Animator

Glenn McQueen
Disney Pixar

McQueen has served as a computer animator on Toy Story, was one of two Supervising Animators for A Bug's Life, and was the sole Supervising Animator for Toy Story 2. Before Pixar, McQueen worked at legendary FX house Pacific Data Images (Antz, Forces of Nature.)

In his two-part conversation with Ken, McQueen discusses how CGI technology has changed over the last few years, what it takes to get in the door at a place like Pixar, and contemplates how increasingly advanced technology is enabling animators to focus more heavily on the characterization and "performance" of their characters.

PLUME: Can you give me some background about yourself?

McQUEEN: I graduated from Sheridan College in 1985 - it's an animation college up in Canada. Right after that, I started work at the Computer Graphics Laboratory at New York Tech. I was there for about six years. I ended up managing the 3-D production department - it was mainly doing film effects and commercials and scientific visualization.

After that, I went to PDI [Pacific Data Imaging], and I was there for about four or five years. Again, I was doing commercials and film effects with the character animation group. Then I came to Pixar in about 1995. I was an animator on Toy Story, I was one of two supervising animators on A Bug's Life. I was the only supervising animator on Toy Story 2, and then currently I'm a supervising animator on Monsters, Inc.

PLUME: Ah - so you're Canadian...

McQUEEN: Yup. "Frostback, huh?"

PLUME: Would you say that your background is primarily in character animation, or in computer animation?

McQUEEN: I would say, probably, computer animation. Only because early on...at least in my career...the opportunities to do character animation on the computer were few and far between. The software wasn't that terrific. There were almost no commercial or film effects jobs that had anything to do with character animation, and if they did, it isn't what I would consider real character animation or anything that's narrative.

There wasn't a lot of storytelling involved. So for the first six or seven years of my career, there wasn't a lot of character animation to be done out there. You'd do sort of effect-y things...or commercial-y things...and whatnot, so I would say my background is in computer animation.

The nice thing is that the software has gotten more sophisticated. When I started, you needed to be able to storyboard, model, animate, shade, light, render. Everything you did, you had to build every model and render it yourself and put it to tape. But now things are way more compartmentalized, so the only decisions you have to make are creative performance based. Also, the software's gotten to a point where you can sort of let the technical side of your brain atrophy...

PLUME: It's far more intuitive...

McQUEEN: Yeah. There are tools that are created for artists...not that I consider myself an artist...but they are non-technical, relatively speaking, compared to what we were using 15 years ago. And that's good for us, the animators. It's also good for the company or the studio because it allows us to hire people who may not have a technical background, but are really good animators, and that's the important thing.

PLUME: What led to your interest in computers at a time - in the early 80's - when they were relatively few and far between? Was it just a matter of finding yourself near one?

McQUEEN: Yeah, it was just a great opportunity. Originally, I thought it would be a lot of fun. But then once I got into it, I realized it wasn't that much fun - but I thought the trade-offs that you made were pretty interesting: the ability to do a version of a shot or a scene or something...save it off... then go off in a different, completely tangential direction - and know that that one performance you'd done initially was safe.

It's the ability to take a chance, creatively, and if you go down a wrong road, it's fine. You just back up to a file you'd saved half-an-hour ago, and the only thing you've lost is a half-an-hour. To me, as opposed to going in and redrawing the entire shot, it was a lot easier to go in and affect change to the work you had done with a big, fat safety net under you. To me, that opened up the opportunities to take more chances.

PLUME: And you started doing this in college...

McQUEEN: Yeah. I took a summer course in computer animation at Sheridan. The only thing it really taught me was how potentially time-consuming and difficult computer animation is.

PLUME: At that time, what did they term it as being computer animation?

McQUEEN: It was 3-D computer animation, but there was absolutely no - and by no...I mean absolutely no...interactivity whatsoever. You had to type in...on a keyboard...frame by frame by frame the translates, rotates, and position coordinates for each part of each model in your shot. At least now, you can set a key pose at frame 1 and a key pose at frame 40, and the computer will in-between all the frames between 1 and 40.

Back then, you couldn't do that. You had to plot it out on a graph. You'd have to know, on paper, exactly where it was in every frame and then go in and type a file for each frame saying, "Rotate the arm 32 degrees" and the next frame would be, "Rotate the arm 34 degrees" then you'd have to calculate slow-ins and slow-outs.

PLUME: So it's like doing your taxes...

MCQUEEN: Oh, it was so much more work than doing your taxes.

PLUME: It sounds like you almost had to have degrees in both mathematics and physics...

McQUEEN: Well, back then, I'd say it certainly would have helped. That probably explains my sunny disposition...he said sarcastically...because I remember how god-awful it used to be. I just have a tough time complaining about software these days, because, man, it's just absolutely light-years beyond what it was 15 years ago. Without wanting to sound like an old man with his "walking to school through the snow when I was a little boy" stories.

PLUME: How would you describe your transition out of college and into the industry? Was there a recruitment program for computer animators at the time, or did you have to find your own way?

McQUEEN: It was a scholarship program, whereby Sheridan sent students down to New York Tech under the auspices of going down to study. It was like a work-study program - but the study part of it was clearly a joke.

No one went down there to go to school. I mean, for god's sake, we had just gotten out of school. The last think any of us wanted to do was go back and take more bloody classes. We were all down there to work. We were down there for about $10,000 a year, which...back then...seemed like a tremendous amount of money. But even back then it didn't go that far in New York.

