Blur sets the pace for Oscar season with a stylish, but funny, animated film.
Each year for the past four years the crew at the small visual effects studio Blur has created one or more award-winning short films. This year, a film that in many ways represents the studio’s most ambitious work, is once again likely to make the short list for an Oscar nomination and could go all the way. It’s the first animation from Blur in which the characters have speaking parts; in which the dialog matters.
Blur artists Francisco Valasco and Sean McNally, set “Gentleman’s Duel,” in the 19th century. To vie for the affections of a wealthy woman, a Frenchman named Dubois and an Englishman named Weatherby fight a duel with two peculiar weapons: steam-powered mechs. The seven-minute film won Blur’s annual short film idea contest.
“We usually have two categories, scifi-fantasy and humor-drama.,” says founder Tim Miller of the in-house competition. “This film, luckily enough, won in both categories.”
That was almost two years ago. The studio spent the first year working on the story, storyboards, and character design. Production started in March, with work on the layout using rough models in digital environments. Animators poured onto the show in July, and the crew wrapped by the end of the September, in the nick of time to qualify for the Oscars.
“In the original idea, the gentleman part was just an overhead shot of a table at teatime,” says Miller. “The barest little touch of the lady’s hand was enough to spark the duel.”
The idea was great, but it didn’t translate well to the screen. “I try to give the artists enough rope to tie a beautiful bow,” says Miller. “The giant robot fighting part worked out of the bag, but the humor part was difficult. It needed to be short and to the point and funny.
“After two iterations, the film was getting longer and harder to do and more expensive,” he adds. “The guys were great with visuals and giving a sense of the story and the world, but they needed help with dialog and animation.”
To give the directors help, Miller brought in Jeff Fowler who had directed “Gopher Broke,” a short animation that received an Oscar nomination in 2005.
Meanwhile, the directors continued to concentrate on the visuals.
“They went all out,” says Fowler. “There is detail in the film you might not see the first, second, or even third viewing. It was inspiring. I helped with the pipeline. The schedules are so short there isn’t a lot of time for a learning curve.”
Fowler also helped set the stage for the duel.
“We needed to have it be quickly clear that these two characters are competing over a woman,” he says. “So, we have them arrive at the same time to court this wealthy attractive woman. Two’s company, three’s a crowd.”
The character designs reinforce the conflict; the duelists are complete opposites. In fact, when they’re face to face, their face shapes nearly fit together like two pieces of a puzzle.
Dubois, the Frenchman, is large, pompous, with a giant bloated chest and the air of being high society even though he might not be. Weatherby, the thin, high-strung Englishman, has bags under his eyes as if something troubling him has made him tired. The viewer has no idea what weapons they’ve chosen until they take their paces at the beginning of the duel. “Instead of turning to fire,” Fowler says, “they run off into the forest.” The ground shakes. Trees rustle. When they walk out of the forest, they’re inside 10-foot tall steam-powered mechs.
