::: The potential of film to reach the masses with a message of hope brings animation to this director's career :::
An interview with Colin Brady, professional film animator
By Cathy Sivak, Contributing Writer
Most third graders bring a favorite toy for show and tell. In the late 70’s, that often meant Star Wars paraphernalia. And Colin Brady was certainly one of the many youngsters enthralled by the debut of the epic George Lucas film series. But instead of action figures and light sabers, Colin’s show and tell offerings were scenes from his first animated film, crafted with clay figures and Super-8 film.
A native of the Chicago suburbs, Colin followed his interest in special effects and films throughout his elementary, junior high and high school years. He led the lighting and effects crew for the high school theater program and dreamed of a career in the film industry. When the time came to apply for colleges, he was California-bound. He visited schools, second-guessed the practicality of his film career ambitions, and decided to accept a scholarship to University of Southern California for mechanical engineering. Of course, he knew USC also had a film program – his hero George Lucas had attended there. And Colin found time to take an animation class. That’s when he realized he’d never make a go of a career as an engineer.
His parents were a bit concerned when he dropped all of his USC classes and applied to California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, Calif. “They thought I had gone nuts,” he recalls cheerfully. But by 1992 he earned a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree and soon launched his animated film career.
He has been an integral part of animated film powerhouses Pixar and ILM (Industrial Light + Magic, a George Lucas company), serving in capacities including lead animator, animation director, supervising animator and as co-director. His film credits thus far include the following:
Toy Story
Toy Story 2
A Bug’s Life
E.T. The Extra Terrestrial Special Edition
Men in Black 2
The Hulk
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
Today, he is in the midst of directing. Colin and another director, Dan St. Pierre, were called upon to take over the animated film Yankee Irving following the death of Christopher Reeve, the original director. It’s all part of Colin’s master plan to create films that create a sense of hope… and that he will be proud to show his three daughters and future grandchildren someday.
The film profession doesn’t leave a lot of time for extra-curricular activities, but Colin has found time to work as an animation instructor at the San Francisco Art Academy and as a volunteer for MacLaren House for Abused Children in California.
He is quick to credit his wife Melissa for her support of his career. “She’s been strong through this whole thing. She has a degree in communications, but if she was imbedded in a high-paid, LA career, it would have been tough. It only works because she loves being domestic and taking care of the kids, and is willing to pick up to move to Toronto for a year,” he says.
“Working on the high school theater program productions kept my sanity throughout high school, and I’ve found the kind of high I got working on a high school production is no different than the feeling I get today. It might be a $100 million film, but there’s no difference in commitment. This is what I love to do,” he tells FilmSchools.com. “I consider it a tremendous responsibility and my vocation, almost a religious calling, to do what I am doing, to bring a message to people. The artistic stuff is fun, but it’s just a conduit; if you have something important worth saying, you have to present it to people in a way they will hear.”
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Education Information & Advice
When did your interest in animation and filmmaking first develop?
The movie Star Wars came out when I was 7 years old; I saw it, and I said this is what I want to do. In third grade, I made my first animated film with clay figures, all in Super-8 film; I’d show my class my progress for show and tell. I did that type of thing all through junior high, and then in high school, I got involved in the theater program, working on the lighting and effects for our theater program’s stage productions.
Tell us about your film industry education. How did you decide to pursue an education in film making? How did you find a school?
I always wanted to get into the film industry, but I didn’t know a lot about how to get there. When I was looking into the industry in high school, there wasn’t any Internet, and there was not a lot of information available. But I knew had to get out of the Midwest and go to California.
