Suzie Templeton, director of Peter and the Wolf, has taken some time to answer The Six Questions. Like many of the other nominees, she is passionate about filmmaking, not about receiving awards. However, she hopes the Oscar experience gives her a chance to expand the scope of her work. Here is what she had to say:

Rick: How did you hear about your nomination? Did you wait up? Did someone call you?

Suzie: I knew we had a good chance of being nominated as the Academy had already let me know that Peter and the Wolf was on the shortlist of nine and that five would be nominated. On the day, I was working in the studio with [animator] Rosto and his assistant Elte. I banned them from talking about it as I was getting so nervous and then I checked the Oscar website in the afternoon and there we were! And then the phones all started ringing and Rosto gave me some flowers and champagne and whisked me off to dinner!

Rick: Since the nominations came out has anything exciting happened because of the nomination?

Suzie: I’m really excited to be going on the Oscar Showcase tour and I’m also going to visit Laika when I’m in the States. I’ve got some amazingly exciting things lined up for the near future but at the moment it feels like the calm before the storm.

Rick: What was the thing that brought you to your nominated project?

Suzie: Hugh Welchman asked me if I’d like to make a film version of Peter and the Wolf for live orchestral performance. I was immediately excited by the idea of making a film with live music and also, listening to the music again, I was gripped with creative desire.

Rick: What made this project special for you?

Suzie: This was my first professional film and also my first film working with a large crew, so it was an extremely steep learning curve for me. Making Peter and the Wolf was intense in every way - brilliant and terrible all at the same time!

Rick: In the next couple weeks there will be all kinds of big events going on, is there something that you are particularly looking forward to?

Suzie: Well really its all one big crazy adventure. I’m looking forward to having a beautiful week with my Rosto in L.A. And of course it’s going to be so weird and exciting going to the Oscars. Percy Irausquin, a designer in Amsterdam, is going to lend me an amazing Oscar dress.

Rick: Anything else you’d like to add?

Suzie: I’ve just moved to Amsterdam and my aim is to find a way to make outstanding stop-motion films here. I’m starting with a short and want to make a feature next. I’m hoping the publicity surrounding all this Oscar stuff will enable me to meet some great collaborators who’d like to get involved in this Amsterdam adventure.

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I Met the Walrus director Josh Raskin and Jerry Levitan have written in to answer The Six Questions. If you don’t already know about their film, it’s based on audiotapes that Jerry made as a teen when he snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room and asked for an interview. Josh then transformed the sound recordings into a whirlwind of images that depict and comment on what is being said. The funny and poignant film says just as much about Jerry as it does about the rock ‘n roll icon Lennon. Here is what Jerry had to say:

Rick: How did you hear about your nomination? Did you wait up? Did someone call you?

Jerry: I was stuck on a hill in a snowstorm driving my six-year-old to school. My girlfriend called me.

Rick: Since the nominations came out has anything exciting happened because of the nomination?

Jerry: Got to meet some great people.

Rick: What was the thing that brought you to your nominated project?

Jerry: The day I spent with John Lennon in 1969.

Rick: What made this project special for you?

Jerry: The event was so part of my life.

Rick: In the next couple weeks there will be all kinds of big events going on, is there something that you are particularly looking forward to?

Jerry: Had fun at the Nominees Lunch.

Rick: Anything else you’d like to add?

Jerry: Happy I met Josh.

Now for the man who helped transform an unforgettable day in Jerry’s life into a fantastical animated film:

Rick: How did you hear about your nomination? Did you wait up? Did someone call you?

Josh: I was in the midst of a nauseous half-sleep in Park City, Utah, when James [Braithwaite] (the illustrator) called with the news. Assuming he was winding me up, I swore at him several times, until everyone else I’ve ever met called that same minute.

Rick: Since the nominations came out has anything exciting happened because of the nomination?

Josh: George Clooney squeezed my arm a few times at the nominee luncheon. Then he asked me where the bar was. That was pretty exciting.

Rick: What was the thing that brought you to your nominated project?

