CINEMA
COURTESY OF INSIGHT EDITIONS
Dressed in special sensor leotards, from left, Spencer Locke, Sam Lerner and Mitchel Musso had their physical movements recorded by motion-capture technology.
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Living his dream
Gil Kenan went straight from UCLA to the big leagues in motion-capture animation
Today's the day for Gil Kenan. After a handful of preview screenings -- including one last month at the Maui Film Festival -- his animated feature debut, "Monster House," hits theaters nationwide. Advance reviews have been positive overall for the thriller about a group of kids who fight off a frightening creature in the form of a dilapidated house (see a three-star review in our Weekend section).
"Monster House" is the culmination of a true Hollywood dream. In an interview during his Maui visit, Kenan said he had "the Zen realization that after giving birth to this movie, it was time to push it out of the house, so to speak, to fare on its own. But I'm a proud dad."
A then-26-year-old Kenan came to the attention of Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg in 2002 through his UCLA student short "The Lark," a film that combined CG and live action.
"I was pretty lucky," Kenan understated. "You hear about these things in school, where you make your thesis film, and it becomes your calling card into the industry. ... After the first screening of my short, I was contacted by CAA (the powerhouse Creative Artists Agency, which represents Spielberg and Zemeckis). It was shocking. I was flabbergasted. I was afraid to ask if this was reality. I'm still floating on a cloud. And I'm smart enough not to question why me.
"I originally had low expectations," he said. "I figured that after graduation, I would be living in an apartment with blacked-out windows and make short movies in my kitchen for $400."
But with Zemeckis and Spielberg as executive producers, Kenan spent his first three years out of college working on a big-budget studio movie, furthering the CG and motion-capture techniques Zemeckis first used on his 2004 production, "The Polar Express."
COURTESY OF INSIGHT EDITIONS
Sensor dots were placed on their faces to capture the actors facial expressions. About 50 animators were used to convert their movements into animation.
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COURTESY OF INSIGHT EDITIONS
Many sketches were made before selecting the "Monster House" that would be used. For more information on the background of the movie, check out "The Art & Making of Monster House" by J.W. Rinzler.
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Despite the enormity of "Monster House," Kenan said, "I do feel it's got my fingerprints on it. I got to explore animation techniques that I started using in my student work. I always try to tell stories in new and different ways, and while 'The Lark' is not on the technical scale that 'Monster House' allows, I like to think that the new movie is still just me in the kitchen, albeit on a larger scale."
Kenan readily took to motion-capture animation for "Monster House." "I'm not a purist to technology," he said. "I'll use whatever I can for it to be a good film. ... It's the subtlety and nuance of motion capture, taken through the prism of CG animation.
"It becomes a stew, driven by the actors, who wore leotards with sensor dots all over them."
The cast -- including Steve Buscemi, Jon Heder, Kathleen Turner, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Catherine O'Hara -- worked a quick 40-day shooting schedule.
"Since they needed no costume or makeup, these were purely character-driven performances," Kenan said. "The heightened sense of their facial and body movement lent themselves well to animation. And while those adults usually have other things on their mind concerning their performances, the kids in the movie are natural believers. It was easy to throw them into the deep end of the pool and let them play."
COURTESY OF INSIGHT EDITIONS
The book contains behind-the-scenes drawings and stories, plus interactive extras.
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It would have seemed more natural for "Monster House" to have come out at Halloween, but Kenan said the timing is right. "For the first 45 minutes, it's a solid Halloween movie. The remainder of it can only have been a summer movie. Everything goes bananas afterwards.
"Even though this movie is rated PG, it's not your usual soft and cuddly family movie," he said. "At the beginning, animation showed the full range of emotions. It wasn't just giggles and big fat hugs."
Kenan said he didn't shy away from including some genuinely scary moments in the film. "Fear is a natural reaction, and I like to feel that sense of electricity in the movie theater. I think that emotion has been criminally extracted from movies that kids can see."
Kenan is in pre-production on a live-action sci-fi film, although he joked that after this debut, "I'm screwed. It's all downhill from here. This will be a tough act to follow."
"Monster House" will be the first feature screened using a new digital projection system in one of the theaters at the Dole Cannery multiplex.