I read George Lucas’ bio, and I learned he attended University of Southern California, so I thought that would be a good place to go to school. I visited USC when I was 16, and thought the film program was really cool, but also that it seemed kind of tough to get a job. I was kind of brainwashed that it wasn’t real or something. So as a compromise with my parents, I went to USC on a Mechanical Engineering scholarship, knowing I would be able to take classes in film, too. I went there for two years. I loved my animation courses, and that’s all I wanted to do; I was going nuts because I couldn’t stand engineering. My animation instructor told me about the animation and film programs at Disney-founded California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). I went there to visit, checked out a catalog and I fell in love with the school .That week, without even having been accepted, I dropped all my USC courses. My parents thought I had freaked out.
I got my admittance interview set up, and I brought in the pictures of the creature sculptures I had done through high school. I was very fortunate to be accepted on the spot, which was wonderful and the most pivotal moment in my desire to get into cinematography!
I had to wait until the next CalArts semester started, and then I was finally in school.
I just loved it, especially the creative atmosphere and the give and take atmosphere. CalArts puts all of the arts disciplines together – film, theatre, dance – it was like going to the school in Fame! In high school, I was always creating stuff, and I’d come up with these ideas. Don’t get me wrong, I had great friends in high school, but I’d say, “Hey, I came up with this idea,” and I’d tell them about it, and they’d be like, “That’s nice…you’re so weird!”
Anyway, only a few of my credits from two years of engineering at USC transferred, so I went to CalArts for three and a half years and earned my Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree in 1992. I took animation and film classes, made some student films, and took a lot of art history classes. For a while, I was drawing nudes eight hours a week. I started taking dance and dance history classes as electives because that’s where the cute girls were, and by the end, I found that animation and dance are kind of one and the same.
The whole time I was at CalArts, my parents were still skeptical.
What did you enjoy about your education in film animation?
One of the cool things about CalArts was that the instructors were almost all professionals from the industry. CalArts is the No. 1 school for animation. A lot of companies go there to recruit, and most of the Pixar people come from there.
Quite often, after one year of school, you’d have the contacts you needed to get started in the industry. You don’t necessarily need a four-year degree to get in this field if you have talent. I knew a 17-year-old CalArts student from Detroit who was going to school, and left after one year to design for Saturday morning cartoons. He was making $1,000 a week and sending money back home to Detroit. The same guy later designed characters for Madagascar.
What advice can you give to prospective students thinking about an education and career in the film industry?
Having a video camera and a computer are the most important things you can do to get into the film industry. Don’t get caught up in having to take a class, or even going to art school. In film classes, a teacher will say watch the film, now watch it without sound, and you’ll keep breaking the movie down into things like “how many frames per shot.”
Start making movies now. If you make one movie a week, as a high school kid you can essentially teach yourself how to create films.
Each week, you should try a different style, such as kung fu, comedy or drama. Study films of each style. There’s no shame in borrowing ideas from them, because they borrowed many of their techniques from those that came before them.
The editing and animation software you can get on computers today is incredible. If you’ve got a $300 video camera and a $500 computer program, you can make whatever film you want. Don’t get too caught up with all the bells and whistles, like fancy cross dissolves, fire effects, tornados, etc.
Practice setting shots, making the idea of the film clear to the viewer. Peter Jackson, who directed Lord of the Rings, said, “Every shot tells one idea, you as director decide how to tell that point of view.” Shooting a character from a low angle makes them appear dominant or powerful; high angles make the character look submissive; horizontal is passive. Lighting and color also are very important; for instance, reds will make a scene more active. When regular people shoot video, they don’t care about lighting. Shooting video of people on a sunny day is generally not very successful unless you have a strong fill light to reduce the harsh shadows.
Chuck Jones, who drew Bugs Bunny, once said that, “Everyone has 200,000 bad drawings in them, the sooner you get them out the better.” It’s the same thing with film and animation.
If you want to get into it, don’t let affordability of art school stop you. There’s a popular program called Maya, you can buy off of the internet, or 3D studioMax. These programs are around $500, and are well-known programs in the industry. For very little money, we’re talking $800, you can be making movies right now, and it can mean saving the $20,000 you’d plunk down for art school, or getting your foot in the door for scholarships. Even going to art school, you might not need to complete a degree to get a job. One or two years of art school are sometimes enough to learn how to put your portfolio together, learn to go to the right places and to make some contacts.