Josh: John Lennon, Jerry Levitan and an arseful of luck.

Rick: What made this project special for you?

Josh: Growing up, The Beatles were my breast milk, so an opportunity to work with John Lennon’s words was pretty much the best thing that’s ever happened. Also, this film provided an opportunity to work with two very close (and very talented) friends: the genius illustrator James Braithwaite and the brilliant designer Alex Kurina. Despite having to lock ourselves in a dark studio for a year with nothing but a firm ping-pong regiment to keep us sane, we didn’t once kill each other. Another thing that makes this project important is that sadly, the stuff John’s talking about seems more relevant today than when he spoke the words 39 years ago. I think it’s a timely reminder of how little we seem to have learned.

Rick: In the next couple weeks there will be all kinds of big events going on, is there something that you are particularly looking forward to?

Josh: I’m particularly looking forward to the screening tour of Bay Area film studios (headed by Ron Diamond). Mostly because I’ll get to run around causing trouble in San Francisco with James and the other nominated lads, but also cause it’ll be neat to see where movies are made. I’m also looking forward to any party Ellen Page is at. She’s adorable.

Rick: Anything else you’d like to add?

Josh: This is all completely insane. And as flattering as it is to be considered next to such amazing work, it’s important to remember that awards are not the reason you make a film. And if they are the reason… your film probably won’t be very good. You have to love what you’re doing, and if it all works out, people will respond to it. Having said that, the fact that anyone has responded so favorably to our little film blows my mind pretty much daily.

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Even Pigeons Go To Heaven was a project that director Sam Tourneux started then abandoned. Well, I’m sure he’s glad that he picked it back up again. Here is what the filmmaker had to say about his film and the Oscar experience thus far.

Rick: How did you hear about your nomination? Did you wait up? Did someone call you?

Sam: Someone called me when I had friends over for dinner. It was someone who speaks English. I needed time to switch my brain in the English mode, but I understood: “…academy… motion picture…. Congratulations!!!” So I answered, “Yes ?! Thank you!” But I didn’t really understand what it was all about. When I hung up, I had a few ideas of what they were calling about: “Is it the Oscars ?!” So the day after, I called my distribution company who told me that I was in the top 10 for the nomination. A few weeks later I was stuck to the Internet waiting for the announcement… And the dream came true…

Rick: Since the nominations came out has anything exciting happened because of the nomination?

Sam: An agent called me… Several congratulations from producers I know…The dream continues?

Rick: What was the thing that brought you to your nominated project?

Sam: The idea came from a long work. At the beginning, I wrote a script about a man who wanted to meet God to ask him something like “why is life so difficult?” It was a 12-minute film, but honestly, it need more time to explain that kind of subject.

With the help of BUF Compagnie, I started to work on the storyboard, then the animatic and a long shot of one minute where the 2cv (the priest car) drives across the forest. At the end of four months of hard work, I realized that the film would be boring and pretentious. So I abandoned it.

Maybe two years later, I showed that first minute with the car in the forest to a production company who told me that I should continue. So I tried to imagine a new story with the elements I already build in my computer — a church; a priest; the 2cv car; an old, little house; a strange machine; a forest; and heaven… And one morning I woke up with the idea, “A priest tries to sell a machine to go to the heaven.”

I quickly wrote a first version of the script and showed it to BUF Compagnie. They liked it, but wanted me to work with Karine Binaux, who wrote screenplay while she was working at BUF as an assistant producer. She provided a lot of ideas and mainly the structure of the story. Olivier Gilbert, who was in charge of the project for BUF, oversaw the work of Karine and myself. It was pretty hard, but three months later, we had the script.

Rick: What made this project special for you?

Sam: It was the first time I could do my OWN film… It took time to write it. Took time to abandon it… Took time to rewrite it… etc…

Rick: In the next couple weeks there will be all kinds of big events going on, is there something that you are particularly looking forward to?

Sam: Meeting people in order to possibly work on longer and more challenging projects… Profiting from California’s weather (if possible).

Rick: Anything else you’d like to add?

