The Making of 9 Presentation at OIAF

By E. Corrado

The event, titled The Making of 9, happened at 3:00 pm Saturday, October 17th, at the OIAF. The event itself was held in the Ottawa Arts Court Theatre, although I must say the Arts Court is not my favourite place for events. I found it too crowded...

Now, about the presentation: Before talking about the film in-depth, presenter Kevin Adams, art director from Starz Animation, tried to show a short clip from the original short film, (which unfortunatly wouldn’t stream properly), and then showed parts of the theatrical trailer from the film. For fans of the movie 9, there were some interesting bits of information here about the hidden aspects of the world they created. Showing concept art, it really made you realize that this film needs to be examined more closely the second time around...

One interesting thing that he talked about was the fact that many of the set pieces for 9, as complicated as they were, had to be built in copied sections, much the way you would a real set. In the scene at the scientists house for example, the set painters were told exactly were the camera would be, and how close-up the shot would be. In this way, they were able to only put real detail into the actual shot, (e.g. not the ‘fourth wall’), and use only minimal detail unless there was going to be a close up shot. Also, in the scenes with piles of junk, or piles of books, they just made a small pile that could be copied several times over and modified with paint to save time. These kinds of things helped them meet their tight time constraints, as well as cut down on rendering times.

He also talked a bit about how the movie didn’t start out at Starz, and how by the time it came to them, they had to get it done in just over a year. While it may not seem that hard, considering that the film was already in development elsewhere, they had to start practically from scratch in order to make the models work with them, as well as the sets.

Overall, it was an informative presentation. The whole thing was about an hour long.

UP NEXT: A short interview with Kevin Adams...