In
an interview to Collider, the director and creator of The Blue Umbrella, Saschka
Unseld spoke about doing something new with Pixar and the origin of the film.
The
Blue Umbrella is currently playing with Monsters University.
“Question:
Where did this idea come from?
Saschka
Unseld: Well, the core idea was me literally walking through San Francisco on a
rainy day, and finding an umbrella that someone tossed away or lost. It was
lying on the side of the street, half-broken and drenched, and people just kept
passing by. It just looked like saddest thing in the world. That picture just
stuck with me. And then, nearly a year later, when I was trying to come up with
ideas for short films, that picture was just so ingrained in my head that I thought,
‘What happened to that poor thing? What could be its story?’
…
How
challenging was the animation of this short?
UNSELD:
It was funny because, theoretically, this short is ridiculously complicated. Normally,
a short is two characters and one set, and that’s it. But, if you count the
city characters we have, there’s a crazy amount of characters. It takes place
on a huge city block with crowds and hundreds of cars, and it rains the whole
time. It’s photo real, in a short that’s six minutes. Every department
theoretically could have been really scared, but they were all super excited.
Even the crowds department was like, ‘That’s amazing! That’s a showcase for
what we do.’ The effects department was like, ‘That’s amazing! It’s a showcase
for what we do.’ There was something for every department. The rain is a third
character in the film. If you watch it again and pay attention, there are
different kinds of rain and there are different sounds for the rain, whether it’s
a romantic moment or a really dry moment. This was a massive opportunity. You
can add so much to a short by just having what you do shine.
Is
the photo-real technology the same as traditional animation?
UNSELD:
It’s not more difficult to do. It’s interesting to do it at a studio like Pixar because the tradition
is not photo real. Everyone was excited about the idea of doing something that’s
different. Simple can be crazy hard. Surprisingly, the faces on the umbrellas
were really, really difficult to do. That was way more difficult than we
thought it would be, in the end.
… ”
… ”
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