Sam: I’m happy, but busy.

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Hugh Welchman, who is nominated for producing Peter and the Wolf, has answered the Six Questions. From concept to today, he has been involved with this film for seven years! It’s a major part of his life and he’s happy that the Oscar nod will allow more people to see the labor of love. Here’s what he had to say:

Rick: How did you hear about your nomination? Did you wait up? Did someone call you?

Hugh: I was told by the Academy that it would be announced at 2:30 pm UK time on their website, at the same time as the television broadcast, so we were all working away at our office, when at 2:00 pm we suddenly got inundated with emails, texts and phone calls!!! So that is how we found out! We had about 30 calls/texts/emails within half an hour!

Rick: Since the nominations came out has anything exciting happened because of the nomination?

Hugh: The first thing that happened is that our server went down because of the sudden increase in volume of emails, so we treated ourselves to a long overdue IT overhaul! We also received a software overhaul from Adobe, who sponsored the film, which was much appreciated. The most exciting thing has been the reception for the news in Poland, our co-producing country, where we were featured in every major newspaper, news show, and radio station in the country, we feel very appreciated!

Rick: What was the thing that brought you to your nominated project?

Hugh: I was approached by a conductor, Mark Stephenson (who went on to be our Music Director on the film, and conducted the world premiere at the Royal Albert Hall) who had heard about the awards that I had picked up at film school, and he asked me if I had ever thought about doing films with live music. I said no, but it sounded intriguing. We met up and brainstormed a number of ideas: new music commissions, various pieces of classical music, and one of the ideas he put forward was Peter and the Wolf. Initially I was skeptical about the idea, as I was sure that such an iconic piece had been already made into a great film. However as I had listened to it hundreds of times as a kid, the idea stuck with me, and I started seeking out the versions already made, and found to my surprise, especially given the calibre of some of the animators who had made versions, that I thought that none of them had grasped the potential of a film version of the piece. At that point the project took hold of my head.

Rick: What made this project special for you?

Hugh: I was 26 when I came up with the concept of how I wanted to do this, and yesterday I was 33 — I feel like I grew up on this project, I have been working on it ever since I set up BreakThru Films, less than a year after I left film school, it would be impossible for me to explain my life and my career without reference to Peter and the Wolf. It has been and still is a very big part of my life, and that feels strange, to have a film that feels ingrained in me! So that is what makes this project special for me. However what makes this film special is the fact that I chose Suzie Templeton to adapt and be the director of the film. From the moment I thought of her for the role I couldn’t imagine anyone else being able to do it. She has made it exactly how I wanted it to be, which is amazing, as it is totally her vision, there were many important collaborators along the way, including co-writer Marianela Maldonado, but it was overwhelmingly Suzie’s creative vision that guided the process.

The most special single moment on the project that I will remember for the rest of my life was during our world premiere at the Royal Albert Hall. We delivered the film off a plane (thankfully the plane was on time!) to the hall at 6:30 pm for a 7:30 pm performance. The tail end of production was so fraught, nail biting and hellish that making a speech in front of 5,500 people seemed like the most relaxing moment I had had for weeks! Anyway then the film started and I was back to feeling nerve wracked, and then at the moment the cat appeared at the gate of the cottage all the children in the hall (about 3,000!) erupted into giggles, and at that point a wave of relief went through my body and I knew that it was all going to work out, and everything would be just fine!

Rick: In the next couple weeks there will be all kinds of big events going on, is there something that you are particularly looking forward to?

Hugh: Showing the film. I love showing this film to audiences and being in the audience when they watch it. We get to show the film on the Oscar Showcase Tour to a very discerning audience made up of the world’s best animators and animation filmmakers, it’s wonderful to have the opportunity to do that, and get feedback from that audience. Obviously also I am looking forward and dreading in equal measure the Oscar announcement!!!! It makes such a difference to the life of the film, and how many people will see and enjoy it, so that moment will be either unbelievable or heartbreaking. It is a great honor to be nominated, but it makes a big difference to the animated shorts to actually win, so inevitably that moment will be incredibly fraught.

