Waltz with Polonsky

David Polonsky, the art director for Waltz With Bashir, dropped by the workshop yesterday. Such a pleasure seeing an illustrator make the transition into animation with such success. For according to Polonsky, "Illustration and animation are two opposing mediums." An illustrator-turned-animator myself, I agree completely.

Couple of interesting tidbits I scribbled down during his presentation:

- Polonsky and Foreman (the director of the film), had 3 weeks to put together a 3 minutes trailer to present at the Toronto Film Festival in hopes of raising the $1M necessary to complete the film. (The film would ultimately cost $2M.)

- Limitations (budget-wise) was the main contributing factor to the look and feel of the movie. Polonsky enjoys working within limitations even if it is more challenging.
A cast of 10 animators worked on the film for 2 years. (Note: They started with 6 animators, at one point increased the team to 8, and only in the last two months did the final 2 animators get hired. 8 of the animators who worked on the film have been incorporated as extras in the film.

- As an Israeli, Polonsky wasn't able to travel to Beirut. That said, the images of Beirut in the film were completely based on images plucked off the Internet.

- The film was not rotoscoped - contrary to what many critics have assumed. With the exception of one scene which was hand-animated, the film is achieved via cut-out Flash animation.

- The scene in which the soldier dances amidst bullets depicts a true moment. Numerous soldiers witnessed the dancing soldier who, as Polonsky described, was "so out of it" as he tried to cross the bullet-filled street, that he began to dance his way across it. Snipers stopped shooting at him, yet continued to shoot at the others...

So what's next? The 2-D dream-team that is Polonsky and Foremon are going to attempt sci-fi! Looking forward to seeing their next masterpiece.