Two recent movies that couldn’t be more different from each other feature the work of a Tacoma animator.
Benson Shum, 32, who splits his time between Tacoma and Vancouver, B.C., animated segments in “The Smurfs” and “The Tree of Life.”
“Smurfs,” the revisit of the 1980s TV cartoon, is a live action/animated feature starring Neil Patrick Harris.
“Tree” is the art house feature from writer/director Terrence Malick that stars Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. The film has gotten positive reviews from most critics and won the Palme d’Or (best feature film) at the 64th Cannes Film Festival.
“Tree” closed Thursday at the Olympia Film Society and at Tacoma’s Grand Cinema, where director Philip Cowan said audiences were mostly receptive.
Heading into the weekend, the Smurfs movie had taken in more than $121 million at the box office while “Tree” had earned $12.7 million in limited release.
On the Smurfs movie, Shum, a contractor, was part of a Sony Pictures Imageworks team that animated all the characters on screen, from Papa Smurf to Smurfette.
Films like “The Smurfs,” in which animation is merged with live action, have their difficulties, Shum said.
When he gets hold of a project, the actors’ scenes have already been shot. If an actor lifts a book off a table, for example, and a Smurf has to be on that book, Shum has to time the Smurf’s movements to coordinate with the actor’s.
“Trying to sell that the Smurf is actually on the book and make it feel like it lives in that world physically can be challenging,” he said.
Though “Tree” is mostly live action, dealing with the complicated relationships of a 1950s family, it features a long animated sequence on the birth of the cosmos and the age of the dinosaurs. The sequence is so unexpected some audience members have walked out.
Shum acknowledges that the two films are at opposite ends of the cinema spectrum but says that’s a plus.
“I can definitely take what I’ve learned from ‘The Tree of Life’ and apply it to ‘The Smurfs,’ or vice versa,” he said. “Animation means the act of movement, to emote emotions and feelings. Whether it’s a character like the Smurfs, or a creature like a dinosaur, they all need to be alive.”
Shum said he never directly worked with Malick, but the director’s implicit instructions and need for secrecy were well communicated.
“All we knew was that dinosaurs were in it and what they needed to do,” said Shum, who animated a wounded Plesiosaur on a beach, a Dromiceiomimus approaching a baby dinosaur and an adult Parasaur.
“Malick really wanted the dinosaurs to convey emotions,” Shum said. “Unlike most movies with dinosaurs, (in which) you would expect them to be more aggressive and eat everything in sight … Malick wanted the dinosaurs to be very subtle, to imply that they were starting to evolve a social consciousness.”
Shum was born and raised in Vancouver. He and partner Justin Leighton, a public relations coordinator for Pierce Transit and a community activist, split their time between there and Tacoma.
“We never treat our time in either location as visits or a trip, it’s just home,” Shum said.
Shum became interested in animation long before he knew it could be a career.
“I would be watching cartoons and drawing all the time (as a child),” he said.
Shum went on to study animation at British Columbia’s Capilano University.
So far, the highlight of his career was working on “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” in London during most of 2005. Other credits include “Surrogates” and “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.”
His current project is “Hotel Transylvania,” a 3-D animated comedy with the voices of Adam Sandler, Steve Buscemi and Kevin James to be released in 2012.
In addition to animation he also dabbles in graphic design, illustration and street sketching. Shum designed the winning poster for October’s Tacoma Film Festival at the Grand Cinema.
Though many animators still employ hand drawing, modern studio animation is computer driven. Shum’s process begins with lots of reference information on the subject, followed by drawings on paper.
After that, “We go right into the computer,” he said. “We … start to manipulate the rig (like a puppet) and pose the character you have drawn.”
Once the director approves the rough imaging, the images are refined until everyone is satisfied.
Even with the use of computer technology, Shum said, animators still need to be keen observers of life.
“They need to be able to analyze how and why things move,” he said.
Craig Sailor: 253-597-8541 craig.sailor@thenewstribune.com
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