What tips can you offer to novice animators?
Oftentimes, first films are too ambitious. As a director, what I look for is someone who can take a stick figure man and animate him and make him look realistic. You can make the stick figure man do anything, change a bicycle tire or chase a butterfly. Take the stick figure man, have him walk to the counter, pour himself a drink of milk, then, “uh-oh, it’s spoiled.” One shot, done well, will get you a job as an animator.
Recently there was a contest, and I was really impressed with what a high school student did with animating Legos. It was crude, but it had clever dialogue; this kid was thinking like a film director with staging and timing of simple Lego people.
The trick to good animation is good acting. Act it out yourself. Often I’d act a scene 50 times in a row until the choreography became second nature; animation is all a careful study of real life. Videotape yourself acting, and don’t overact. In real life, if you’re sad, your eyes don’t droop. My job is to make sure the animated characters look real, not like something out of vaudeville.
If you can’t afford art school, but can animate a mannequin perfectly, you can get a job. For instance, the video game field is a more lucrative industry than film, and it can be a good foot in the door to get into film.
You & Your Career
How did you break into film animation on a professional basis?
My first job out of school was with Rhythm and Hues in Hollywood. They are probably best known for their commercial work, especially the Coca-Cola polar bears. Mostly they taught me how to use the computers, because at the time the programs were really expensive and the schools couldn’t afford them. I did a lot of 3-D modeling, texturing. It was really like graduate school for me; basically, the first six months, I was being trained in all aspects of computer animation. I worked on commercials, and mostly on an awful film called Hocus Pocus, and I was the lead animator for a motion-based ride called SeaFari.
I was at Rhythm and Hues not a quite a year when I heard Disney’s Pixar was hiring animators to develop Toy Story, which was the first fully computer animated film. Basically, the whole Pixar operation was located in small warehouse; it was a fun time to be there. I was a lead animator on Toy Story, and worked on it for about two years. I animated a lot on that film and gained a good reputation.
Once the movie was done, I told them I had an interest in supervising others, so I became the animation director for the CD-ROM/Shorts Division at Pixar; it was basically stuff connected with the Toy Story movie, the interactive CD-ROM activity center, animated story book ,etc.
After that A Bug’s Life (1998) came around, I was offered the job of supervising animator. During that film, Pixar started working on a direct to video of Toy Story 2, and I was asked to co-direct that project. I couldn’t say no to such a great opportunity. After a year and a half of successful screenings, the film was green-lighted for a theatrical release. Shortly after, John Lasseter, the original director of Toy Story, came aboard to direct the film for the last eight months of production.
How did your career unfold from there? Tell us about some of the film projects you’ve worked on.
I really began to miss the days of when Pixar was small and we were the underdog. At that time, I heard ILM (Industrial Light + Magic, Lucasfilm Ltd.), wanted to start it’s own animation division. George Lucas had been my hero since Star Wars came out when I was 7, so I thought this was a good time to work for the man who was my original inspiration.
ILM never really did get their act together doing animation like Pixar; so mainly I did special effects there. In 1999, I worked on Magnolia, a live action film with Tom Cruise. The film was filled with heavy drama and at the end, frogs fall from the sky. They started with rubber frogs and it looked so bad, they came to ILM for effects. I did an animated test recreating real frogs, which was cool because most of the stuff I had worked on before that were computer generated cartoons. I worked in the ILM features group, on some short digital films, and on some effects for The Mummy Returns; I don’t really like those kinds of movies, they’re sort of popcorn films that pay the bills.
But right after that is when the exciting stuff started happening. I heard that Steven Spielberg wanted to redo E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, and replace the animatronics puppet performance, which at first I thought was silly, because it was perfect already, right?