Rick: Anything else you’d like to add?

Hugh: Thanks to AWN for organizing the Oscar Showcase Tour, I am really excited about it!

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I sent out six questions to the nominees and producers of the nominated shorts. I’m hoping everyone will have time to answer them before the Tour begins, however I know how unbelievably busy they are at the moment. Marcy Page, producer of Madame Tutli-Putli and Oscar Tour alum, has written back and here is what she had to say about the Oscar experience, as well as the eye-catching stop-motion film that she worked on. (Okay, that was a pun I couldn’t resist).

Rick: How did you hear about your nomination? Did you wait up? Did someone call you?

Marcy: My husband, Normand, and I listened to the Academy announcement on television in the morning in Montreal and when Kathy Bates stopped after the major film nomination categories, I immediately went to the website and saw Madame Tutli-Putli listed with the other short animated films. I screamed. And hugged Normand who was not only excited for me but also because of Petrov’s nomination for My Love (he had composed the music for the sound track). So we hugged and screamed. I then immediately called Chris and Maciek, who were at the Sundance Festival. It was around 5:45 am for them but Chris was already up, having checked the Academy site himself. He had just called and woken Maciek. We basically exchanged a lot of inarticulate exclamations of delight and amazement and hysterical laughter. When I got off the phone, it immediately rang and I was surprised and happy to hear Ron Diamond’s voice calling with congratulations. I think I was relatively restrained and I don’t think I screamed in his ear (too much). Then Mia Desroches, our new NFB marketing coordinator, called and I’m sure I did scream again. That sort of thing seemed to play out all day at the NFB.

Rick: Since the nominations came out has anything exciting happened because of the nomination?

Marcy: I think the realization that I would go on the Oscar Tour again was actually the most exciting news for me in the last week or so. We did have a lovely assembly at the NFB where we all toasted the nomination and David Verrall (executive producer for Animation) made a touching speech. I think everyone felt very proud. Though one would think that the NFB would be quite jaded by many past nominations, trust me, this does not get old. Chris and Maciek have gone through a gauntlet of press interviews, being the lightning rods for most of the public and press excitement about the nomination.

The NFB was also collectively pleased that Josh’s film, I Met the Walrus, was nominated too. Many of us know Josh and also the illustrator on the film, James Braithwaite, who is currently working at the NFB. The project in addition to support from Bravo!FACT had a little help from the NFB to make its 35mm print. It has been fun to vicariously experience their excitement as well.

Rick: What was the thing that brought you to your nominated project?

Marcy: Meeting and getting to know Chris and Maciek and finally encouraging them to consider a project with the NFB. I remember visiting them in their Clyde Henry studio (then in Toronto) and coming to the realization that they had that ineffable madness and creative genius to be interesting film creators. The studio was crammed with interesting bits of artistry that clearly pulled in influences from a broad base of culture — art, theatre and film. Amidst the puppets, props, collage assemblages, posters and paraphernalia, I remember one sign that they had up on the wall, that said something like, “an impossible task, a tight budget and a crazy deadline are the mothers of invention”. No doubt, a little spirit catcher for stray producers.

Rick: What made this project special for you?

Marcy: It was special for me to help give Chris and Maciek a chance to make their first serious auteur work. While they had done some commercial work for television, comic books, illustrations that were based on model constructions, they had not really ever made an animated short. They had not really even done much animation beyond exercises and the odd bit in their commercial work. While I knew that they were quite brilliant at synthesizing surprising images, to see them rise to the challenge of learning to animate with such sensitivity and then rise to the challenge of becoming really interesting filmmakers was all quite gratifying. I felt vindicated in my faith.

I was also dazzled by the eye technique that Jason Walker worked out for them using the eyes of our actress/costume designer, Laurie Maher, and seamlessly integrating them into the puppet animation with such perfection. Spending time with Laurie and Jason and also compositor, Peter George, has been fun. I also enjoyed the post-production time with David Bryant and Jean-Frédéric Messier whose work on the sound track was nothing short of miraculous. In addition to being hypnotized by the visuals, I truly love listening to this film.

