General News

The Academy Celebrates: ANIMATED FEATURES Oscar Nominees – Video

By Michelle McCue | February 22, 2013

On Thursday evening at the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills, the Academy invited movie fans to join in the celebration of the work of this year’s Oscar nominees in the Animated Feature Film category. Although not pictured above, director Tim Burton was on hand for the panel discussion hosted by actor Rob Riggle (HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA, DR. SEUSS’ THE LORAX).

The nominees discussed how their films were developed, talked about their creative processes, and presented clips illustrating their techniques. All were adamant in saying that animated films are not cartoons and that there is place for both stop-motion and CGI in the genre.

The Animated Feature Film nominees are:

BRAVE
Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman

This is the second nomination for Mark Andrews and the first in this category. He made his feature directorial debut with BRAVE.

After interning at Disney, Andrews worked as a story-board artist on several films. At Pixar Studios he co-wrote and co-directed the 2005 short ONE MAN BAND, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Animated Short Film.

This is the first nomination for Brenda Chapman, who unfortunately was sick and couldn’t attend the panel. She has worked at Disney on such films as THE LITTLE MERMAID, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and THE LION KING. In 1994 Chapman joined the newly-formed DreamWorks Animation, and was one of three directors on their 1998 feature THE PRINCE OF EGYPT. Chapman conceived the original story for BRAVE and served as one of its two directors.

Both directors drew from life experiences with their own daughters as inspiration for Merida’s tale.

FRANKENWEENIE
Tim Burton

Burton worked on the Disney animated feature THE FOX AND THE HOUND (1981) and directed two short films for the studio, the stop-motion VINCENT and the live-action FRANKENWEENIE, before directing his first feature, PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE. In 2005, Burton earned an Oscar nomination for Animated Feature Film for TIM BURTON’S CORPSE BRIDE.

Burton said he returned to FRANKENWEENIE nearly three decades after he conceived the original idea, reimagining the story as a stop-motion animated feature.

PARANORMAN
Sam Fell and Chris Butler

This is the first nomination for both. Fell made his feature directing debut with FLUSHED AWAY, co-directed by David Bowers, and followed that with THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX, co-directed by Rob Stevenhagen.

Butler spent more than ten years writing the original script for PARANORMAN, which marks his screenwriting and directorial debut. Among the film’s inspirations are classic Ray Harryhausen movies and Butler grandmother, who once told him she was going to “watch over” him.

They mentioned that PARANORMAN is a throwback to the 1980’s horror films and a cross between John Hughes and John Carpenter.

THE PIRATES! BAND OF MISFITS
Peter Lord

Lord formed Aardman Animations with David Sproxton in 1972 as a low-budget studio for shorts and trailers. Nick Park joined Aardman in 1985, and over the next two decades the company produced the Oscar-winning shorts CREATURE COMFORTS, THE WRONG TROUSERS and A CLOSE SHAVE, and the Oscar-winning feature WALLACE & GROMIT IN THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT. PIRATES marks Lord’s return to directing 12 years after his last feature, CHICKEN RUN. This is his third nomination and the first in this category. He was nominated for the animated short films Adam (1992) and Wat’s Pig (1996).

Being a huge advocate for stop-motion animation, Lord’s snarky comments about a certain heavily funded, CGI animation company in the San Francisco area was met with laughs from the crowd

WRECK-IT RALPH
Rich Moore

This is Moore’s first nomination. After co-writing and designing the Oscar-nominated short film TECHNOLOGICAL THREAT, he launched his career in television animation. He was one of the three original directors of “The Simpsons” and won Emmys for his directing work on that show as well as “Futurama.” A lifelong video game enthusiast, Moore developed WRECK-IT RALPH after John Lasseter invited him to join Walt Disney Animation Studios in 2008.

Of the video game characters in the film, Moore said he just went ahead and threw in Bowser, Street Fighter, Q*Bert and Pac-Man into the script without knowing first if he could get the rights from the different companies. He told the audience could envision a “parallax of Disney and Nintendo lawyers going at it at the table.”