So I flew to Los Angeles, and sat down with Spielberg. He initially said he wanted to re-do about 20 shots. We watched all of the original E.T. together; he’d stop it once in while. As we watched, he was telling me all of these great stories, like ‘that was the best dog we ever worked with.’ It was the best director’s commentary ever, because I was sitting right next to him. I saw sequences that were cut from the original – and the reasons why they were cut. By the time we were done reviewing the original E.T., the original 20 or shots grew to something like 100 to 120 shots.
It was hard, because we’d watch a classic scene like E.T. and Elliot first meeting, screaming at each other, and we had to look with a critical eye, forgetting it was a classic. It was a great experience, as the supervising animator, I got to direct all of the new animation. The most important thing was to keep the flavor of the original; the great thing about real world puppets is that they always moved with a gritty kind of motion which we didn’t want to completely remove.
It was very rewarding to have Mr. Spielberg say, “This is great idea or expression.” We made stark (and hopefully transparent) improvements to the original; it was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had. After E.T., I worked as the supervising animator on Men in Black 2, but my work on it was deemed ‘too Pixar’ and I got booted.
Then I was asked to work as animation director on The Hulk, under director Ang Lee (from Crouching Tigers, Hidden Dragon) and the visual effects supervisor, Dennis Muren, who is the one of the biggest names in special effects. In the film world, visual effects supervisors are in charge of lighting, shadows and making effects look real; the animation director is in charge of how the characters move and act.
I got wonderful experience with motion capture technology on The Hulk. The hardest 3-D animation I have ever done was on the The Hulk, particularly the fight between the Hulk and the mutant dogs. The computer-generated Hulk wasn't created until the filming sequences were over, and director Ang Lee wanted us to motion capture athletes. In motion capturing, sensors are placed on a human body wearing a black skin suit, then you sample and record how a human moves in 3-D; you can then map the movements and transfer them to any computer character. Ang wasn’t happy with what we captured from any of the athletes or actors, so we put him in the suit and he acted it out for us. It was a great personal experience working with him; he’s a wonderful human being with gentle kind of soul. The Hulk ended up being a moodier, darker film than people expected.
The next project I worked on was Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. It was very challenging to re-create a human baby. On The Hulk, we motion captured attack dogs, so on Lemony Snicket, we figured, ‘why not babies.’ We built tiny motion capture suits, and we brought in a bunch of babies and sampled their movements. In sampling, you don’t have to follow the motion perfectly; you can edit it in the computer.
My 2-year-old daughter Grace became my best reference. In one scene the baby wrestles a snake. And I thought, hey I’m wrestling with my 2-year old every night when I get home from work, I dangle her by an ankles pretty regularly, why not do it in a motion capture suit? So for a few key baby shots in the film, the motion is modeled on my daughter.
Tell us about your current project.
Pixar had grown to be a giant by this point. That’s when I got ‘really Hollywood,’ and I got an agent. I used the ton of vacation time I had built up, and I interviewed at every single big studio in LA that had an original digital feature on the boards. I figured something would land, and it did.
I had heard about IDT Entertainment on the East Coast, a start-up that is aggressively trying to be the next Pixar. But the company didn’t have any experience in animated films. It was originally a phone company; the owners bought up the studios that do animated TV like The Simpsons and The Family Guy, and they bought a live action studio. Christopher Reeve was directing an animated feature film called Yankee Irving from his wheelchair before he died. IDT wanted to complete it, and that’s how I got involved as the director. It’s a wholesome, family film with a baseball theme, a blend of action, heart, and comedy. We think our story is as strong as anything out there.
What do you find most rewarding about your career in film animation? Most challenging?
Working on the high school theater program productions kept my sanity throughout high school, and I’ve found the kind of high I got working on a high school production is no different that the feeling I get today. It might be a $100 million film, but there’s no difference in commitment. This is what I love to do.