Rick: In the next couple weeks there will be all kinds of big events going on, is there something that you are particularly looking forward to?

Marcy: I look forward to the studio screenings, the Chocolate Fosca party and the chance to visit again at Skywalker Ranch. I found on the last tour, that by the time our little group got to the Academy reception and screening of the animation and live-action shorts, that we felt so collectively bonded that we were proud not only of our own work but proud of each others’ work and that we could put on such a nice show of animation together. I look forward to seeing that happening again with this years group. I hope there will be a red carpet, but it wouldn’t be such a tragedy if our little tour ended with the Chocolate Fosca party.

Rick: Anything else you’d like to add?

Marcy: Thanks to Ron Diamond and his team (including you too, Rick) for continuing to work so hard to put this tour together. It is a huge amount of work and a labour of love. Bravo encore.

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Today we get the second part of our Little Matchgirl interviews — this time chatting with director Roger Allers. The veteran Disney story man made his directing debut on The Lion King. Talk about hitting one out of the ballpark on your first at bat. Allers not only worked with producer Don Hahn on The Lion King, but also the Oscar nominated Beauty and the Beast. Allers, who wasn’t even awake when the nominations were announced, doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who makes films to win awards, however, I still wanted to find out what the Oscar experience has been like for him as well as his feelings about making Matchgirl and his other work.

Rick: I talked to [Little Matchgirl producer] Don Hahn and he said that he had called you in the morning and left a message on your answering machine on the morning of the nominations, when you heard that message what was your feeling?

Roger: Actually, I didn’t hear his message first. I was still up in bed and the phone was down in my home office so I didn’t hear the message. I heard the phone ring, but I didn’t hear it. It was actually a call I got up to answer, which was from an animator friend who actually worked on the show. But, be that as it may, it was thrilling. It was a big thrill. Before that I wasn’t thinking about it very much and I was surprised at how much it sort of made my head spin (laughs).

Rick: When designing the look for the film, what were some of the influences and thoughts that you tapped into?

Roger: Well a major influence was Hans Bacher. He was on very early. And as I said, in the early days, it was a very, very small crew. So Hans was doing these brush and ink sketches just to work ideas of what the girl might look like and putting her in different situations. And I’m sure he worked with his inks and ink washes because it was very quick for him. But the look of it just caught my eye and just enchanted me. There was such a beauty to it and such a simplicity and such a moodiness to it. The look of the ink on paper. The way the pigments spread around and the way they soak into the texture of the paper was beautiful. I was really determined to see if we could get that same look on the film. Certainly, we were able to do it to some degree. We shifted to watercolor for the backgrounds, but when it came to the characters we were doing them where the hand drawn animation would be scanned and then it was in the CAPs system, the post-production painting system, that we painted it. We had to do all sorts of trickery to try to mimic the look of the way pigments of color soak into paper. We used noise and did blurring and blending and seeping and all sort of processes and some were actually invented on the spot and I couldn’t tell you how it was done. It was exciting to create that look so that it looked to be of the same medium.

Rick: When Little Matchgirl first started production that was a time when studios weren’t doing shorts and now everybody is doing shorts. Where to you see short filmmaking going in the future?

Roger: One thing that we use to bemoan, all of us in animation, we all loved shorts. Of course we all grew up watching shorts, whether it was some of us in the movies before they discontinued that and certainly all of us watching them on TV. We always wished the theaters would carry them again. To that end, it was a really happy thing to see that Pixar was managing to put their shorts sometimes in front of their movies. And to get them back out in the public eye again was wonderful. But being a member of the Academy, I would see so many wonderful shorts. There’s such a variety, there’s such a bunch of different creative approaches that people take, it would be frustrating to think — well we’re the only ones seeing these things, I wish the public would see them. The Academy is looking into putting together DVDs of the nominees. They should get out into the public.

Rick: While I was doing research for this project, I noticed that on IMDB many people were posting wonderful comments about Little Matchgirl after discovering it on The Little Mermaid DVD.

