They were getting destroyed, many of them literally
November 12, 2013 5:38 PM Subscribe
The refs!
posted by maryr at 6:44 PM on November 12, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by maryr at 6:44 PM on November 12, 2013 [1 favorite]
The Space Jam movie site is still there, frozen in amber.
posted by mhoye at 7:19 PM on November 12, 2013 [6 favorites]
posted by mhoye at 7:19 PM on November 12, 2013 [6 favorites]
/r/comeonandslam has all your Quad City DJs vs _____ mashup needs covered.
posted by jason_steakums at 7:33 PM on November 12, 2013 [3 favorites]
posted by jason_steakums at 7:33 PM on November 12, 2013 [3 favorites]
Foghorn Leghorn was killed. Died right there on the court.
posted by 256 at 8:03 PM on November 12, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by 256 at 8:03 PM on November 12, 2013 [2 favorites]
Smelled delicious.
posted by maryr at 8:12 PM on November 12, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by maryr at 8:12 PM on November 12, 2013 [1 favorite]
I had forgotten that Bill Murray was in this movie. They almost nailed the "30 for 30" tone though.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:11 AM on November 13, 2013
posted by ob1quixote at 12:11 AM on November 13, 2013
The Space Jam movie site is still there, frozen in amber.
That site went up three years before my mother died. It'll probably outlive the rest of us too.
posted by JHarris at 1:01 AM on November 13, 2013
That site went up three years before my mother died. It'll probably outlive the rest of us too.
posted by JHarris at 1:01 AM on November 13, 2013
The line about "this was 1995, back before we knew aliens existed" made me realize that what the world really needs is a Space Jam/X-Files mashup.
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 3:43 AM on November 13, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 3:43 AM on November 13, 2013 [2 favorites]
I earned serious Good Dad points taking my son to that movie when it came out. That awful R. Kelly song was his favorite for years after that.
posted by octothorpe at 5:05 AM on November 13, 2013
posted by octothorpe at 5:05 AM on November 13, 2013
Oh man. Blast from the past!
I worked on that movie! In fact it was my first gig in the US (though, technically, I was working for Warner Bros. Feature Animation UK).
I showed up in May of 2006. The movie was in shambles and they had brought in Ron Tippe to clean up the mess. The parameters were: you can have all the money in the world but you can't push the deadline. At all. Not even by an hour. We had to make the entire movie in 4 months. The normal schedule for that part of animation production is about a year and a half to two years.
I was working as a scene planner mostly (think 2d camera) but ended up lending more than a hand in what was referred to as the ADA department which was sort of a back-end mystery black box doing everything digital that people didn't understand or have a name for. Sort of a catch-all bin for odd things and stuff other departments had missed but the shots couldn't be routed back to them anymore.
During the last four weeks of production I worked 125 hours per week on average. Basically work a day, a night and a day, go home shower, sleep a few hours, rinse lather repeat. The good part was that the union was still somewhat stronger in those days. After 7 days without a day off you got into golden time (triple pay) and since we never got to go home for 8 hours or more it never reset. I was on permanent triple time for those four weeks. So that's about 375 hours worth of pay per week. The bad news is that by the end I could barely remember my own name and where I lived. A lot of people made enough money during that month to go buy houses and expensive cars but a lot also lost their spouses, probably because they couldn't remember their names anymore either.
The production was incredibly intense and stressful so alcohol was a constant factor and production provided generous budgets for booze. We were basically constantly mildly drunk. The trick was to keep it at that level. Too little and you'd start fading, too much and you'd lose your edge.
I remember towards the end during the last week, it was about 4am in the morning, I found myself sitting in front of a computer screen realizing that I had been simply staring at it for 10 minutes straight without working. And then I realized that I had no comprehension of what I was looking at or what I was supposed to do. My brain had literally blanked out. I think I was animating tiny little vector shadows for the tiny little cars on the giant ferris wheel in the space amusement park for the big shot where the camera drifts towards and shows the park in space for the first time. That shot is such a mess of oversaturated colors and buzzing details that I don't think anybody would have ever noticed those little shadows but whatever. Our head of FX in charge of 2d/drawn shadows was a noodler and perfectionist who wasn't goint to let a deadline get in the way of his obsession.
Lots of crazy people and strange goings-on. The animation industry was a very different beast back then. It makes sense if you think about it... sane people would not be capable of doing certain animation jobs without going nuts such as cleanup (turning animator's rough drawings into perfect line drawings) or checking (checking those drawings against reference models and for mistakes) for example. Now that everything has gone all CG/3d these types of jobs have gone away and what remains isn't as hard and mind-numbing anymore and so the animation industry crowd has become a lot more boring and so have their parties.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:00 AM on November 13, 2013 [16 favorites]
I worked on that movie! In fact it was my first gig in the US (though, technically, I was working for Warner Bros. Feature Animation UK).
