The ultimate student film might be Birthday Boy – Sejong Park’s film which earned an Oscar nomination last year and played at Annecy 2005. Park’s film was brilliant and it certainly pushed him onto the worldwide stage. But not everyone can get an Oscar nomination. Also at Annecy last year, a bunch of french students were invited to produce short films to be screened before each day of the festival. One such film was le Building. It is a g
Le Building is an animated short film made by a team of 5 french students (Olivier Staphylas, Marco Nguyen, Pierre Perifel, Xavier Ramonède and Rémi Zaarour) from the animation school “the Gobelins” in Paris, France.
It was made as an opening short done for the Annecy 2005 international animation festival, so it had to be funny and/or punchy. After developing the story to find an idea all the team members liked and would be happy to work on, they came up with a simple one. A grandmother wants her neighbour to stop singing so loud — and the main focus of the film ends up being the crazy chain reaction which follows. Its a pleasure to watch.
The movie was completed in 4 and a half months, including screenplay, storyboards and designs. The technique is a mix between traditional 2D, Flash, and 3D animation. With these differing techniques used, the challenge was to blend them so that the audience won’t notice it too much. For example the pizza guy, his bike, the bus, and the crane are in 3D. The cat on the pizza guy’s head is animated with Flash and the other characters are traditionally animated in 2D.
Making of le Building and the Final Short Film
We had the opportunity to interview Staphylas about his work on the film. You can movielink(lestory/makin-web.mov, download our exclusive “making of” video) about the work done to create le Building.
Be sure to check out the final completed movie, which you can download and view in its entirety from the movie web site.
Facts about le Building
Type : student short movie
Client : Annecy film festival 2005
Produced by : Gobelins school – Paris FRANCE
Directors : Olivier Staphylas, Marco Nguyen, Pierre Perifel, Xavier Ramonède, Rémi Zaarour
CG Supervisor : Olivier Staphylas
2D Animation : Marco Nguyen, Pierre Perifel, Xavier Ramonède, Rémi Zaarour
3D Animation : Olivier Staphylas
Sound design and music : Olivier Crouet (www.cblvprod.com)
Vocal performance : Manu Nabajoth
Production time : 4 months and a half (including story, storyboards and designs)
Length : 1min30s
Format : DV Pal and 2K for 35mm projections
Technique : traditional 2D, 3D and Flash
Software : Alias Maya 6, Adobe Photoshop CS, Adobe After Effects 6.5, Crater Software CTP, Macromedia Flash MX2004, Logic Audio, Pro Tools
CG Rendering done with Mental Ray for Maya.
CGI elements : Pizza boy, his bike, the bus, the crane. And some CGI backgrounds or multi-plane backgrounds to allow 3D camera movements.
Website : www.le-building.com