Channel Frederator Blog

The Vancouver Sun is reporting that Pixar is planning to build a 20,000 square foot facility in Vancouver to produce its short features. The Walt Disney Studios is currently scouting locations in the downtown area, and hopes to be up and running as early as this fall.

From the article:

Amir Nasrabadi, who will run the Vancouver operation as studio general manager, said Vancouver was attractive to Pixar for a number of reasons. It’s an English-speaking city in the same time zone as Los Angeles; the B.C. production tax credits are attractive to an American company; and the city, with its numerous animation studios and quality schools, is a good source of talent.

“There’s a huge, very robust, and mature talent pool in Vancouver that we’d like to tap into and continue to develop,” Nasrabadi said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles, where he has been vice-president of operations and finance for DisneyToon Studios, a direct-to-DVD studio.“I don’t have a particular number [of employees] in mind, but I can say the majority will be locals.”

Pixar has grown from a small studio making award-winning computer-generated short animations - Luxo Jr. (1986), the tale of a small desk lamp which, when shown in theatres, got as much buzz as the feature it preceded, and the Oscar-winning Tin Toy (1988) were its first titles - to a large operation which has produced nine major animated features: Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, and Wall-E. A 10th feature, Up, will be released on May 29.The company’s most popular short features include Knick Knack (the story of a snowman stuck in a snow globe), One Man Band (about fiercely competitive street performers), and Presto (a hapless magician frustrated by an unfed rabbit).

The company uses short films as springboards for its feature animations, and that will be the role of the Vancouver studio. A Pixar short takes six to 12 months to produce, and the production team can range anywhere from 20 to 75 people.

“First and foremost for us is to concentrate on Pixar legacy characters,” said Nasrabadi, citing Woody and Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story, and Lightning McQueen and Mater from Cars as four of its legacy characters. “We want to keep these well-known and well-liked characters alive without creating a distraction to those working on the full-length motion pictures in California“The types of products we produce will be niche products, such as short films, whether they are standalone or episodic in nature,” said Nasrabadi, a 12-year veteran of the digital entertainment business. “They will be helpful to all of Disney’s ancillary businesses, such as television, compilations on DVD, Internet broadcasting, as well as theatres.”

To me, this is reminiscent of the other satellite studios Disney has set up in the past (like this one, this one, this one, this one, and a few more). It looks like now Pixar is in on the act. With John Lasseter as the Creative Director at both Disney and Pixar, you have to wonder how much of this is Lasseter’s doing, and how much is decided by the people watching the bottom line at Disney?

I know I was surprised by this news. Actually, “disappointed” is a better word. The short films have been such a huge part of the studio culture in the past, it’s a shame to see them shipped off to somewhere else, like some kind of car part to be manufactured at a lower cost. What do you think?

-Floyd Bishop