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MAKING A BUG'S LIFE WITH BILL KINDER by Shane Buettner About the Interview : In honor of the release of Buena Vista's terrific new Collector's Edition DVD of Pixar Studio's A Bug's Life, DVDFILE had the opportunity to sit down with Pixar's Senior Manager of Editorial and Post Production Bill Kinder to talk about the development of the film, the creation of the DVDs, and all the technical work that went on behind it. So here in its entirety is our visit with Bill Kinder...
Bill
Kinder: Let me introduce myself for a second. I'm
the Senior Manager of Editorial and Post Production at Pixar,
so on A Bug's Life I managed the editorial department
through the entire production. Then, when the film part of
the production wrapped up, I got very involved in the mastering
for the home video. It was somewhat special for a couple of
reasons. One, it was a direct digital master for the first
time from our original film frame data, and then, secondly,
for the 4:3 versions we did this reframing thing, where instead
of pan and scan we actually recomposed the shots that required
that. I was very involved in that, and that was just like
getting the film in a home video master state, and then when
the idea came in looking back, hey, we have all these other
nuggets to make a special edition out of, I got involved in
DF: So, what was the genesis of the project for the Bugs Life special edition, how did that come about exactly? BK: It came about when we finished A Bug's Life and said hey, "we have all this cool material that we think our audience would enjoy, and why don't we share it with them?" There's so much cool work that gets generated that doesn't wind up in the final film yet it contributes to the completion of the final film, and it's cool in its own right. And you know, for people who enjoyed the film, just sharing that and helping people understand the process by which the film gets made was the origin of the idea. DF: I was curious if Pixar had a special edition with these extras in mind while making the film, having had the experience of doing an extensive special edition for Toy Story on laser disc.
BK: You know, in the heat of production it's always, "we gotta just finish making this movie" and everything gets kind of churned out and tossed to the side. And sure, it's always in people's mind, you know, wouldn't it be cool, oh, this would be great. Sometimes people say during the middle of things, "this will be great for the special edition." And yet, there's just not the sort of time or resources to be making the special edition as you go. So all of this stuff gets churned out and thrown to the side, and then it's this archeology project at the end to go back and unearth the sedimentary layer and find out, what did we do, and what after three years really stands out as being cool and what really are we glad wound up in the trash. DF: Given that it's common knowledge that some deleted scenes or unfinished animation will have life as a special edition supplement on DVD or a laser disc, sometimes does a little bit more work get done on these things, just knowing that at some point, even though they might not make it into the final film, that they might eventually be shown to people in some fashion? BK: I see what you're saying. Not really, at least not in my experience on this project. Like I said, people are too focused on completing the film. Some of the cool things that are ending up on the disc, the development artwork, the concept art, shots of the models, and even scenes that got deleted from the film are just truly by-products of producing the film. Then we just went back and said, okay, lets scoop up everything we remember as being cool, review it again and see if it really is cool. Probably the closest thing to what you're talking about, is in the case of 2 scenes on the special edition that were cut from the film. Those we had to restore on our Avid in order to re-output, but they didn't really get polished or prettied up, they were really kind of thrown on there. DF: So they're really in rough form. BK: Yeah, I hope we've explained well enough that this is really rough stuff you know, we're sharing that this is how our films get made and these are the building blocks. DF: I wonder if you could talk about the decision to use CinemaScope and further, if you had a chance to take a look at the new anamorphic presentation, any thoughts you might have on the advantages involved of presenting the film in that fashion. BK: I can, I think I understand your first question, I'm not sure I get your second question. So I'll just start with what I'm getting, and tell me what you want to know. The subject matter of A Bug's Life is epic in its scope, so to speak. The filmmakers, very early on, decided that the appropriate presentation for an epic story would be the wide screen. They looked at other wide screen films that had been made and it really became obvious that the right visual treatment, compositional treatment of the subject matter visually was CinemaScope, wide screen. DF: They were obviously pleased with the results. BK: Everyone was very excited with the theatrical presentation. And, then, I'm not sure I got your second . . . DF: I guess the second question revolves around the fact that the first time A Bug's Life was released on DVD it was presented in nonanamorphic wide screen. DF: And so I just wondered if you had any thoughts on the second presentation, which is going to be anamorphic widescreen with increased resolution and such. BK: Yeah, well the increase in resolution comes if you have a wide screen television set or projector. That of course is a great thing, and we love that. At the time