Bilby (film)

Last updated

Bilby
Bilby poster.jpg
Film poster
Directed byLiron Topaz
Pierre Perifel
JP Sans
Written byLiron Topaz
Pierre Perifel
JP Sans
Based onCharacters
by Harry Cripps
Produced byKelly Cooney Cilella
Jeff Hermann
Starring Dee Bradley Baker
David P. Smith
Edited byMichelle Mendenhall
C. K. Horness
Music by Benjamin Wallfisch
Production
company
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date
  • June 16, 2018 (2018-06-16)(Annecy)
May 21, 2019 (home video release with How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World )
Running time
8 minutes
CountryUnited States

Bilby is a 2018 American animated short film written and directed by Liron Topaz, Pierre Perifel and JP Sans in their directorial debuts, and produced by DreamWorks Animation. It centers on a bilby trying to protect an albatross chick from the dangers of the Australian Outback.

Contents

A product of DreamWorks' newly created shorts program, it is based on the studio's cancelled project Larrikins.

Plot

In the Australian Outback, a desert-dwelling bilby tries to search for fruits while he escapes from a goanna, but bilby comes across an abandoned albatross chick turned on its head. Taking pity on the chick, the bilby flips over the chick, which grows attached to him. The bilby wants nothing to do with the chick, but he can't help but abandon his mission to find more food in order to save the chick from all kinds of predators. Time and again, he tries to leave the chick in a new environment, only to find himself constantly trying to survive a wide variety of dangerous situations, such as facing a pack of dingoes, swimming in a lake of piranhas, passing to spiky echidnas, jumping in a lake full of crocodiles, dodging running emus, being eaten by a great white shark, escaping from a bushfire and many more.

Finally, the bilby and chick stop at an extremely high and steep cliffside that frequently experiences gusts of rising wind. The exhausted bilby decides to leave the chick there, especially since he believes she's ready to fly on her own, only for her to get snatched by a white-bellied sea eagle. Fearful for his new friend's safety, the bilby gains the courage to jump from the cliff and attack the eagle. During this battle, the chick falls from its talons, leading the bilby to free-fall through the air and clutch her. The bilby tosses the chick safely onto the cliff's edge, while he keeps falling and gets blown back up by an updraft. The two friends embrace, and the chick is happy that she can finally fly. The film ends in a flash-forward to the now-grown albatross landing on the cliffside, where she and her friend now live with an ample supply of food.

Voice cast

Production

Larrikins

Larrikins logo. DreamWorks Larrikins logo.jpg
Larrikins logo.

By June 2013, Tim Minchin was attached to compose the music and score for Larrikins, which was based on an original concept from screenwriter Harry Cripps. [1] The film followed a timid bilby named Perry who leaves his home under a rock to go on a road trip with a music band in the Outback. Three years later, Minchin and Chris Miller were attached to direct the film while Margot Robbie, Hugh Jackman, Naomi Watts, Rose Byrne, Ben Mendelsohn, Jacki Weaver, Josh Lawson, Damon Herriman, and Ewen Leslie were to voice characters. The film was slated to be released on February 16, 2018. [2] Illustrator Peter de Sève was one of the first artists brought onboard the film and helped design several characters. [3] [4] In 2017, Minchin revealed on his personal blog that the project had been cancelled. Minchin wrote on his blog:

I've recently been working in 3 different continents, missing my kids a lot, sleeping too little and not playing piano enough. And then a couple of days ago, the animated film to which I've dedicated the last 4 years of my life was shut down by the new studio execs. The only way I know how to deal with my impotent fury and sadness is to subject members of the public to the spectacle of me getting drunk and playing ballads. [5] [6]

Minchin spoke more about the film's cancellation on Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast in March 2020, saying how the film was 75% completed with 110 people working on the film, with songs completed. Hans Zimmer was also composing the score. After Dreamworks was bought by Universal Pictures in 2016, the film was cancelled and written off for the acquisition expenses, at the expense of DreamWorks. Illumination's Chris Meledandri was also consulted by Universal executives before the cancellation. He also explained how he tried to shop it to other studios, with Netflix and Animal Logic wanting to buy it, but the film's price tag was exorbitant, making it non-viable for other studios to acquire it. Overall, the film cost $90 million. [7] [8]

Resurrection

The film was brought back as a short, as part of the studio's newly announced shorts program. Bilby's three directors had worked together on the Larrikins animation team; Perifel served as head of character animation, Topaz as a lead animator, and Sans as a character supervisor. [9]

Bilby proved to be a testing ground for various new animation software, including MoonRay, a light rendering engine that was used on DreamWorks' feature films beginning with How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World . [9] [10]

Release

Bilby had its world premiere on June 16, 2018, as part of the closing ceremonies for the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. On December 21 of the same year, the short was released on DreamWorks' official YouTube channel, but in November 2020, the short was no longer available as the YouTube video was set to "Private".