I showed up in May of 2006. The movie was in shambles and they had brought in Ron Tippe to clean up the mess. The parameters were: you can have all the money in the world but you can't push the deadline. At all. Not even by an hour. We had to make the entire movie in 4 months. The normal schedule for that part of animation production is about a year and a half to two years.
I was working as a scene planner mostly (think 2d camera) but ended up lending more than a hand in what was referred to as the ADA department which was sort of a back-end mystery black box doing everything digital that people didn't understand or have a name for. Sort of a catch-all bin for odd things and stuff other departments had missed but the shots couldn't be routed back to them anymore.
During the last four weeks of production I worked 125 hours per week on average. Basically work a day, a night and a day, go home shower, sleep a few hours, rinse lather repeat. The good part was that the union was still somewhat stronger in those days. After 7 days without a day off you got into golden time (triple pay) and since we never got to go home for 8 hours or more it never reset. I was on permanent triple time for those four weeks. So that's about 375 hours worth of pay per week. The bad news is that by the end I could barely remember my own name and where I lived. A lot of people made enough money during that month to go buy houses and expensive cars but a lot also lost their spouses, probably because they couldn't remember their names anymore either.
The production was incredibly intense and stressful so alcohol was a constant factor and production provided generous budgets for booze. We were basically constantly mildly drunk. The trick was to keep it at that level. Too little and you'd start fading, too much and you'd lose your edge.
I remember towards the end during the last week, it was about 4am in the morning, I found myself sitting in front of a computer screen realizing that I had been simply staring at it for 10 minutes straight without working. And then I realized that I had no comprehension of what I was looking at or what I was supposed to do. My brain had literally blanked out. I think I was animating tiny little vector shadows for the tiny little cars on the giant ferris wheel in the space amusement park for the big shot where the camera drifts towards and shows the park in space for the first time. That shot is such a mess of oversaturated colors and buzzing details that I don't think anybody would have ever noticed those little shadows but whatever. Our head of FX in charge of 2d/drawn shadows was a noodler and perfectionist who wasn't goint to let a deadline get in the way of his obsession.
Lots of crazy people and strange goings-on. The animation industry was a very different beast back then. It makes sense if you think about it... sane people would not be capable of doing certain animation jobs without going nuts such as cleanup (turning animator's rough drawings into perfect line drawings) or checking (checking those drawings against reference models and for mistakes) for example. Now that everything has gone all CG/3d these types of jobs have gone away and what remains isn't as hard and mind-numbing anymore and so the animation industry crowd has become a lot more boring and so have their parties.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:00 AM on November 13, 2013 [16 favorites]
I worked on that movie! [...] I showed up in May of 2006.
Space Jam was released in 1996.
posted by JHarris at 1:37 PM on November 13, 2013 [1 favorite]
Space Jam was released in 1996.
posted by JHarris at 1:37 PM on November 13, 2013 [1 favorite]
(Not trying to be pedantic or saying you're WRONG GOOD DAY SIR, just point it out in case you're talking about a different movie, or just got the year wrong, or are talking about some other work on the film like for overseas audiences or cleanup for Blu-Ray, or something like that.)
posted by JHarris at 1:38 PM on November 13, 2013
posted by JHarris at 1:38 PM on November 13, 2013
A lot of people made enough money during that month to go buy houses and expensive cars but a lot also lost their spouses, probably because they couldn't remember their names anymore either.
"What happened to my marriage? Space Jam happened."
posted by jason_steakums at 6:50 PM on November 13, 2013 [2 favorites]
"What happened to my marriage? Space Jam happened."
posted by jason_steakums at 6:50 PM on November 13, 2013 [2 favorites]
JHarris: "Space Jam was released in 1996."
Haha, LOL, I always do this. Yes, I arrived in May of 1996 and left in September. Came back permanently in 1998.
Not sure why I always make that mistake... happens in conversations too. It's like I'm subconsciously refusing to acknowledge that I've gotten that much older by tossing out an entire decade.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 1:01 PM on November 14, 2013
Haha, LOL, I always do this. Yes, I arrived in May of 1996 and left in September. Came back permanently in 1998.
Not sure why I always make that mistake... happens in conversations too. It's like I'm subconsciously refusing to acknowledge that I've gotten that much older by tossing out an entire decade.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 1:01 PM on November 14, 2013
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Fantastic.
posted by axiom at 6:06 PM on November 12, 2013 [1 favorite]