The studio released the first teaser for Frozen 2 this week. It’s always fun and interesting to see people’s reactions when they get their first look at what we’ve been working on, sometimes after a year or more of active production on the film. If you weren’t one of the 116.4 million views in the first 24 hours, check out the teaser below:
I started at Disney Animation in January of 2013, during the middle of production on the first Frozen. I was working on Big Hero 6, so I didn’t get my first taste of working with these characters until the short Frozen Fever in late 2014, and even then only for about a month before I hopped onto Zootopia. It’s been fun to spend more time with this world and these characters that generate so much excitement and anticipation from audiences, and I can’t wait for everyone to see the finished product.
I sometimes wrestle with my role as a tiny part of the largest capitalist entertainment conglomerate the world has ever known, but the thing that always wipes that feeling away is the joy and laughter of audiences seeing our movies for the first time.
Wednesday brought more fire-fighting at work, as I spent the bulk of my time fixing issues with the CG animation intern’s assets and shots. Turns out he hadn’t set things up properly with the pipeline tools we have…and, surprise, things weren’t working now that he needed to render. It took some finagling, but I got him back on track.
Any time not spent fixing people’s individual assignment problems was devoted toward coloring more shots for Momotaro. We still had an absurd amount to finish before Friday’s premiere, so I stayed at work pretty late that night trying to make sure we were squared away.
Yesterday a second group of Aggies came for a studio tour. I didn’t join the group this time since we had so much work to do, but I said hi when they came down to the Talent Development area and talked briefly about working there. Right around the time the tour group departed, the gold medal match for women’s Olympic soccer started – a rematch of last summer’s World Cup final between Japan and the United States. I tuned in online and watched the game, sort-of-working on my code for Tal at the same time. It was a pretty exciting match, with lots of great saves and close chances on both sides, but this time the U.S. women came out on top, 2-1.
Later in the afternoon, Tal came by my desk for a final review of my code and my overall performance that summer. We had a good chat about the code, and he had some nice things to say about my time at Disney. I feel like we worked pretty well together, and I learned a lot from him in a short amount of time.
I stuck around for leftover dinner, making sure that any work I needed to finish for Momotaro was complete. When we finished eating, Sam and I decided to call it a project (some of the others were wrapping up the editing and audio levels) and head downtown to try and meet up with Weecho and some other Aggies.
We eventually found Weecho and hung out for a while in the Standard Hotel, which has a café and bar open til midnight. We offered various opinions about L.A. and talked about our various experiences at animation studios (Sam and Weecho had been interns at Pixar several years before). I guess Thursdays are dead nights in downtown L.A. – it seemed like nothing was really going on anywhere – and so Sam and I headed back to Burbank to get some sleep before Friday’s big premiere and our last day at work.
The interns screened Momotaro in the digital review room next to the Caffeine Patch. Since it was less than a minute long, we showed it every three minutes for an hour during Bagel Friday, and we had baskets of peaches out next to the bagels as well, in keeping with the film’s story. People from all over the studio packed into the room to see what we’d done, and one group even asked to watch it a second time! I think the project was pretty successful, and I’m looking forward to showing it outside the studio once we get clearance from the legal department.
The rest of the day was pretty sad. We turned in our badges, filled out exit paperwork, and said our goodbyes to friends we’d made around the studio. It’s hard to believe that eight weeks went by so fast. I really enjoyed my time at work – the job, the people, the building – and would come back if I had the chance.
I picked Jessica up from Shyam’s place this morning, and we made our way downtown to the L.A. convention center. I was glad to have a navigator; it’s hard enough to drive in downtown L.A. without having to figure out where to turn next. We found a surface parking lot (the $10/day rate wasn’t too exorbitant) and walked a few blocks to the main entrance of the convention.
We picked up our passes at registration; large 4×6 cards emblazoned with our names and access levels, encased in clear plastic sleeves and suspended from neon green NVIDIA lanyards. Weighed down by our new badges, we made our way into the main exhibit hall where studios, software and hardware companies, school, and research institutions all set up booths giving talks, demonstrating products, showing reels, and, most importantly, giving away free stuff.
The most well-known and longest-running giveaway happens at the Pixar booth, where they hand out Walking Teapot toys every year. I staked a place in line about 45 minutes before the giveaway started at noon, so I was already behind several hundred people at least. This video ought to give you some idea of the craziness:
In the end, though, I came away with teapot number 821 of 5000. I think they gave away about 2000 teapots today.
After I got my teapot, I met up with some other Aggies for lunch and then walked a few blocks downtown to the Standard Hotel, where I had an interview scheduled with Blue Sky Studios, creators of the Ice Age films. They had rented out a suite on the 12th floor of the hotel, making this by far the swankiest place where I’ve ever interviewed for a job.
I felt the interview went well, and it was good to get a chance to learn more about Blue Sky, which I had not had much exposure to up to this point. I walked back to the convention center and spent the rest of the afternoon checking out different displays and galleries until Dailies started. I even saw Ed Catmull in the exhibit hall!
