Space Jam Prevents Brain Drain
Britain has produced a lot of animation of which it can be proud. But do you also know of its contribution to Space Jam?
From page 10 of Section 5 of the Sunday Times, Sunday 16th March 1997:
Bugs Bunny moves to cyberspaceBRITISH animators have been able to work on a Hollywood blockbuster without leaving their London offices, thanks to a new high-speed computer network, writes Mark Prigg.
Warner Brothers’ latest film, Space Jam, which opens in Britain this month, uses a mix of live action, traditional hand-drawn animation, and computer-generated animation. The film was put together in 10 different studios, six in America and four in London.
Space Jam stars Michael Jordan, the American basketball player, who is transported to “toon land” to help Bugs Bunny and friends fend off alien attackers in a basketball game.
As the film’s Hollywood director needed to check each frame of animation at different stages of development, fast transmission of the files was essential.
According to Colin Brown, managing director of Cinesite Europe, the digital-effects house company whose London and Hollywood offices helped to put the film together, the network is the fastest in the world.
“We’re already talking to BT about its next generation of high-speed links – we need more capacity than any Internet company I’ve ever come across,” says Brown.
Space Jam used a combination of multiple ISDN telephone lines and a large-capacity data line across the Atlantic to allow Hollywood and London animators to work on the film.
Courtney Vanderslice, a production manager at Cinesite, says: “Each frame was about 45 megabytes, with each finished 2-3 second shot taking up 6-10 gigabytes. We were also sending over line drawing each day.”
Each line drawing was scanned by Cinesite and transmitted to Warner Brothers; Hollywood office, where a computer named Jammer coordinated the huge amount of data. Jammer let all the studios involved see exactly what frames of animation and live action were available, and retrieve the footage when needed.
Putting the different elements of the film together was also handled by Cinesite. The live-action film was scanned in using one of only four laser film scanners in the world.
Alex Bicknell of Cinesite Europe says: “The amount of technology we used was astounding, especially as a lot of this had never been used to such an extent before.”
According to Uli Meyer, an animation director on the film whose London animation studio also contributed around a third of the film’s hand-drawn sequences, the nightly video-conferencing sessions were also critical to success. “We just wouldn’t have been able to male the film without all this technology. Can you imagine having to courier all these drawings to Los Angeles every night?”
Meyer believes the film has also helped stop the “brain drain” of animators. “Hollywood knows we have the best animators here, so finally we are in a position to actually keep them here.”
The film also had to be made and released in record time. According to John McKenna, Warner Brothers’ vice-president of feature animation, this was largely because of constraints on Michael jordan’s time.
“Michael had only a three-month time slot for the project, and we also needed the film to hit at the right time. We had to do what would normally take more than two years in about nine months. Without all this technology, we would never have got the film out.”
From page 20 of the Evening Standard, Tuesday 18th March 1997:
Swackhammer to stop the brain drain
By ROBIN STRINGER
Arts Correspondent
ANYONE who goes to see Space Jam, the latest Hollywood attempt to mix live actors with cartoon characters, would be forgiven for thinking that the movie is as all-American as it could get.
It combines the talents of American basketball legend Michael Jordan with those of Bugs Bunny and other Looney Tunes characters in an improbable match against the evil Monstars.
It looks American and sounds American yet many of the original ideas for the film and nearly half the animation was done in three animation houses in London. “For us as a London-based studio it has been fantastic,” says Uli Meyer, the chief London contributor, from his Oxford Circus premises. A year ago they were humming. “We hired over 100 artists to work on it and for period of some six months we were working seven days and nights a week.
“We were sending art work to Los Angeles on a day-to-day basis and every Thursday at Cinesite in Soho we would link up by satellite with our fellow animators in Hollywood and producer Ivan Reitman. Distance hardly means anything any more.”
The film is state-of-the-art in its marriage of sophisticated computer techniques with the traditional animator’s art, the thousands of meticulous drawings that go to make just a few seconds of film. Key elements, like the creation of the villain, Swackhammer, and his gang of Nerdlucks were invented here by Meyer whose work was eventually established as “the guideline” for other participating studios.
Meyer believes that the studio link-up system devised for Space Jam will help staunch the “brain drain” of animator to Hollywood. “It simply means that they can still work on Hollywood projects even if they stay at home,” he says.
The commercial success of the film, which is already assured, can only heighten the already high regard for british animation.
“It has opened a lot of doors,” says Meyer, who has already been able to present to Hollywood chiefs his own proposal for a £36 million feature film called The Duck.
It too would mix live action with hand-drawn and computer-generated animation. “If I can pull it off, it will be the first time it has happened here,” he said.
