, as opposed to Superman's powerful directional flight or Jack-Jack's tumbling," Rubio points out. Despite the emotional toll the film took, Rubio relishes the opportunity to direct. It also gave him the chance to learn the pipe- line, something he never experienced before as a storyboard artist. "As a director, you get to see the pipeline from the beginning to end, from story to character designs, to the art department and to the sets – how they are built – and animation," he says. "This is a totally different animal from traditional animation [which he previously did at Dis- ney]." Plus, there are the music and lighting elements, too. "All the way from beginning to end, it was a big education for me and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a big learning curve to go through in just six months, but I am confi- dent that if I had to do it again, that I could," says Rubio. Loop (8:00 runtime) Director/writer: Erica Milsom Producer: Krissy Cababa & Michael Warch "Loop" might be a short film but it is long on emotional content. The animated film, directed and written by Erica Milsom, tells the story of two teens at summer camp: a talkative outgoing boy and a very quiet girl, both of whom are paired up on a canoe course. The girl, as we come to learn, is not simply shy. She is non-verbal, autistic. To complete their trip, they must learn how the other experiences the world so they can communicate. Milsom already had been making films on the side and felt participation in the Spark- Shorts program was a natural evolution to her storytelling interests. Milsom is a documentary filmmaker in Pixar's Creative Content department, telling the stories behind the stories of the studio's features. So when the SparkShorts opportunity came up, she was immediately interested, wanting "to explore working inside an animated story versus about an animated story," she says. ("Loop" aired in early January, and now Milsom is directing an upcoming series about the studio that also will be shown on Disney+.) Prior to working for Pixar (she has been there for approximately 15 years), Milsom worked within the disabled community, later teaching a class for disabled adults in her neighborhood where she had met many people who communicated through gestures rather than words. Initially, her reac- tion was to talk her way through a situation with them; the effect was not a good one, she adds. "People were not trying to communicate with me because I was creating a wall of friendly chatter," the director says. "The inspiration for the short came from the work I did as a volunteer." In the film, the boy Marcus tries to com- municate with non-verbal Renee by talking a lot. Renee becomes agitated; Marcus, frustrated. Eventually, they figure out how to communicate. Milsom also drew on her love of canoeing while craing the film. "If you are not getting along or not in sync with your canoeing partner, you are kind of stuck. You can really work against each other," she points out. "So, I thought this would be a good location for fun and also some drama." "Loop" is indicative of the Pixar aesthet- ic. Using the studio's pipeline, the group called on the animators' talents to find very specific and different behaviors and performances from the characters – for the animation and acting, as well as in the voice performances. The biggest technical challenges, accord- ing to Milsom, were the visual points of view and the sonic points of view of the girl, Re- nee. "We had learned that people with au- tism have a different sensory experience of the world, that they might have an amplified sense of the world around them," Milsom explains. "We only had a short time to make the film and had to define an entirely differ- ent look for Renee's point of view." Danielle Feinberg, cinematographer, then asked Milsom to provide some information on her idea of what this POV was, which Feinberg then sent out to the lighters, who were not yet on the project, asking for examples of different kinds of lighting. "Float" looked to live-action films like E.T. for lighting inspiration.