that we mastered A Bug's Life for home video, we actually created 3 masters simultaneously, or if you want to talk about PAL and NTSC, we created 6 masters, we did the anamorphic transfer at the same time we did the flat letterbox. DF: Oh, you did an anamorphic widescreen transfer back then? BK: Yep. It was an arduous process, requiring a great deal of effort to make these video masters, so the time to pluck that fruit from the tree was then. We understood the advantages of 16 x 9, but there are some disadvantages too. So we left the decision to our experienced partners at Buena Vista Home Entertainment as to which was the appropriate version to release on the original DVD. And, you know, I support their decision . I don't know if you've ever seen this, but I've looked at some side-by-side comparisons of a 16 x 9 disc on a 4 x 3 monitor, and this is with A Bug's Life playing back on DVD. If you look at 16 x 9 on a 4 x 3 monitor, allowing a good player to discard those lines that you have to discard in order to get it back out to wide screen and not look squeezed, and compare that to the flat letter box non anamorphic, side-by-side, what you'll notice, interestingly is a pretty minor artifact, in things like the credit crawl, where the text is jumping lines. So, you get this kind of stuttering effect, and then overall, if you're watching scene to scene, it's very hard to detect a difference. The players actually do a pretty decent job with basic program material that doesn't involve highly graphic art material. But it's the downconversion process that causes some artifacts for most people, assuming that most people don't have 16 x 9 or video projection. So, then the question becomes, are those artifacts objectionable enough that you'd want to sway the decision to release which version? And like I said, appreciating the technical issues at Pixar, we made the 16 x 9 master and then left the decision to Buena Vista Home Entertainment as to which to release in the marketplace. And that was a topic of discussion, as you recall, when the Bug DVD came out. A lot of people were fretting about it not being an anamorphic release. One of the counterpoints to that is that there were two versions on the first DVD, which is the case on the special edition. One is a reframed 4:3 version, which if you want to get into resolution, uses all of the resolution on a 4 x 3 set and so, therefore, from that vantage point, that becomes the optimal version. Much more so than a pan and scan would be because it was actually reframed by the filmmakers and composed for that presentation, so we had that sort of antidote to the critique that, well you know, "I don't like pan and scan and you haven't given me the beautiful ultimate letter box quality version." We didn't do a pan and scan, we did this special version and people who wanted to see it in the theatrical presentation could. And now with the special edition we've got the anamorphic, so now everybody's happy.. DF: I guess being a real purist in that respect, I wanted to see A Bug's Life how it was presented theatrically, which is how I saw it and that's where I fell in love with the movie, so from now on I want to see it 2.35:1. And, obviously, anamorphic widescreen is the best way to experience that.
BK: If you've got that kind of TV set, totally, absolutely. And you know, A Bug's Life was the first all digital transfer, so we're really committed to pushing the quality of the home experience for the audience viewing the film. DF: Well, I'm glad to see that continue, because the kind of work that went into the Toy Story Laserdisc Box Set was just fantastic, and for the most part, some of that attention to detail was previously left behind in a lot of DVDs, so I'm really happy to see A Bug's Life getting the full treatment. BK: Yeah, the Special Editions are for people who really enjoyed the films. DF: Was Pixar actually involved in making the menus for the Special Edition, are they more interactive and exciting than what we saw in the previous DVD? BK: Yeah, we were definitely involved in the design of the menus and you know, I think they're very tasteful, elegant . . . DF: Is there full motion and all of that? BK: There is motion in many of the menus, the background is moving. Some people will like this, and some people might have wished for more motion on their screen. But a lot of DVDs come up and for each screen there's this whole animation routine you go through before you can see your selections. My experience is that the first couple of times you see that it's really cool, and then when you want to just get to the part that you want to get to, you're saying "all right already, I want to get to the part that I want to see. Just show me my menu!" So, this doesn't have that kind of animation where you have to sit through it to get to your menu. It has, I would say, very well-designed elegant animation in the background that sort of puts you in the environment and experience of the film and the characters. There's sound that goes with it that's equally immersive, so that you're sitting there and you feel like you're in a bugs perspective and ready to watch those clips, rather than having the ants carry the menu items to the screen and leave them there and walk off in some sort of crude 2-D CD-ROM-esque sort of animation on the thing. Some people might feel that's too bad, I happen to think that it's gorgeous. DF: No, that's fine. It's just that going back to the first disc, the menus were just really static and really weren't very involving. BK: These menus are very nicely done. You know what we have, which I'm really excited about. We're using the angle feature. There's the circus sequence, you can go to, and using the