Research into Pixar.

Pixar.

In 1995, Pixar Animation Studios started to make a big impact on the film making business with their first release, Disney·Pixar's Toy Story. Pixar was founded in 1986 but Toy Story was their biggest and best (most popular) piece of work and was loved by all. Toy Story reflected years of expert animating and enthusiastic work done by some of the leading scientists and creative team members. The making of Toy Story was heavily influenced by President Ed Catmull and Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter. The first production by Pixar went on to get the highest profit of a film in that year, with $362 million worldwide. The director of Toy Story, was awarded with a Special Achievement Academy Award for his exceptional work on Toy Story which was the first full length animation.

Since Pixar was founded the high firing animation company has also created and produced a number of successful box office films which include: A Bug's Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008), Up (2009) and just now in 2010 the long awaited Toy Story 3. The afore mentioned films came together to earn a combined gross of $6 billion at the worldwide box office. Most of Pixar's success came from some of these films which 35 Academy Award nominations, 9 Oscars, 6 Golden Globes.


Within Pixar's creative team they have given audiences of all ages some of the most memorable characters ever to grace cinema-screens and home television. Some members of the Pixar team that made Toy Story in 1995 have gone on to great things that have massively impacted the world we know today. One of these is Steve Jobs who is now the CEO of multi billionaire company Apple who rivaled Bill Gates' company Microsoft with their computers and other technology.  Jobs no owns 5.426 million shares of Apple.


Pixar also collaborated with some huge household names such as: Disney who worked on Toy Story, The Incredible, Up and many more. They also are in progress shooting the brand new film and sequel to Cars 2 which is set to hit screens soon.

Short film by Pixar

Disney announced on January 24, 2006 that it had agreed to buy Pixar for approximately $7.4 billion in an all stock deal, which pushed aside majority share-holder Steve Jobs, but also gave him the individual majority share-holder and also granted him a seat and a place in their board of directors, this simply added to the massive amount of shares and wealth of Steve Jobs.

Up (2009)

WALL-E (2008)

We think that our animation would be perfect for Pixar to distribute as it strongly fits in with there other productions such as Toy Story and Monsters inc. We think this because of the target age group for the productions and the over-all style of the animation. although ours and Pixar's films are similar in the genre and style we also realise that our productions budget is a far cry from the millions of dollars that were pumped into the making of their films. Our film would also massively benefit from the input that Pixar would be able provide as their expertise, equipment and the budget that would be available.
our film also has some major differences to Pixar's films mainly to do with budget reasons, like the animation that was used.

Toy Story 2 Pixar (1999) evaluation

Toy Story 2 Pixar (1999)

We have chosen to compare our film to Toy Story 2 produced by Pixar. We feel our film has many similarities and differences which will be outlined in this evaluation. 

Buzz Lightyear - Toy Story

First of all, both films are animated and mainly for children. We can tell this by the use of bright and simple colours. Also the characters of both film opening are likable, interesting and friendly. The characters from Toy Story 2 are good as children can relate to them and they look up to them, whereas in our Children's Film the characters are living their dream as their hero has come to visit them, but Toy Story 2 is basically the lives of Toy's from their owner Andy.   

The music of the Toy Story 2 opening titles fits well with starting action, this music is dramatic and exciting, however the music for Jericho is more calm because there is less action. But this music fits with our style of film and the action on screen. When the main title of Jericho comes on screen the music changes and becomes more entertaining and upbeat.

Toy Story 2's classification is the same as our film which is Universal 'U' as the film basis for Toy Story 2 is for 4 and above, but our film age range is from 2 to 8 years old which falls under the Universal category.

Uses typewriter for part of intro text, whereas we use normal text on FinalCut and use motion keyframes.

Toy Story 2 uses fades at the beginning and end of the sequences and use continuity editing during the opening scene. We only used fade at the beginning of our sequence and the scene we made used limited continuity editing as it was mostly one camera angle. Toy story 2 used a full range of shots including Close ups, long shots medium shots. They also used camera techniques such as panning and tracking. We did not use these camera techniques in our scene.

Close-up shot

Low angle shot

Point-of-view shot

                                                                      Toy Story 1, (1996) Disney, Pixar

The film that we have chosen is Toy story, which we feel is most similar to our animation. This is because it includes fictional characters coming to life and having an adventure, it also includes small children who have some kind of love for the fictional characters. Another similarity would be that in both ours and toy story the soundtrack to the film starts during the first title sequence before the film has started properly. The soundtrack to the film also tells the mood of the characters and the film, for example when Jericho the superhero comes out of the T.V screen. both films have a rather light-hearted theme and atmosphere, with a simple plot beginning to reveal itself to the audience. both films have a similar target audience, ranging from around the ages of 3 - 8 although Toy Story and Jericho alike would probably be watched by a varying audience of young and old. One similarity that we noticed was that from the very start we got to know the main characters for the film, including Jericho from our sequence and Woody from Toy Story.

