Inspiration for your Weekend!

We had our first guest lecture tonight---Mark Osborne came and discussed his career history and his recent directing credit on Kung Fu Panda. However, most of the lecture focused on visual elements and I didn't have too many notes. A quick summary of his history: He attended Pratt--upon graduating, he was accepted into the Experimental Animation program at CalArts, he has independently directed a student film called, "Greener" and a film called, "More," he has also helped out on shows like Spongebob Squarepants(and movie), occasionally teaching stop-motion classes at CalArts(during his "More" film), and most recently---co-directing "Kung Fu Panda." The main points of his lecture all tied back to Yoda's famous "Do or do not. There is no try" and how this statement had impacted his various decisions when it came to stepping out of school and into the big ol' film industry. And most importantly, "Failure is apart of the process. You never know what you might discover from failing." Overall, a very interesting lecture and I really enjoyed it. Enough from me---here are some of his shorts that I could track down:

Jurassic Park music video by Weird Al
Mark was in charge of all the animation. I couldn't find his first film titled, "Greener" but that student film helped him get onboard with this video.

A bit of time passed between the Weird Al video and this next video titled, "More" which was an independent project Mark Osborne created. Very amazing film:


He gave us personal stories about creating both his student film, "Greener" and his film, "More" and it was very insightful and helped drive the point home about "Doing instead of trying." How it's far better to have a finished film(whether it lived up to your ideal vision or not) rather than a project you tried to make or are always talking about, but never taking any steps towards finishing it. How both of these films taught him how to be smart and very resourceful within the constraints of a project. And most importantly, to "follow your instinct--follow what you were initially feeling. What originally inspired you to pursue this project." All of this led up to his eventual directing job at Dreamworks on Kung Fu Panda. He discussed the challenges,the learning experiences, failures that were addressed, etc. He shared concept art(most of which can be found in the beautiful Art Of book) along with rough computer animation. So I'll end with one of my favorite scenes from the film....


We got to watch a clip of the actual actors(Jack Black and Dustin Hoffman) providing the voices for this scene---very insightful. Anyways, enjoy the videos and I'm off to bed.