Future

With my aunt Tiffany at DreamWorks.

Recently I've been looking at colleges, in person and online, and learning a lot about my ideal major and career. One thing I haven't done much, though, is actually see people at work - or even explore other careers. Today I'm glad that I was able to tour my aunt's work with her after school and learn a little more about the animation process - because even though I'm not interested in animation, it was an incredible experience. (That being said, when I was little I used to hope that my family connections might get me some sort of a role in a movie... it took me a few years to realize that it was a hope that would almost never be fulfilled. It was nice to dream about it though, even though I've since decided to follow a path that doesn't include the movie business!)

My aunt is Tiffany Hillkurtz, the younger daughter of Gary Kurtz (who, along with George Lucas, produced Star Wars VI: A New Hope and Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back). She's had minor acting roles in the past and is now an editor for animated movies, including Madagascar 3 and Astro Boy. Normally she lives in Los Angeles, but for the past six weeks she's been living with my grandparents so she can work with DreamWorks on The Penguins of Madagascar (March 27, 2015). She invited me to tour the studios, and so today she showed me around the building.

For The Penguins of Madagascar, Tiffany is mostly working with storyboards - the initial drawings. She's one of the small team who gets to decide how long a certain image is projected in the movie, what sort of angle to use, the tone of the music, even characters' voices (to a point). When I was there, she played four different recordings of the same sentence, with different words emphasized to create different tones, and explained how she gets to choose which one works the best for her scene. In the short time I was there, she also explained how she can use up to 16 tracks (voice-overs, music, etc) at a time and draw on the storyboards to adapt them to her liking.

It was an interesting experience because before today, I never really knew much about the animation process or even much about Tiffany's work. It turns out that people have been working on Penguins for a year and a half and it's still mostly in the storyboards stage - and, if the producers don't like the screening that the editors will be presenting soon, they can still get rid of all of those thousands of hours of work and have everyone start over again from scratch. After Tiffany and the editing team finish their work, it'll go off to the animators, the lighters, the set makers, and way more people than I can remember.

I never knew how long it took to make an animated film before today. I mean, I knew that it took a long time, but I never really understood why. In case you're wondering why it takes close to four years to make a one-and-a-half-hour movie, here's something to put things into perspective: In the six weeks that Tiffany has been working up here, her finalized scenes - which can still be cut from the movie - total 15 minutes long. And that's not uncommon for editors.

I've never really considered following in my aunt and uncle's footsteps (my uncle, Alex Hillkurtz, is a storyboard artist and drew the storyboards for movies like We Bought a Zoo and Argo), and after today I've decided that I really just don't have the patience necessary to work in a job like theirs. I really enjoyed touring DreamWorks though, because it was a great way for me to experience one type of a workspace, and I loved learning more about my aunt's work.

In honor of DreamWorks, here's a poem about dreams and the future:

Future
As soon as I cut the rope
I can feel myself floating
toward freedom, toward new horizons,
toward the blank beauty of a clear mind.
The water laps at the sides of the boat
and the foot nudging mine laps
at the edges of my understanding.
I know the owner of the foot is my now,
my golden light to keep the monsters of my then at bay.
I know that the boy who sits before me
is the best future I could have imagined
for myself or for anyone else.
He is my clean slate. He is my guardian.
And most of all, as he leans forward
and his lips brush mine, he is the one
who scares demons from the dark depths of my past
and fills the empty spaces they leave behind
with the starbursts of color and light
that is my future.