If you’ve been following along on the site this year you’ve read a bit about this shows current departure from previous tours with our first commissioned short films. The first of the four that came together was with Stop-motion titan PES. The description for this film gave us a sense of where he wanted to take things for this culinary quickie but we really didn’t have a solid picture of the project until it arrived on our doorstep to as “Western Spaghetti”. Taylor recently caught up with PES and had this to share. For more production pics head over to his facebook page for a gallery of behind the scenes.
THE ANIMATION SHOW YEAR 4 Theatrical
PES
Animator, “Western Spaghetti” (2008)
Interviewer: Taylor Jessen
Date: 6/9/2008
Via phone from New York
Animation Show: You’re at a post-production house right now. Tell me where and what you are post-producing.
PES: Actually, I’m editing a new commercial for Scrabble’s 60th Anniversary. They just put out this diamond edition, all the trays, you know, all the tiles and stuff are contained inside the box. It’s kind of like, made to travel. It’s their 60th anniversary, so…
AS: The mind reels at what the PES animated short based on the Scrabble set will be like.
PES: Well, you know, when you do a commercial, it’s not really my idea. I’m just really acting as the director. So it’s a totally different thing than conceiving and then shooting a film.
AS: So someone came to you with a precis and you’re a hired gun, basically, on this one?
PES: Yeah, I mean advertising you know, in general, like, the advertising agencies, they work for sometimes months, even a year, sometimes to sell concepts to clients. So I don’t have to deal with any of that part of it.
AS: Was that the modus operandi of some of your other commercials as well, because, I mean, you really have a personal stamp on the bits you were doing for, I believe there was a Coinstar spot and the Orange ads that you did. They seemed like they were really springing directly from your head.
PES: Well, always in commercials, there’s always a chance to put that personal kind of touch, you know, little humorous things here or there, but by and large, I’m always looking to see the best concepts I can get from advertising agencies. Because the better you start with, the better the end product will be. So, I like to put myself in a situation where I’m working on good concepts that I only have to make better, rather than try to take a concept that I don’t really think is that strong and turn it into something, that rarely works.
AS: So would you consider yourself in a pretty lucky position now that you’re getting a lot of things thrown at you and you can kind of pick and choose?
Entire Interview Here
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