Updated July 20, 2010

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Watching the paint dry...

I haven’t blogged or journaled what’s been going on production-wise with the film in quite some time, but this—as I mentioned in an earlier blog—is because we’ve been so busy.  Executive Producing and Directing a feature length film has proven to be the single most challenging endeavor of my 15+ year career in animation.  Wearing so many weighty production hats, as well as keeping up with the ongoing artist development of mentoring/training students in the technique and skill of tradigital 2D animation is quite honestly like having several full-time jobs.  Thankfully I have a wonderful and fiercely devoted production staff that make managing this ambitious project feasible.  We are all constantly learning and adapting as the production chugs along and we meet every challenge that comes our way from logistics to creative solutions to our process.

Another contributing factor to my lack of much to say these days is where we are in production.  I think I mentioned in my previous blog that we reached the point of final sign-off or Network Approval for the Animatic.  In layman’s terms, that means all the story changes and script revisions that were an ongoing facet of production since we were picked up by BET (Black Entertainment Television) came to an end about two months ago, and we’ve been in the stage of Principal Animation ever since.  All those creative back and forth and significant story changes made for quite entertaining blog-fodder.  Character design revisions are interesting because you can see and share how a character evolves over time from conception to the final designs that make it in the film, as was the case with Nandi and Thedlewe.  Our revised ending climax provided fascinating insight into the political and creative compromises that ultimately have to be made in a production that has to go through many phases of approval from Network Programming executives to the Network’s Standards and Practices legal department in order to arrive at content that everyone is happy with.  But when you get past that point, and the story and all the major elements that we’re using to tell that story, including character designs, storyboards, voice performances, layouts, animation style, color palettes—we’ve even had discussions on the color of the male characters' nipples and how far below the navel loin cloths and skirts should fall on the indigenous costumes—when all that is settled and signed off on, all that’s left is to animate until the every scene  of every sequence in completed…and that, my friends, can be like watching paint dry, or grass grow. 

Some scenes—depending on the amount of characters, the length of the scene and range of action and dialogue—can take weeks to complete.  Some scenes—shorter, less complicated scenes—take only hours.  But whether a scene takes hours or weeks, it’s a slow, painstaking process that happens drawing by drawing, level by level, frame by frame at 30 frames per second per character. It’s a slow, sometimes painfully laborious process, but eventually it’s all worth it.  Immediately, it sucks.  You work and work for a week or two and when the scene is completed and approved, you hit the playback button and the .swf movie plays and it lasts all of three or four seconds and you can’t believe how many hours and/or days of your life went into it with all of three or fours seconds to show for it.  But, after the whole team has been animating for months, the frames start to add up to seconds, and the seconds start to add up to minutes, and eventually the accumulation of scenes become sequences and finished sequences get you that much closer to a finished movie.

The Zulu Crew has put a not-insignificant dent into this film.  We have a few months of animation to go, so there’s lots more to do, but there’s enough to be able to sit back and watch a current Work-In-Progress print and bask in how much we’ve accomplished thus far—as well as sigh at how much more we have to go!  But, it’s coming together—and not just the animation.  We got the orchestrated version of our end credits song from our composer about a week ago, and when I heard it, I almost cried.  To understand my reaction, you have to understand a little about my upbringing...

Most of you know that my father works for The Walt Disney Company, and for over thirty years of his almost 40 year tenure with the company, he worked for Feature Animation on films from The Rescuers to The Little Mermaid, to The Lion King to Atlantis.  Long before Pixar started treating audiences to animated “bloopers” during the end-credits of their films, causing people to stay for the closing credit scroll, my family stayed for the credits, when just about everyone else was walking out of the theatre.  We had to—my father’s name was going to roll up the screen and we had to wait for it, and applaud accordingly.  And because we knew his friends and co-workers, we felt obliged to stay and applaud their credit as well—or at least stay and honor all their hard work by sitting through their name.  I remember the first time I saw my name scroll up the screen in a Disney movie—in the Lion King.  It was at the official cast and crew screening at the El Capitan Theatre, so of course everyone stayed and clapped through the last closing titles, but I remember how amazing it felt to have your recognition, and to have people staying to help make that recognition special.  It’s a feeling I’ve almost forgotten as my career in animation has been almost exclusively in Broadcast commercial animation since I left Disney and there is no credit scroll at the end of a 30 second commercial on Cartoon Network or TBS.  But I digress…

While sitting through the end credits of Disney animated features growing up, that is when you would hear the pop-ballad version of some song in the film.  Remember Regina Bell and Peabo Bryson singing Beauty and the Beast during the end credits of that film, or Vanessa Williams singing Colors of the Wind at the end of Pocahontas.  I’ve always associated that feeling of goose-pimply awe from hearing a soulfully sung R&B rendition of one of the film’s touching ballads with my experience sitting in the theatre as a child, plotting that one day, I’d be sitting there listening to the end credits song of my own movie.  Well, when the orchestrated version of the end credits song in Kasha came back from the composer last week, that lifelong obsession—that epic journey from plotting in the theatre as a child to hearing the actual fruition of a childhood of ambition near completion—I was nearly brought to tears.  And not just because I co-wrote the song, so it’s my baby in more ways than one, but because it’s such a beautiful song, and captures the essence of what Kasha is about—personal self-esteem that comes from just being here.  The song is titled, Child of a King and believe me, it’s powerful.

While you won’t hear Child of a King in a darkened multiplex due to the fact that Kasha is going to be broadcast on Network television and not released in theatres, you will hear it as the credits roll by because the credit scroll is a part of Network Broadcast (even though they are often times the victim of squeeze-credits…when the Network crunches them down into a corner or off to the side and runs them smaller and faster than it’s possible to read in the interest of setting up the content to follow or squeezing in a station ID).  But in in the case of squeeze-credits, the DVD version of Kasha—which will be almost 20 extra minutes of content—will have unfettered end credits guaranteed.  As I listened to the orchestrated version of this beautiful song, sung beautifully by a young woman named Latoya White who lives down in Valdosta, I realized my little “Pinocchio” was slowly becoming a real boy—a boy named Kasha who has a run-in with the Zulu King.  And while watching animation happen frame by frame is like watching paint dry, listening to that song is like witnessing a dream come true.  An experience as indescribable as true love or the most beautiful sunset you’ve ever seen in your life.  I listen to it over and over almost every day, afraid I’ll get sick of hearing it.  But every time I hear it, it’s almost like I’m hearing it for the very first time.  And that’s hearing the song in isolation.  I can’t imagine how I’ll feel after the film’s premiere, as I’m glued to my seat, listening to a literal dream come true—humbled beyond belief that it came from my mind—my heart—my soul—the talent God blessed me with.

I guess there is quite a lot to blog about...even while we’re in the middle of the slow and arduous grind of watching digital paint dry…

…now, back to the drawing tablet.

Jai