Bilby, along with Bird Karma , was included on home video releases of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World on May 21, 2019. [11]

Reception

Bilby received the Jury's Choice Award at the 45th SIGGRAPH conference, as well as the Audience Award at the Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films. [10] [12]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karey Kirkpatrick</span> American screenwriter, director, and producer

Karey Kirkpatrick is an American screenwriter, film director, and producer. His films include Chicken Run, The Rescuers Down Under, James and the Giant Peach,Over the Hedge, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Charlotte's Web, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He has also directed the films, Over the Hedge, Imagine That starring Eddie Murphy and Smallfoot. Kirkpatrick wrote the English-language screenplays for the U.S. releases of the Studio Ghibli films The Secret World of Arrietty in 2012 and From Up on Poppy Hill in 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DreamWorks Animation</span> American animation studio

DreamWorks Animation LLC (DWA) (also known as DreamWorks Animation Studios or simply DreamWorks) is an American animation studio owned by Universal Pictures, a division of NBCUniversal, which is itself a subsidiary of Comcast. The studio has released a total of 49 feature films, including several of the highest-grossing animated films of all time, with Shrek 2 (2004) having been the highest at the time of its release. Its first film, Antz, was released on October 2, 1998, and its latest film, The Wild Robot, was released on September 27, 2024. They have an upcoming theatrical slate of films, which includes Dog Man on January 31, 2025, The Bad Guys 2 on August 1, 2025, Gabby's Dollhouse: The Movie on September 26, 2025, and Shrek 5 on July 1, 2026.

<i>Reds Dream</i> 1987 short film by John Lasseter

Red's Dream is a 1987 American animated short film written and directed by John Lasseter and produced by Pixar. The short film, which runs four minutes, stars Red, a unicycle. Propped up in the corner of a bicycle store on a rainy night, Red dreams of a fantasy where it becomes the star of a circus. Red's Dream was Pixar's second computer-animated short following Luxo Jr. in 1986, also directed by Lasseter.

Reel FX Animation, formerly known as Reel FX Creative Studios, is an American visual effects and computer animation studio with studios in Dallas, Texas, Hollywood, California, and Montreal, Quebec.

Anthony Leondis is a Greek–American former animator, filmmaker, and voice actor, known for directing The Emoji Movie, Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch, Igor, and the unreleased DreamWorks Animation film B.O.O.: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pearl Studio</span> Chinese film production company

Shanghai Pearl Studio Film and Television Technology Co., Ltd, doing business as Pearl Studio, formerly known as Oriental DreamWorks, the trade name of Shanghai Oriental DreamWorks Film & Television Technology Co., Ltd., is a Chinese animation film production company owned by CMC Capital Partners. The company was founded as a Chinese-American joint venture in 2012 by DreamWorks Animation and Chinese investment companies. The company mainly produces Chinese-themed animated and live-action films and their derivatives for distribution within China and worldwide. In 2018, CMC acquired NBCUniversal's stake in the studio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MoonRay</span> Open source renderer

MoonRay is an open source renderer developed by DreamWorks Animation. It is continuously under active development, boasting an extensive library of production-tested, physically based materials. It features an Universal Scene Description (USD) Hydra render delegate and supports multi-machine and cloud rendering through the Arras distributed computation framework.

<i>Cosmos Laundromat</i> 2015 film directed by Mathieu Auvray

Cosmos Laundromat: First Cycle, developed under the code name Project Gooseberry, is an animated absurdist sci-fi fantasy short film directed by Mathieu Auvray, written by Esther Wouda, and produced by Ton Roosendaal. It is the Blender Institute's 5th "open movie" project, and was made utilizing the Blender software. The film focuses around a depressed and suicidal sheep named Franck who's offered "all the lives he ever wanted" by a mysterious salesman named Victor. On August 10, 2015, it was released to YouTube. The film was originally intended to kickstart a feature-length film. A short film sequel was written and designed but never brought to production. In 2020, Roosendaal announced that the one film would be the total of the project.

<i>Le Building</i> 2005 French film

Le Building is a 2005 French animated short film directed by a team of final year students at Gobelins, l'École de l'image. The story depicts a series of slapstick accidents that cause destruction to a three-story apartment complex. Le Building's team of five directors is composed of Pierre Perifel and Olivier Staphylas, both of whom went on to become Annie Award-recognized animators at DreamWorks, Xavier Ramonède and Annie award-nominated Marco Nguyen, who have continued their careers with animation credits on various high-profile French productions, and Rémi Zaarour, who has since become a comic book artist, published under the pseudonym Pozla.

