Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1532695
I love working with them so much because they are so malleable. They're so open to new ideas, trying new things. That's a place I wanted to work with when I was a little kid. I thought, "Man, if I could work at ILM one day, that would be incredible." Of course, I was bas- ing it on the kind of practical effects work that they were doing on the Star Wars films and in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Now I want to work with them on everything. We've got a rapport. And when you have that chemistry with fellow creators, you know that you can get a lot more bang for your buck because you're kind of speaking the same language, and you're finishing each other's sen- tences. I've loved my collaboration with them so far, and I want to continue to work with them on everything I do. "Bringing those very grounded elements from real cameras and lenses into the filmmaking helped us tell a believable story..." CGW: How did you work with your animators to encourage them to bring their personal experiences into the film? Shannon Tindle: I would start to tell a very personal story about something that happened to me. And the animator's like, "I'm try- ing to understand what's going on. He's not talking about animation. He's not talking about posing." Until I got to the end of the story and said, "That's what this scene is about. That's where it came from, and that's what I want you to put into it." I tried to encourage that with the team, where I was telling stuff that was deeply personal. I was getting emotional talking about it, and I wanted them to feel the freedom to be able to express their emotions in that way, in that room, to be able to say, "I went through something similar." Because I feel like the more open and vulnerable you are, the more open and vulnerable they can be in their work. And you see it up on the screen. You see those moments up on the screen where they've gone through something. In Ollie, Ollie [a CG character in a live-action environment] can only be seen by Billy except in one instance where Billy's mother is dying, and she can see him. She says, "Can you give me some wa- ter?" It was something that I'd gone through with a family member lying in bed dying. That scene I knew was a tricky one. They put the cup on a rod, and I told them, "Look, if done wrong, people will laugh, and they cannot laugh in this moment." They were so thoughtful in the approach. Ollie is so gentle in it. But again, because I was willing to express something that hap- j a n u a r y • f e b r u a r y • m a r c h 2 0 2 5 c g w 9 Lens flares and virtual crane shots grounded the visuals in reality.