Roger: Oh cool.

Rick: It’s interesting how shorts being part of the extra material on bigger DVDs is allowing people to see them, which is great.

Roger: I’m just happy that people are looking at the second disc (laughs). Sometimes you don’t know, maybe it’s only the movie geeks who are looking at the making of discs, but I’m so happy that people are really looking at them and seeing Little Matchgirl. That’s really a pleasing thing to think of.

Rick: I don’t want to get into a 2D/3D debate because that’s tired, but the transition from doing Lion King to now tackling Open Season how was that transition for you artistically?

Roger: Artistically it’s still very much the same kind of challenge in a way. Working with Jill Culton and Tony Stacchi on Open Season, there was very specific vision and a goal. The Carter Goodrich characters and the kind of Eyvind Earle looking backgrounds. The Eyvind Earle inspired backgrounds. Trying to get the strong design sense. So whether you were trying to encourage artists to paint like that or to encourage the renders to build trees that could work like that, they are different challenges, but sort of the same in that you accomplish the same goal. It was an interesting challenge and for me I know judging the character animation in the simpler forms of the CG models that are moved around in the beginning, they are not generally as articulated as, to my eye, the rough doodly sketches of an animator. So that was an adjustment for me. To look at the bare bones of an animator’s blocking of the scene and think — okay… that’s gonna work. And certainly also other considerations of things. Even though it’s a virtual space, you have to deal with it as real space, because your characters can’t penetrate different planes. You can’t have them penetrate surfaces of buildings or the ground plane. You can’t have grass stick up through their feet. Even though it’s virtual, there is a reality that you have to deal with and it’s odd — in drawing you just draw it the way you want it and you overlap things and hide a lot of things. And in this there is a lot of attention to detail too. Interesting challenges, but it was exciting to see the expanse of textural possibilities working in CG. That was a lot of fun.

Rick: The whole Lion King experience from the story to the success, how was that experience?

Roger: (laughs)

Rick: I’m sure you could write a whole book on that.

Roger: So you want it in 100 words or less?

Rick: (laughs) Yes, this is the college entry form version.

Roger: Where to begin on that one. It was super exciting. It was my first film to direct. You kind of take the plunge into the deep end. Though I had headed up story before, which had some quasi-directorial aspects to it, this was a big one. So you kind of feel like you’re learning on the job, which puts a lot pressure on you. At the same time, it was thrilling to be involved in all aspects — the music, the backgrounds, directing the voice actors — though it’s challenging it’s so much fun. It’s so much fun to be involved in all those aspects. Also the picture started off and there were a lot of story problems and it wasn’t the favorite of anybody when we started on it (laughs), including Jeffery [Katzenberg]. So we had a little bit of an uphill slog with that one.

Rick: When going through any of the challenges that it takes to make any film and an audience embraces it like they did with The Lion King, how did that feel?

Roger: Well, the scale of the response to that sometimes is kind of hard to appreciate. But it’s kind of the same thing even if you only worked on one scene and you go into a theater and it’s being projected and people are laughing at your scene or they are just responding emotionally to it some way. The satisfaction of people responding to your work that’s where it all is. The idea that it’s multiplied by… I can’t even think of a number… but when you think of worldwide when the response is so large that’s actually kind of mind-boggling. I really can’t wrap my mind around it. I’m just thrilled when people appreciate things and we can all go on that ride together.

Rick: In the next couple weeks there are all kinds of big events, is there any of them that you’re looking forward to?

Roger: I’m looking forward to going around to all the studios with the other shorts nominees and showing our stuff to other studios and meeting with people from other studios. That’s always fun. It’s always fun to be with other animators and hear their questions and see some different points of view. I’m looking forward to that. I’m sure that they will start stacking up on me. As a person my nature is such I kind of take days one at a time and I don’t look too much to the future and that includes even next week. So I’m getting ready to go into this nominee tour and see where it goes from there.

Rick: I’m going to be going on the Oscar tour and I’ll probably have more questions for you then.

