Revised Production Schedule

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0At8OprUzORF2dHZPM3VvendNTlJwUmhsTFpQNzlnQ0E#gid=0

Animation Schedule:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0At8OprUzORF2dHZPM3VvendNTlJwUmhsTFpQNzlnQ0E#gid=1

Film Review

Film Review – “La Luna”

Pixar Studio produces its new short animation “La Luna” and shows it to public during the Annecy International Animation Festival this year. The film attracts audiences’ attention and receives widely praise. It is written and directed by Pixar’s head of story Enrico Casarosa, an famous Italian artist who began work as a storyboard artist before working his way up as an animator.^[1] “La Luna” is his directing debut with the short film.

The story is inspired by Casarosa’s own relation with his father and grandfather in the Genoa Sea.^[2] In the beginning of the film, a little boy and his father and grandfather are sitting on a small boat in the sea. Suddenly the giant and bright moon majestically rises up into the dark sky. The father then holds a ladder and they use it climbing up to reach the moon. After landing on it, they see countless shining stars on the surface. Their work is to clean up stars off of the moon. Everything goes well initially, but then a huge star falls onto the moon. They get scared and have no idea about how to deal with it. At this time, the boy starts to look over the star and climbs up to the top of it. He uses a broomstick knocking it and then it falls apart into many small pieces, therefore they can continue to work. After the clean-up completed, they go back to the boat. The scenario zooms out and the full moon changes back to a new moon.

This animation does not only have a great storyline, but also perform amazing sound, visual and aesthetic effect. Justin Pearson plays the role of the sound designer. In order to achieve realistic sound effect, he really found a wooden boat and made sound recording when it’s floating on the lake as well as people were paddling the boat. The stars are another key part in this film. I was wondering how stars would sound like before, and “La Luna” gives me a satisfactory answer. They sound like glass-made objects which perfectly match their shinny appearance and create magical atmosphere for the animation when stars touch each other.

The visual effect of this film is also remarkable. Here is a scenario that I want to review. In the beginning of the animation, the dark sky adds mysterious element to the story. Suddenly the moon jumps out into the sky and becomes the only but powerful light source in the screen. The yellowish light from the moon strongly contrast with the dark blue sky which attracts audiences interested in exploring more about the giant moon. There are lots of scenarios in this film impress me in terms of the graphics rendering, 3D effect and character motions, which demonstrate Pixar’s leading technology in animation production.

In the aspect of aesthetic, the director elaborately designs surrealistic story plot and scenes for “La Luna”. The family’s work is pretty fantastic. They need to climb up a ladder to land on the moon, and clean off the stars in order to turn the full moon back to a new moon. Those behaviors are obviously impossible in real world, but it recalls audiences’ memory about their family love and dream in childhood. The film is obviously made with an immense amount of love, passion, and personal inspiration, and that certainly shines through in the short.

This short animation is one of Pixar’s best in years. It does not only provide me great visual experience, but also inspire my ongoing graduate film. As a good animation, the character motions (facial expression, gesture, movement) should lead audiences to following scenes, which means to get people to know the character’s intentions and motivations. “La Luna” sets a great example in this aspect. To improve the continuity of my graduate animation, I need to re-design the camera angles in some of the scenes, combining with adding more proper guiding frames between the character motions.

“La Luna” is currently touring around film festivals, and will be shown in front of Pixar’s Brave in theater next summer.^[3] This is a great short animation and definitely worth watching it.

References

[1], [2], [3]. “Telluride Review: Enrico Casarosa's Wonderful Pixar Short 'La Luna'” by Alex Billington, Sep.3^rd, 2011