Visitors

On Tuesday I was able to attend two talks by visiting famous people, who came to work to talk about past projects. I'm a little behind the times, so I'm only able to get into writing about this now. Sorry!

The first talk was by Stan Winston, the founder of his eponymous studio, and also, it turns out, Digital Domain.
Stan sounds like a truly creative guy, and he described his career path from working in makeup and prosthetics to advanced puppetry and animatronics in "Predator", "Aliens", "The Terminator" and "Jurassic Park".
Stan confesses to know very little about computer graphics, (in spite of running a computer animation studio), but maybe that's a boon in many ways. As a artist in the most traditional sense, he would be unconcerned with megabytes and deformations, and more interested in performance, aethestic, and feeling. This is something I reckon I need to do more of - to step back and look at the big picture with a critical eye. It's ridiculously easy, when beavering away during production to see all trees, and no wood!

The second talk came later in the evening. Pete Doctor, the director of "Monsters Inc", (and general Pixar genius guy), came to introduce his English language translation of "Howl's Moving Castle". The film was good, and it was fascinating to hear how Hayao Miyazaki creates these films. Apparently, he is the story department at Studio Ghibli, and nothing gets underway until he says so. It's such a different way of working to the Western production methodology, and a film is totally dependent on a single visionary.
I wonder what an animated film would be like if produced in America in this way? How many directors would be up to such a task?