The negatives are the hours I work, and the time I have to fly around and be away from my family. When I first started with this new job, I was living in San Francisco, and was commuting by plane to LA, New York and Toronto. Then I’d fly home for the weekend. This job was rough initially; it’s a five to six hour flight from Toronto to California. This fall, I moved my whole family to Toronto for a year. It’s more difficult than I ever anticipated, its also more rewarding. I’m at the point now where I feel I’m in the best job ever.
Co-directing for a year and a half on Toy Story 2 was huge, but there were so many masters between Pixar, Disney, and Mattel; I was director, but I felt like a manager. The job I’m doing now gives me more creative hold everywhere, in story, character design, lighting, camera, music and editing. I’ve got input into the whole thing.
Films you have been a part of have been recognized by prestigious film organizations and film critics alike. How important is this recognition (as well as awards and accolades) to you, personally, to your career and to the field of animation?
For the most part, any recognition is more something that my parents are interested in more than I am. Right now I’m not part of Oscar Academy or the Film Society; technically one needs three film credits to get in academy, and then you vote on the films that win the academy awards. I haven’t applied. To me, it’s kind of a minus that box office results have an impact on the awards process.
Lemony Snicket’s and The Hulk were pre-Oscar finalists for visual effects. Every year before films get voted into Oscar, they have what they consider the pre-Oscar bake-off, where they trim eight or nine nominees down to three or four Oscar finalists. You have to pitch your film, give a presentation on the effects to 3,000 industry people. To me, it was an honor to present my work to the 3,000 people who are making all of these films.
It would be cool to get that Oscar someday, but more for my parents than for me. They still call me up to tell me, “We have your high school band letter.”
My reward is to continue to work in the business, make quality films, and put my daughters through school. I can’t picture retiring…I hope to be working on movies like this until I’m an old man. Working in this industry is the real reward.
I was a presenter in at the 2003 SigGraph, an annual computer convention, spoke to 3,000-plus people about special effects in a special session called “Creatures, Critters & Clones: Styles and Techniques Unique to Industrial Light + Magic.” To me, being invited to be a part of SigGraph, recognized as a top person in the profession, is just as important as getting a statue.
What do you consider some of the highlights of your career thus far?
Experiences such as directing major stars like Tom Hanks are definite highlights. Here I am, reading lines with him, and it’s sort of like an out of body experience. Just recently, I was directing Rob Reiner. He’s best known as being the character Meathead on All in the Family, but he’s directed films including The Princess Bride and is tied into the Ron Howard community. To actually direct a Top 25 player in Hollywood, those are ‘highlight’ moments. Finding out they are talented, normal people, not the jerks you might expect is always a pleasant surprise.
I still feel a little young to be doing what I’m doing. I’m 35, working with people with way more experience; basically, I’m viewed as a young guy in the industry.
But I wasn’t ready for this type of thing 10 years ago. It only helps me the older I get, and the more experience. I have a feeling the 40s are going to be good decade for me.
The Actual Work
What are some common myths about your profession?
Lots of people think its technical and computer oriented. They’ll say, “Wow, you had to take a lot of computer courses.” The truth is, I took not a one! I went through program manuals and basically learned on the job. The most important thing to develop is problem solving skills. Being a good animator is primarily about being a good actor, really, it’s what makes or breaks my career. The video camera is the most powerful tool I have; I act out every part I animate. My job is really being an acting coach to those who are playing the characters. Voices are always recorded first, then we do the animation, and we look for imperfections in the delivery. It’s the throat clearing, etc., that make the character come alive.
It might sound glamorous, but animation becomes extremely tedious work. You spend a lot of time talking about highlights, refraction of the cornea through eye, what is the translucency of the nose compared to the chin, etc. It might take a full week to animate four seconds of film. For the most part, it’s very tedious, which people don’t realize. You do a lot of sitting, a lot of repetition and have to be constantly self-critical, judging your own work. That ability to not get numb to your own shot, but to look at it with fresh eyes, over and over, is what makes someone successful.