Roger: Oh great.

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As a precursor to the tour, I had a chance to talk with Little Matchgirl producer Don Hahn about what the Oscar experience has been like thus far. He’s not an Oscar newbie by any stretch, having been nominated for producing Beauty and the Beast and the animated short Lorenzo. He was also behind mega-hits such as The Lion King and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I talked to him over the phone and his voice was genial and he seemed very humbled by the experience. I look forward to meeting him in person as we kick off the tour next week in San Fran. Well with no further ado, here’s what he had to say.

Rick: The first question is — how did you hear about your nomination? Did you wait up? Did someone call you?

Don: (laughing) No, I got up early and I actually went to the Internet at about 5 or 6 in the morning in my pajamas and saw it there. And I just couldn’t believe it. It was just great to have the work of these artists that made this movie getting acknowledged. You know it’s not always that way and there are so many great contenders for the short films this year, it’s really nice to hear the announcement that we were nominated.

Rick: That morning when you looked online and you saw that you were nominated, who was the first person that you called? What did you say? What did they say?

Don: I actually e-mailed Roger right away because I knew he wouldn’t be awake yet. And then once it got to be about 7 o’clock, I called him and he still wasn’t awake so I left a message on his machine and I said, “Roger, you’re an Oscar nominated director now.” So he called right back and we were both thrilled. We’ve been through a lot of movies together and I admire him as one of the best directors working in animation right now, so I’m as happy for him as anybody, because he’s a great, great director.

Rick: How was this experience any different or similar to your other nominations?

Don: They’re all great. It’s like winning the World Series, so there is no such thing as a bad one (laughs). They all have different personalities, just because of the year too. We had the nominee luncheon yesterday and got to meet some of the other animators that did some of the shorts and you meet different people with different sensibilities and the films this year are really special, all of them in the shorts category.

Rick: Since the nominations came out has anything exciting happened because of the nomination? Did you get to talk to someone that you really admire or that you’ve always wanted to talk to? You said that you got to meet the nominees at the luncheon.

Don: Well, it was great, because Martin Scorsese is nominated and he was there and Steven Spielberg was there and we got to talk to Helen Mirren — I’m just a huge fan of hers. And what I love about the Oscars though is that all the crafts are treated equal when it comes to the nominations. If you’re a writer, if you’re an animator or if you’re a producer or actor, I think the Academy realizes the importance of every branch. And that’s one of the miracles of the Animation and Shorts branch is that shorts are still made and recognized and I think that is to the credit of the Academy. So it’s really wonderful to sit at a table with Eddie Murphy and Helen Mirren and Leonardo DiCaprio and these great actors — Will Smith — and share a meal with them and feel that you’re welcomed at the table and they are as respectful of you as you are of them. That is a really special feeling.

Rick: What made the project special for you?

Don: Well, I guess one thing was how long it took to make it. You know, we started this back in 2001, 2002 as a project that might have been part of a Fantasia film that we were working on. It was kind of like a world music Fantasia. We wanted to do something that was kind of a traditional fairy tale. Little Matchgirl isn’t necessarily a fairy tale, but it’s a great, long-lasting Hans Christian Andersen story and I think the thing that appealed to me was that we could easily do it in pantomime. In fact the first piece of music that we set it to was not Alexander Borodin’s “String Quartet,” which it is set to right now and around that time [director] Roger Allers became available and we started talking about the project. We got the Emerson String Quartet about the same time and all these elements came together at the same time between Roger, the musicians, the piece of music, certainly some great pre-production design from Hans Bacher and Randy Haycock did some of the character design. And when all those elements come together, especially when you’re a producer, it’s the best part of your job. It’s almost better than getting an Academy Award nomination, because it’s when the alchemy of making these movies comes together it’s really great. So the feel of all those elements coming together, which was back in 2002, was fantastic. I went back to New York with Roy Disney and Roger and recorded the Emerson Quartet and that gave us this wonderful foundation of music to build on. We boarded it and slowly over the years animated it as people were available. It was kind of an under-the-radar project, because shorts weren’t being produced at the time. Now they’re very trendy and every studio is doing them, but at that time they weren’t, so we were doing it under the radar, behind-the-scenes with borrowed help whenever we could and that’s what made it doubly good to get an Oscar nomination, because it was — I won’t say covert — but it was a long processes. It took four years to do six minutes, which is ridiculous by anybody’s standards.