Speakers at SIGGRAPH Dailies are given ninety seconds to talk about their research or project, and they typically do so in an entertaining or humorous way. Since there was a large group of Vizzers here to present their work from the summer industry course, we made sure to get in early for good seats.
Once Dailies wrapped up, we made our way over to the Westin Bonaventure hotel for the annual Viz SIGGRAPH reception, a gathering of Viz students, faculty, staff, and industry friends, past and present, for food, drinks, and a good time. I caught up with a few Vizzers I hadn’t seen for years, and a few that I’d seen recently at Disney or Dreamworks.
The reception was a great end to a long and eventful day. The only damper was the solo walk back to my car and the drive home to Burbank. There are only a few days left of work at Disney, but it was nice to take a break and take in a new experience at SIGGRAPH. I hope to be back again, and I’ll try to go to more research talks next time.
On Saturday I did the last load of laundry that I’ll need before heading back to Texas – including all those Ralph shirts I bought for my family. I spent a little more time figuring out some thesis research interview details, reading more Three Cups of Tea, and watching some Olympic cycling. The British women really aren’t messing around this year; I watched them set a new world record three consecutive times in each of their heats on the way to a gold medal in team pursuit.
Later on that evening, I went over to Sam and Mike’s apartment to watch Battle Royale, the 2000 Japanese film about a class of students dumped on a remote island and forced to kill each other as part of a government-run game. The film is heavy on satire and black humor, but it’s pretty brutal nonetheless. I can see how many folks thought The Hunger Games borrowed heavily from the premise of this film.
On Sunday I headed over to the Glendale Church of Christ to change things up a little and see what manifestation of Stone-Campbellism existed there. After worshiping in Episcopal churches all summer – most of which were cathedral-type buildings – the much plainer Glendale CofC building seemed almost spartan in comparison. Once worship started, though, I could very well have been in a small church in central Texas because the service followed a pretty standard Church of Christ ‘model.’
More importantly, though, I was warmly greeted and chatted with several people after the service. I went to lunch with James and Kristi, who came from Colorado several years ago, and had a good discussion with them about the church and its ministries in the area. We ate at Hook Burger over in the Burbank Empire Center, which reminded me of the recently-opened Grub Burger in College Station.
I did some more reading that afternoon, and remembered to tune in online for the landing of NASA’s Mars rover, Curiosity. The rover was entering the atmosphere of the planet, and I listened with people all over the country and the world as NASA live-streamed the reports from the JPL in California. When Curiosity landed and touchdown was confirmed, the whoop of celebration and sheer exuberance of the NASA engineers was totally infectious. In a time when federal funding for science and space is being slashed, it’s incredible to be reminded what we’re capable of.
Today a group of Aggies (in town for SIGGRAPH) came to the studio for a tour. I walked around with the group, providing some color commentary for Michelle’s tour, and ate lunch with them before departing back to the training area to get some work done. I spent some time fixing technical issues with some of our assets and preparing everyone for my absence tomorrow (I’m headed to SIGGRAPH for the day). I learned how to use Harmony (the 2D animation software we’re primarily relying on for our short) to color one of our shots, which I finished at a totally unreasonable hour before heading home. Tomorrow I’ll brave the L.A. Convention Center at my very first SIGGRAPH Conference!
Wednesday was a media day at work, where Disney invited journalists and bloggers of various descriptions into the studio to see some new footage from Wreck-It Ralph. I saw a camera crew or two milling around in the patch when I went upstairs to get my coffee. Online reactions to the footage seem to be positive, and I think people are starting to get excited about the movie.
We had a lighting dailies session for Momotaro to update everyone on how the final look of our short was developing. We still have a lot of work left to go, but I think the end result should be pretty impressive.
I took care of a few other tasks at work – setting up some assets for an internal training session, testing more code for my individual assignment – and went to lunch with Shyam, Ravin, Megan, and Michelle to mark Megan’s last day at Disney. She got a job over at Dreamworks, so sadly the Disney A&M Crew is downsizing by one. We ate at a little Thai restaurant in Burbank, and I got some delicious roast duck.
Thursday was pretty unremarkable other than a special meeting that was set up for the interns. We sat down with Mark and Joel, two of the technical supervisors at the studio, and they talked about the TD department and the kind of responsibilities they have during production. It was neat to hear about that work from a senior perspective, and I think it gave the other interns a clearer picture of what my job is at the studio.
Today was the really exciting part of the week – the interns all got invited to a screening of Wreck-It Ralph for studio executives, including John Lasseter (Chief Creative Officer at both Disney and Pixar) and Bob Iger (CEO of Walt Disney Company). We didn’t meet either of them, but it was cool to know that when I laughed at something in the movie they could both hear me! The movie isn’t finished yet, obviously, but I think what is done is pretty great. I’m very excited to see the final product in November.
With such a great start to the day, it was hard to imagine anything going wrong, but unfortunately the chain on my bike – the one I just had replaced a couple of weeks ago – broke as I was riding up the hill to my apartment after work. Hopefully I’ll be able to get that fixed up for free at Velo Studio before I leave.
fighting in a sack 