PRESS: Cinesite Sneak Peeks ‘Addams Family 2’, Spotlights 5 Animated Adventures with Aniventure at Annecy
If there’s one thing filmmaking is not, it’s not a solo act. It can be a struggle to find the right people to collaborate with. It can be hard to find a community of people you trust who will make your work better. It was great to hear first-hand from eight esteemed directors during our session at Annecy Film Festival that they found what they were looking for at Cinesite.
If you couldn’t make the Annecy Festival live stream, have a look at this Animation Magazine article for a mini-sneak peek of some of the amazing projects we have in production and to read the director’s thoughts on working with us in full (article & presentation extracts below).
Rob Minkoff director & producer of Blazing Samurai: “I’ve been working on this project for a very very long time and it’s been a rollercoaster! Up and down, back and forth & sideways and every way you can imagine. In some respects, at the very beginning, it was one of the most difficult things i’d ever done, but when Cinesite & Aniventure came aboard the project it has actually turned into one of my most favourite professional experiences of my career. ”
Conrad Vernon, director of The Addams Family 2: “We had significantly less time to get this one done. The first one was a hit so MGM was really looking to come out with the second one as fast as possible; that’s why they set a date immediately, ’cause they were really excited about having a second one,” Vernon shared. “So, we are literally going from script to screen in around two years, which is pretty much unheard of for an animated movie — and the Cinesite team really, really rose to the occasion.”
Mark Koetsier, director of Blazing Samurai: “One of the unique things that [Cinesite] brought to it, which we didn’t have that much of a ‘look’ to it yet, was the flashbacks. We were looking at traditional animation, something different, maybe a different color styling altogether. What Cinesite brought to us was this comic-book look — very extreme darks, very ‘pop’ color, much like a Mike Mignola style of comic book. Very unique, very fun to watch, and they have done an incredible job on it.”
David Silverman, director of Extinct: “One of the biggest challenges on this film was of course we had these characters that the writers put in the script they have a hole in the middle of ’em. Well, that was a little tricky to design at first, because every design we did it looked like you had character with a comedy gunshot hole in the middle of them as opposed to something that kind of organically looked like that. … Character designer Ryan O’Loughlin came up with a good concept of it — he sort of built the character around this hole and it became a ring, kind of doughnut-looking character,” Silverman explained. “The drawings were great, but when you see this CG character you think, OK, is this gonna work?, when you see it in that sort of crucifixion pose. The animators at Cinesite really gave it a real personality and a real life. They found ways of bending it and moving it that seemed natural.”
