HOLLYWOOD - Let's Pollute is a sharp, satirical film that was nominated for an Academy Award in the
Best Animated Short Film category. The film has a green message, a subject that filmmaker/director Geefwee Boedoe is very passionate about — pollution, consumerism and waste.
"Of course it was disappointing not to get the Oscar, and though a win would have been great, the nomination has been huge,” says Boedoe. “For a little independent film no one had heard of only a few weeks ago, the Oscar spotlight has brought tremendous exposure. The next step is creating more opportunities for the film to be seen and delivering its message to an even larger audience."
Let's Pollute (
www.letspollute.com) uses a retro-modern and a distinctive, hand-drawn animated style. The six-and-a-half-minute film was created in large part by Boedoe, who wrote, produced, directed and composed some of its music.
"Early on I decided to create the entire film in the style of a 50s educational cartoon, with its exuberant narrator and light-hearted music," Boedoe explains. His background includes working as an animator for both Disney and Pixar. "For me, that era's positive motto 'We're building a better future - today' was the perfect contrast to the heavy and disturbing subject."
The submission is Boedoe's first independent film and took more than three years of work at his El Cerrito, CA, home studio to complete. It’s budget was $15,000, and talent from the Bay Area donated services, including editor Torbin Bullock, co-producer Joel Bloom and sound editor Chris Barnett of Skywalker Sound.
“My personal background is old-school, hand-drawn animation, so all the line work, both backgrounds and animation were drawings on paper with a black lithographic pencil,” he explains. “The textures were created mainly with India ink on plastic sheets. I wanted to get as much real texture as I could instead of relying on computer synthetic effects.”
In the early stages, Boedoe drew out storyboards with pencil and paper, and scanned them into Adobe After Effects to block out the timing. “Then I imported those into Adobe Premiere for further editing and for laying in the temp soundtrack for the story-reel.”
The next stage was much the same only with the finished artwork. The artwork was scanned into a Mac G4 using an Epson 1640 XL scanner. All the backgrounds, and characters were colored in Photoshop. These finished elements were then compiled into After Effects for the final stages of animation, compositing and rendering.
In the final post production phase Boedoe got help from picture editor Torbin Bullock, of Pixar Animation Studios, and from sound editor Christopher Barnett of Skywalker Sound. The film was edited on Avid Media Composer, in co-producer Joel Bloom’s garage, and the final sound was performed using Avid Pro Tools.