Bit of an exciting week for me, I’m trying to be present and enjoy these rather special times. Tomorrow morning at 5:30am they announce the Oscar Nominations – fingers crossed – Then on thursday we are driving down to the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. La Luna is screening the night of the premiere in front of Lawrence Kasdan’s new film Darling companion. It’s just fantastic that an animated short would open in front of film like this. It’s an absolute honor to be there in such company with our little film, just like it was at Telluride when we screened in front of Wenders’ Pina. In fact I’d love to see this become a trend and witness more shorts of all types screen at festivals’ premieres.
So there you have it, will I be able to sleep tonight? Hard to tell, but as we’d say in Italy (for break a leg)-”In bocca al Lupo” to us and we would answer-”Crepi!”.
I leave you with a photo of the advance copy of the La Luna storybook I received a few days ago. I’ll tell you more about it soon, but it’ll be available in May, pre-order here.
A couple of weeks back when we were down in LosAngeles for the Animation Breakdown screening of La Luna I sat down for a video interview with David Polland. I enjoyed our chat, he’s very good at making it an informal and relaxed affair. Now if I could only get past listening to my own voice …
We have a great event to benefit the Cartoon Art Museum happening this saturday at Pixar, there might be even some tickets left for purchase if you’re so inclined. Among the many wonderful things Michael Johnson has been organizing to make it a special day at Pixar, we’ll be showing La Luna and I’ll be talking about the making of it. I also just finished this watercolor for the art auction section (which is always an amazing and unique chance to get yourself some original art by many talented Pixarians).
UPDATE – you can bid on-line here on this watercolor and many other pieces by amazing artist such as Ronnie del Carmen, Daniela Strijleva, Pete Docter, Scott Morse, Derek Thompson and more.
And it’s a wrap! One last thing I wanted to share: during the production of La Luna every sunday night at the end of a weekend I’d be like: “YES! IT’S MONDAY TOMORROW!! I CAN’T WAIT!”. I’ve had a lot of great times at Pixar but never before had I this feeling about going to work on a monday, I couldn’t wait to get to work and see one more small piece of this big puzzle coming together. That’s how special making La Luna was for me. I can’t wait till you all can see this short we made … cheers!
Kevin Reher (La Luna’s producer) and Aj Riebli (Production manager) with SupTech Daniel McCoy and I at the Pixar atrium. Kevin and Aj are working behind the scenes to get us the crew and resources we need at the time we need them … all with the goal to finish La Luna within time and budget. It’s a harder job than it sounds, there’s a huge amount of juggling of talent within a studio like Pixar.
The lighting department is responsible for the final look of the movie, they translated Bill Cone’s colorscript beautifully! Lighters are also known to live in dark dark caves, but they are really friendly … they were also an absolute hoot to work with! From left (in first photo): Fonz, Charu, Esdras, Kyoung, Bryan (Lighting Lead) and Mathieu!
One silly anecdote, I found “finaling” a shot with a guitar riff, accompanied by a loud “F$#% YEAH!!!” to be the most effective and satisfying way to final something! I also found I have an innate talent for “air guitaring”.
I stop by at Supervising Technical director of La Luna Daniel McCoy’s office to check on the shading on one of our props. We actually watercolored most of the textures we applied to our models.
Steve Bloom and I record temporary gibberish for the story reels. The actors changed but the gibberish and the gesticulating stayed! I am acting as grandpa, can you tell? By the way here‘s an old cartoon I grew up with in Italy, La Linea. Inspiringly goofy stuff.
We try and figure out the physics of sweeping with animators Juan Carlos Navarro and Javier Moya. We video sessions like these to help capture the right movement. Won’t tell you much more than this to avoid spoilers!
I am acting as grandpa, can you tell? By the way 