TVPaint Animation is a 2D paint and digital animation software package developed by TVPaint Developpement SARL based in Lorraine, France. Originally released for Amiga in 1991, version 3.0 (1994) introduced support for other platforms. In 1999, the last Amiga version 3.59 was released as free download. TVPaint Animation currently runs on Mac, Windows, Linux, and Android operating systems.

Pierre Perifel is a French filmmaker and animator. He is best known for his work at DreamWorks Animation, including directing the short film Bilby (2018) and the feature film The Bad Guys (2022).

Olivier Staphylas is a French animator, known for his work at DreamWorks Animation and for his award-winning student film, Le Building. He joined DreamWorks in 2006 and, within a few years, attained the role of supervising animator on How to Train Your Dragon. His work on 2011's Puss in Boots, supervising the titular character's animation, earned him nominations for an Annie Award and a Visual Effects Society Award. He then served as head of character animation on Penguins of Madagascar. Starting in 2014, he served in that position at Oriental DreamWorks. Staphylas has since left DreamWorks and worked on 2021's Wish Dragon alongside Base FX and Sony Pictures Animation.

Francesco Giroldini is an Italian director, writer and artist working in the animation industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Animation Showcase</span> Traveling screening of animated short films

The Animation Showcase is a travelling film screening collection, showcasing animated short films.

<i>Bird Karma</i> 2018 film by William Salazar

Bird Karma is a 2018 American animated short film written and directed by William Salazar and produced by DreamWorks Animation. It was the first short to come from DreamWorks' newly created shorts program, and the studio's first film to utilize only traditional animation since Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas in 2003. It is also the first DreamWorks production to be distributed by Universal Pictures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simon Otto</span> Swiss animator

Simon Otto is a Swiss film director and animator. He is best known for working as the Head of Character Animation of the Oscar-nominated How to Train Your Dragon film trilogy for DreamWorks Animation.

<i>Back to the Outback</i> Australian animated film

Back to the Outback is a 2021 animated adventure comedy film directed by Clare Knight and Harry Cripps, from a screenplay written by Cripps, and a story by Cripps and Gregory Lessans. The voice cast includes Isla Fisher, Tim Minchin, Eric Bana, Guy Pearce, Miranda Tapsell, Angus Imrie, Keith Urban, and Jacki Weaver, and is distributed by Netflix Animation.

References

  1. ↑ Kemp, Stuart (June 7, 2013). "DreamWorks Ani Picks 'Matilda' Musical's Tim Minchin to Score 'Larrikins'". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved October 1, 2020.
  2. ↑ Anita Busch (June 1, 2016). "'Larrikins' Sings With Aussie A-Listers For DreamWorks Animation". Deadline . Retrieved October 1, 2020.
  3. ↑ @peterdeseve (March 6, 2017). "Very sad to hear DWA killed LARRIKINS, their Aussie project. I was the first designer on that and had high hopes. Silly me. Fun though!" (Tweet). Retrieved October 1, 2020– via Twitter.
  4. ↑ @peterdeseve (April 6, 2017). "A few more from LARRIKINS, now six feet down under. #characterdesign" (Tweet). Retrieved October 1, 2020– via Twitter.
  5. ↑ Amidi, Amid (March 7, 2017). "Dreamworks Kills Tim Minchin's 'Larrikins'". Cartoon Brew . Retrieved March 2, 2018.
  6. ↑ "NEW YORK! TIM – GETTING DRUNK AND PLAYING BALLADS AT FEINSTEIN'S/54 BELOW TOMORROW NIGHT!". timminchin.com. March 5, 2017. Retrieved October 1, 2020.
  7. ↑ "Tim Minchin - RHLSTP #263". Youtube. March 3, 2020. Retrieved April 26, 2024.
  8. ↑ Brew, Simon (April 7, 2020). "Tim Minchin opens up on the shutting down of his animated film". Film Stories. Retrieved April 26, 2024.
  9. 1 2 Failes, Ian (August 13, 2018). "EXCLUSIVE: Dreamworks Directors On How They Made 'Bilby', And On The Studio's New Shorts Program". Cartoon Brew . Retrieved December 23, 2018.
  10. 1 2 Wolfe, Jennifer (December 10, 2018). "VIDEO: DreamWorks Animation Short 'Bilby' A Testing Ground for New Production Tools". Animation World Network . Retrieved December 23, 2018.
  11. ↑ "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World 4K Blu-ray". Blu-ray.com. March 26, 2019. Retrieved March 26, 2019.
  12. ↑ Giardina, Carolyn (July 11, 2018). "SIGGRAPH: Animated Short 'Hybrids' Wins Best in Show". The Hollywood Reporter . Retrieved December 23, 2018.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.