However between our film and Toy story there are some differences such as, Toy Story's title sequence is rolling over the top of the beginning to the film.

This sequence introduces the main people who were involved in the making of the film. In our film we chose to use one type of shot throughout the opening sequence, whereas in Toy Story they use various shots, including panning, close ups and long shots. This would have been harder to perform in our animation as we did not have the time or a sizable budget like the makers of Toy Story would have had. In our film we chose to use narration to tell the story of our film, but in Toy story they used the characters to start telling the story. Toy story also simply used the events to tell us what was happening whereas this had less of a part in our film. Like in Toy story the young boy's birthday tells us what might happen.

Toy Story uses a lot of CGI (this helps to give a good flowing motion picture, as we could not use this facility ours was much more jumpy) in the film to give a very professional effect to their animation, however we did not have the budget or time that they had, and maybe to improve our film we could have used this. we used 'Istop motion' animation in our production which was very good for a simple and effective opening sequence.

Final Cut, iStop and Garageband Screen Grabs

From this project we have learnt to use the following

• To use titles in our sequence
• Fade in and out
• Use of iStopMotion
• Use motion keyframes to animate letters/text of the title sequence
• Adding Text to our film
• Using the volume control in Garageband
• Using motion keyframes to animate text
• Adding markers in FinalCut to make timing more precise
• Fading in/out music on GarageBand

Jericho - comments.

Camera-work, All establishing shots no close ups or other shots included.
                      , All very steady camera-work
                      , All mostly one angle, could experimented with other angles.
                      , No movement in camera-work
Sound, No unnecessary sound
          , music fitted well with the fact it was a childrens film and theme.
          , No unwanted background was captured during the sequence.
Conventions, title clearly shown
                   , showed all names involved clearly
                   , story and characters introduced well
                   , could be more info on characters names.
Mise en scene, use of animation is smooth but sometimes jerky
                      , title movement smooth
                      , lighting was natural
                      , location and setting easily established
                      , colours bright good for kids
Target Audience, 2 - 8 simple story line but still some action.
Edting, The editing is very smooth and makes it look very professional. the editing in continual.

It would be suitable for local film festivals as a small independent production company would be welcome there and gain comunity support

Jericho - Children's Film Final video

this is our soundtrack

Shot list

Storyboard

Shot 1
This shot is a long shot of the window with the characters 'Jess' and 'Tim' sitting down on the sofa watching the television. This shot then slowly zooms in going into the room showing the expressions of the children's faces while watching television.

Shot 2
This shot is a close up of the television showing a new program that the characters have been waiting for. This is where the opening sequence starts to show the storyline on the children's film.

Shot 3
This shot goes into an extreme close up of the television only showing what is on the tele. This is where the viewer sees one of the main characters and the interest's of the child.

Shot 4
This is a reaction shot of the two children while watching the cartoon and gives the viewer an insight to what the children are interested in.

Shot 5
This shot gives the viewer the impression that the story world is related to the program on the tele world keeping the giant font and speech bubbles.

Shot 6
This is where the children's film starts with the title of the film and introduces the names of the characters and the font logo.

Storyboard

Children's opening sequence

This is our storyboard for the opening sequence for are children's film.

Lightning McQueen

Lightning McQueen

The character of Lightning McQueen from the movie Cars is very memorable from a child's perspective. He is introduced by driving out the back of his trailer. During this sequence, close up shots of his wheels, exhaust and number are used to show the character off. The shot of Lightning McQueen moving towards the light and then being photographed gives the impression that he is famous, many children would want to be like this character even though it is an animation.

The location of this scene is at a very large race event in which the main character will take part. The lightning in the scene is made through the use of spotlights and background lighting as it is set at night. The use of colour in the film is significant as it appeals to children of that age because there is use of bright colouring (Lightning McQueen is bright red). These thing make up the Mise en Scene of the clip.

The sound in the introduction is a mixture of a backing track, sound effects and a voiceover. The backing track is used for the most of the opening of the film as it gives a good sense of the type of film and the lyrics relate to driving. Sound Effects are used in the sequence to help show that the movie is about racing by the use of revving engines. The voiceover gives the watcher good understanding of the main character and what he does.   

This sequence of being introduced to the main character uses many opening sequence conventions including:

• Introducing a character(Lightning McQueen)
• Giving an indication of what is to come in the film (a race)
• Establishes location (racetrack)
• Hooks Viewer (through the use of action, the cars racing round the track)

Overall, the introduction of Lightning McQueen will be very memorable to children because of the use of bright colours, good camera shots and sound work.