What contributions do you feel film making has made to society?
Film is the true modern media. In some ways film is the most powerful art form we have today. Done well, it crosses the barriers of language. You can turn off the dialogue of a good film, and through staging alone, the message of the film is conveyed. It’s a tremendous responsibility, because we are spreading ideas and helping to influence culture; this generation’s questions can become the next generation’s belief. Here we are with a medium that can very strongly influence ideas. At its best, film and video have the clearest way to speak to the whole world.
That said, the majority of stuff out there is probably negatively influencing culture. The name video came from Latin “I see.” There’s an ego related to film making, and it is often the reason that most actors are unsettled. The trouble is that there’s too much watching ourselves, getting caught up in ourselves.
It’s a very egotistical medium; even with my own kids, I turn on the video camera, and they act like complete goofballs. A daughter singing a song is reduced to goo-goo, gaga and funny faces when the camera goes on. A similar thing is happening globally with film; there’s a lot of crap out there. Too much Paris Hilton and her ilk; with so called reality shows that contain no reality.
Someone once said the definition of film is “a medium that lies 24 frames per second.” Film is constantly an illusion. Every frame is a lie, is artificial, and is someone’s point of view.
I think film is the most powerful artistic medium available today. It combines all the great art forms – music, visual arts, acting and technology – the best of all art forms. But I see us misusing it more than to help spread truthful or beneficial messages.
Is it possible to incorporate greater professional and personal philosophies into film-making?
I don’t want to over-elevate my own role, but I do feel a tremendous urge to create movies that I can feel proud of showing to my kids or someday, my grandkids. The film I’m on now carries a universal message of not giving up hope; I consider it one of those universal truths that stands above all of these negative messages people get from the media.
I consider it a tremendous responsibility and my vocation, almost a religious calling, to do what I am doing, to bring a message to people. The artistic stuff is fun, but it’s just a conduit; if you have something important worth saying, you have to present it to people in a way they will hear. People ignore the crazy person ranting on the street. In film making, you can sell a message with some sugar and some nice music.
I believe I have a responsibility to reach people, otherwise, I might as well be putting on a fireworks show with beautiful colors, where the people ‘ooh’ and ‘ah,’ but when it’s done, they don’t take away anything new.
At the very least, helping spread a sense of wonder might be enough. The more kids watch TV all day long, the more they get desensitized. It’s a real tragedy if kids grow up apathetic, with a “who cares” philosophy. As a film maker, if you make something beautiful and full of wonder, it might just be the one spark they might need.
I remember going to see movies like The Abyss and the first Jurassic Park, and coming out of the theatre, I had no idea how they did the effects like the water blob. I was so humbled… and I had to figure out how they did it. At the very least, that sense of wonder is very important.
Wonder leads to being surprised by life, that life has more to offer than you might imagine. When you lead people to a sense of hope, it keeps people thinking of the future, of their own possibilities and own potential, and ultimately makes people better toward each other. That’s a high ideal, but I think its worth striving for.
We want to make timeless films with good messages; they don’t have to mention the word 'God' to offer messages that get people hopeful and considerate toward their fellow man.
I treat every film that I work on that way, every day; the message you convey is not just the message of the film, its how you react on a daily basis with your fellow workers, the actors, everyone involved. Here I am with this great opportunity to work on a film with the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of people, and it’s the responsibility of the film to spread a good worthwhile message. So I consider it important not to lose my temper over something petty during the process, to live that message as well.
I had an opportunity to work for a video game company, on R-rated video games. That wouldn’t be so hard, and it might even be enjoyable. But I can’t justify moving my family to Canada so I can animate beach babes in a video game.
When I was in art school, I was so idealistic that I swore I’d never work on a commercial. But a film is often just a commercial enterprise.
One of my favorite children’s stories is The Giving Tree; it’s a timeless story of self-sacrifice. Every time I read it, it moves me in some way. My goal as a film maker is to create that type of art.