angle feature on your remote, flick through story boards, layout, animation, and lighting material, so you can just watch that sequence over and over again in any stage that you want, and each stage is introduced by the creative leads who worked on the film at that stage. So you get a really rich presentation of what it means, how it's done at each stage, and what it looks like. And you can watch whichever stage you want to watch, or click back and forth. BK: Yeah, I think it's really cool. I hadn't seen that done before. I had seen storyboard-to- film comparisons with a sort of overlay you can click on, but not quite like this. We also do a side-by-side where it's actually top and bottom split of one of the scenes in the film, storyboards versus final, so you see the two simultaneously, and you can see how things changed, or how the storyboards really informed the composition and production of the actual shot. DF: Now, how about the short film, Fleabie? Is that an older project or is that a recent short subject? BK: Fleabie is a presentation tape for A Bug's Life, which was created in-house to share with our marketing partners and folks at the Walt Disney Studios very early in the production. They call it a Town Meeting or something homey like that, where they have a satellite link-up every so often, maybe once a year at Disney, with Disney Paris, Orlando, LA etc. all contributing and reporting how everything is going. Everybody can see everybody else on this linkup, and Disney said, and why don't we send up a crew and we'll shoot around Pixar and make a little short presentation on what's going on up at Pixar with A Bug's Life. Pixar said we'll do a 2 minute thing telling you what's going on here because the people here knew that the sort of tone and style of the piece would be much more Pixar's voice if we kind of made our own little video journal if you will, and so that's what that is. It's very home brew and a very irreverent and humorous presentation of what A Bug's Life is all about. It's was made a couple years before it was due to come out, so that's what it is, it's pretty fun, pretty humorous. DF: Has there been any talk at all about getting the early Pixar animated shorts to DVD in some fashion? BK: I think that's a great idea, I think we should do that. I think we just need to find some time to do it. DF: Yeah, that would be fantastic. Also, everybody's dying to know when Toy Story is going to make it to DVD. Given that Toy Story already has a great wealth of supplements done for it, are there any plans or possible timetable for that DVD release to tie in with the video release of Toy Story II? BK: I think a lot of people are trying to figure out the best way to do that right now. There isn't a plan that I know of. DF: I have to assume there's been some talk about it. BK: Yeah, there's definitely people thinking about how to do that really well. DF: That about covers what I had to ask, is there anything else that you'd like to mention to get people even more excited about the Special Edition DVD that you'd like to mention? BK: Well, in addition to all the other stuff we talked about that is on here, is the actual sound effects track isolated. So, at any point you can turn off everything else. You actually can listen to Gary Rydstrom's sound design isolated and hear what wonderful work he does on that aspect of the film. I hope by us putting it on there, more people will appreciate that because if you think about it, none of these environments or characters exist anywhere, and neither do any of the sounds. You know, live action you put a mike out and you get something, then people go to work and polish it up after that, but in our world it's completely fabricated. DF: I think that's a huge, huge element so far as making it a convincing and involving experience when it comes to animation or computer animation is concerned. BK: It absolutely is, and we just wanted to honor that contribution by putting the sound on there like that. But I think that when people press that button and check it out, they'll be interested and amazed. There's also a little presentation by Gary about how he created some of the sounds, which is really fun too, which, once you see that and realize that his creativity and ingenuity in making this stuff believable, and then you realize what's behind it, it's really a kick. So he does a great presentation that helps inform your enjoyment of sound effects track when it's isolated. The music is so wonderful, we're isolating the music score as well. DF: Yeah, I think a lot of people are into that, especially right now. A lot of the people that are really into DVD are of the specialist niche market that was also into laserdisc and they're really into sound and really into the home theater experience, so I think a lot of people will be really interested. BK: Good. I hope so. I think it's pretty cool. I think everything else is just kind of a nice presentation of the things that people would hope are on there. Character design and artwork...we talked about the split screen stuff and the angle stuff, and the trailers. People hoped there would be some of the other promotional stuff that's fun to see. I always get a bang out of seeing the international posters, to see what it looks like. There's also an insert that describes what's on each disc. The design of that is nicely done and pleasing to look at, which is always nice. DF:
Bill, thanks a lot for the great interview.
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DVDFILE:
Thanks for taking the time to talk with us and our readers
today. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you came
to Pixar?
BK: Yeah,
a flat wide screen, uh-huh
DF: That's
fantastic.