Rick: What was the thing that brought you to the project? I know that you studied music, was that something that attracted you to the project?

Don: Yeah, very much. I’ve always loved Fantasia. I worked on Fantasia/2000. And literally on New Year’s Day of 2000, after the Rose Parade, Roy Disney and I talked and he said, “Maybe we should put together another Fantasia.” I love that stuff, because I was a musician in college. I was a music major and an art minor. I think animation particularly, and music blend together really, really well. So many animated movies have too much dialogue and talk too much and don’t rely on the simple emotion of animation and music. I think that’s where Matchgirl really appealed to me was it’s completely pantomime, there’s no spoken word. There’s nothing except the mastery of these animators that are able to create wonderful feelings of emotion and acting and performance just with a pencil and no dialogue at all. And so all those things really attracted me to the project. We found this great piece of Borodin music that I had known since Kismet, which was a Broadway musical and it was originally written by Borodin 100 years before as a string quartet. So when we discovered that and pulled that together that made it even more appealing to jump into this particular project. And then Roger brought such a great artistic sensibility, almost doing it in black & white and having a very watercolor, washy style. And not having a happy ending. We argued about that a lot with our colleagues at the studio. Roger was very confident about the material and stuck to his guns and really made a great film that is true to the original story and has tremendous emotional impact.

Rick: Was that a difficult fight to get the sadder ending? I know that other Hans Christian Andersen stories have had tragic endings and they have been changed.

Don: If you’re doing Little Mermaid, which is Hans Christian Andersen, it’s a feature, it’s made for a wide audience and of course you want a very happy, fulfilling ending. This was a short and it was something that we could take more risks on. So it was very heavily debated. But to the credit of everybody involved — I never mind heated debate as long as people are open — and everyone was open to talking about it. We animated the ending four different ways, in fact, with the little girl dying, with the little girl being lifted up and carried away and not dying and all these different variations. Again to Roger’s credit, he really had a very specific passion for it. He read the story to his daughter on his lap when she was a little girl and they would cry together about this story and he was very close to it. I was really lucky as a producer to have someone like that who was really clear about what the power of the story was.

Rick: How was the experience of getting nominated for Beauty and the Beast?

Don: That was like winning the Super Bowl. You know, you have to go back to 1991 and there was no category for Animated Features. Animation was certainly seen as a smaller industry; maybe just Disney films were being made every four years. So what Beauty represented was like validation — not just for that movie or Disney even — for the industry to say to animators that you guys are filmmakers and you guys can make movies and express yourself through animation just the way someone expresses themselves through live-action. So I think it was validation for the whole animation industry that the movie was nominated. And it is really a credit, not so much to myself, but to the team of people that made that movie, because animation is such a team sport. So to have everybody team up for that movie and have the Academy recognize it in an era when animated films [were not recognized] — we felt like the kids at the card table in the kitchen… and to be invited to the dining room table to sit side by side with filmmakers that we admired was a real treat.

Rick: In the next couple weeks there will be all kinds of big events going on, is there something that you are particularly looking forward to?

Don: Yeah, Ron Diamond is going to pull us together with the other filmmakers and tour around. I love that. I love talking to other colleagues in the animation business with different points of view. I love the thought that we can tour and show our films to Disney and Pixar and ILM and share lunch together and talk about our craft, because it’s less about who’s going to win and who got nominated, but it’s a great chance to meet face-to-face with other people in animation, because it’s a small industry and the real truth is we’re all rooting for each other out there. It’s really hard to make an animated film no matter what studio you are from. I already admire the films of these other guys and girls. And I feel just the chance to learn from them is going to be great. So that’s one thing I’m really looking forward to.

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