Home work - Toy Story - Buzz Light year

 Toy Story - Buzz Light year




















Buzz Lightyear is introduced in Toy Story, when Andy get's a surprise birthday present and all the 'toys' wonder what it is. All the toy's get excited when the kids and Andy bring him upstairs and leave him on the bed where the toy's get introduced/startled by buzz lightyear when he thinks he is a real 'space ranger'.
Buzz Lightyear is introduced on Andy's bed in his bedroom, he is surrounded by a bright wall paper and tonnes of toys making Buzz seem important as they do a low angle shot at him when they introduce him to the scene. Buzz  Lightyear's suit is mocked by Woody yet all the other characters praise his suit, as he has more gadgets then the other toy's. When he is first introduced when it does a low angle zoom shot, a dramatic piece of sound is plaid to make Buzz Lightyear seem important, better the the rest, dominant and more powerful, as well to make a entrance for him. The close up of Buzz Lightyear's face when they are all hiding show his smugness thinking how good he is. Also when Buzz Lightyear is shown in a first person view/pan across the scene it shows his personality as Woody startles him and his body language comes across as scared and intimidated.

BBFC film classification requirements

Universal (U)

"It is impossible to predict what might upset any particular child. But a ‘U’ film should be suitable for audiences aged four years and over. ‘U’ films should be set within a positive moral framework and should offer reassuring counterbalances to any violence, threat or horror"

Parental Guidence (PG)

"General viewing, but some scenes may be unsuitable for young children. 

Unaccompanied children of any age may watch. A ‘PG’ film should not disturb a child aged around eight or older. However, parents are advised to consider whether the content may upset younger or more sensitive children".

We plan to make sure that our opening sequence fits the BBFC criteria for a childrens film by:

• making our characters bright and fun and not in a negative mood 
• having a fun and friendly atmosphere within our story
• not include any violence.
• include positive morals and a clear message.
• making sure the content would be considered acceptable by parents of young children.

Moodboard

we chose a colourful selection of images that appeal to children as they will be our target audience. Also the fonts we chose were picked because they are colourful and bright to attract attention. The characters are big children's favourites so we chose them because they catch the interest of the children's when they appear. we included a couple of locations in our image to show that the setting will have an importance to the film. we chose mainly animated characters as we aim to use animation in our sequence. The mood of our opening sequence will be simple and happy to suit the people it is intended for, so we selected characters to express the main plot of the film.

Group 17 Evaluation - Children's Opening Sequence

Animation of title's

We thought it was clever the way the title's were introduced/presented and it was a good use of iStop motion. However there was no clear production company name/logo, but the music during the opening titles was quite effective and fitted in with the movement of the animation. the scene was set well by the narrator telling us that it was set in a teachers classroom at Long road sixth form college. we were also presented with a main character in the form of Noah and a piece of the plot was revealed that he was unaware of strange activity in his classroom. after the first character was introduced we see some other characters but are not properly introduced even though they seem to play a big part in the story line.

First view of the characters

skill full use of animation

The animation was good as most of the characters as it seemed they had real movements and not too jumpy, seeming as they were not real life. But the only problem with this is that there was no background music which made it hard to sense the mood of the scene, this wouldn't keep the target audience (children) interested as they would have to work out the film. The actual props are bright colours like the lego bricks, however the rest of the scene colours is dull.

We were really impressed with this bit of animation as it was quick movement and still in flow, as it wasn't stop/starting (jumpy), after this scene the colour turned dull, and sad music came in but we weren't given a clue why.

Monsters Inc opening sequence

the opening sequence begins with an introduction to the companies involved in the film, which are Pixar and Disney. As the film starts these companies are re-introduced within the theme of the film using certain effects and animation. an example of a company involved in the production below.

after the opening titles the film kicks in with the characters and their jobs and roles within the film, and begins to set the scene and relates to the title of the film as a company and main location for the film, this is the scaring factory.

introduction to two main characters of the film

We then are given an insight into the plot of the film, a main crisis is shown as a shortage of energy provided by children's screams, this hooks the viewer as the target audience would be children of a similar age as some shown in the film.

The two main characters are brought in at an every day situation where they are waking up and going to work. They are shown to have a good relationship with each other and other characters of the film, by the way they act we know that they are the 'good guys'. by their appearance i.e big, fluffy and colourful, they are made loveable to the audience.                     

Preliminary task

Classroom discussion.
We added club music to make the film more interesting, and used vibe and a bass guitar to add effect to the atmosphere of the film.

Jake Groves , Ryan Carless , Will Haylack

Preliminary Task

A boy walking down the hallway on the phone to his friend telling him directions on where he is. When the boy arrives to the classroom there is a close up of the handle of the door while being opened. The shot then changes to a match on action shot showing the door opening from inside the room where this friend is on the computer waiting for him to show him something on the internet, and his reaction to what he has seen.