The other day I asked Erik if he missed working on the movie. He said yeah. He also said he missed reading the blog. I asked him why and he said, "it was something to look at." Not a ringing endorsement, but I know what he means. I have a lot of blogs that I look at just because they're something to follow.
Sean's been watching the Buzz Lightyear traditionally-animated movie. Pretty primitive. I remember the other month I speculated that one of the qualities of a B-movie is that it doesn't have any "moments." If that's true, then Buzz Lightyear is definitely all-B. Somehow I had it in my mind that in animation you can do anything. If you can draw it you can do it. But after thinking about it, I realized that this isn't true. You can set your story in any place you like. But the more animation you have the more it costs and the more backgrounds you have the more it costs. Like those other B-movies, Buzz Lightyear's direction is more about connecting the dots than anything else. You can follow the story, but most of the (surprisingly decent) jokes get swallowed and no moments are ever created. I think I realized this in the ship crash landing scene. Instead of actually seeing the landing, the ship disappears into the distance. Then we see the ship already crashed with smoke coming out. That's the way you would have directed it if you were shooting live to save money. But this is animation! You would think they could have animated the crash. That would have been what—48 frames? But I guess not. So the film has an overall flatness and cheapness about it. It would be a good exercise to think about how certain scenes could be reshot to make them more momentous.
In other news, Gracie just gave birth to a son (I think)! So in the time we've been shooting she had time to get pregnant and have a baby. I think our goal should be to finish the film before Ben's next baby arrives.
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