To me, basically, what we had was free reign to teach ourselves, and pick up as much as we possibly could about the system at New York Tech - which was...at that time... probably the best in the world. It was one of those times where you have a terrific opportunity, and you're damned if you're going to let it slip through your fingers. So that was the classic stay there all night, learn as much as you can, ask everybody as many questions as you can think of, and just try to soak up as much as you can scenario.

PLUME: As far as the computers and hardware you had there...and the way you worked...how would you rate it on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the kind of computers and software you're working with today?

McQUEEN: Well, back then, they were an 11 on a scale of 1-10. There were literally millions of dollars worth of computers downstairs at the lab in a temperature-controlled, halon-guarded computer room - with a whole cadre of computer-ops ready to go in and do whatever needed to be done to keep the computers going.

One of those...like a VACS 11785...which back then was like the hottest machine you could get - it's probably not even 10 percent of what the computer I have under my desk is now. Software, for the time, was actually pretty good. But on a scale of 1-10, it was probably about a 2. Using the current Pixar software as a benchmark, it was probably about a 2 - maybe a 3.

PLUME: And it didn't have the computing power behind it...

McQUEEN: Oh no, not at all. But again...for the time...it was fantastic. It was a rare opportunity, I think, because it's probably where I developed a taste for working with people who are way better than I am. A lot smarter than I am, at least.

Everyone there was absolutely brilliant. It's great being around people who you're constantly learning from. That's one of the reasons that I really like working at Pixar, because everybody you work with you can learn something from.

PLUME: How did you transition out of New York?

McQUEEN: The projects that we were getting in New York were kind of going nowhere. We were working on a sequel to Yellow Submarine called Strawberry Fields - and I didn't know much about film production, but I was pretty sure the way we were doing it was not the way it should be done.

A friend of mine was working at PDI...and it sounded like the mantle for really excellent work...had moved from New York Tech and was over on the other coast, so it seemed like that move made a lot of sense, and it did. PDI was a fantastic place to get introduced to computing in the 90's. Everyone had their own SGI. There weren't big, cumbersome mainframes down in the basement. It was faster, lighter. It was a company that had to think on its feet - I like that. The work they did was good.

PLUME: What projects did you work on at PDI?

McQUEEN: I worked on commercials...a couple of films, like Angels In The Outfield and Sleepwalkers. A couple of Scrubbing Bubbles and Pillsbury Doughboy commercials. Generally just whatever needed to be done, but preferably something that had some character animation in it.

PLUME: As opposed to a ball flying through the air...

McQUEEN: I did that a couple times too. It was a lot of fun, and it was a great place to work. I'm real happy that now they're working on narrative films like we are. I'm dying to see their next couple of films. I'm really looking forward to them.

PLUME: What led you to Pixar?

McQUEEN: The change from there [PDI] to Pixar was primarily because of Toy Story. I think pretty much everybody in the industry...when they heard about Toy Story...was like, "What? They're doing whole film? With no live action plates? You've got to be kidding!"

It just sounded so implausible - but after awhile I started thinking, "Well, you know, this Lassiter guy has done absolutely the best work in the industry. There's no way he's not going to make a good film." So, it was certainly not based my personal knowledge of John, but my knowledge of his body of work. Every year at SIGRAPH, I'd see his next short film, and every time it raised the bar for what all of us thought computer animation could be. So the chance to work with this guy, boy, what could be better than that?

PLUME: What was the recruitment program like at Pixar at that time? Was it just based completely on your portfolio?

McQUEEN: Yeah. I talked to the producer, and I talked to Pete Doctor - he was the supervising animator. It was certainly a lot looser back then. The bar is pretty high now in terms of what kind of animators we hire. I'm glad I'm not trying to get a job here now - I'm glad I got in here when I did. Because when I started here, they were looking for people...I wouldn't say aggressively...but they were definitely looking.

PLUME: They were ramping up from a small group who'd just done shorts to a group necessary to do a feature...

McQUEEN: Yeah. I think when I had started, they'd finished the army man sequence with a small group of animators. They'd worked on it for a tremendously long time, because they were still massaging the story a small bit. In every film we do, there's sort-of a tentpole sequence - one sequence that, no matter what throes the story goes through, won't change. In Toy Story it was the army man sequence, and for A Bug's Life it was the circus sequence. You can change the story all around those two sequences, but those sequences would be left pretty much unsullied.

PLUME: Do you think the hiring bar is higher today because of the glut of animators out there? People can practically teach themselves on their home computers now...

McQUEEN: Absolutely. We get people coming in who have reels that are just...boy...if I had seen it three of four years ago, we would have dropped what we were doing and carried them in on our shoulders.

Now, it's like, "Well I saw something like that last week." I'm sure it has a lot to do with the availability of decent computer power, and great software. I think you can go to school and learn. Well, you can learn computer animation, but whether you can learn to be a great animator or not, I'm not so sure of. Certainly, I think there are a lot of courses out there, or a lot of schools that have pretty comprehensive computer animation programs.

PLUME: But it still comes down to - now more so then when it was a more technical skill - to having that innate ability to act, doesn't it?

McQUEEN: Yes, it basically does. That's why we hire people like (Muppeteer) Karen Prell, who has a puppeteering background. We have several people who have stop-motion backgrounds. It's interesting that there seems to be a correlation between working with a real, physical model and working with a computer model. There's actually a pretty strong correlation between the two, although I'm sure for those people in particular it must be frustrating as hell.

You must just want to push your hand through the computer screen, grab the model, and pull the arm over across the eye - or mush it down onto the ground. Things you were accustomed to doing on the set. Instead, you're doing it kind of piecemeal, control by control, with a mouse. You just want to reach in there and grab it...

PLUME: Would you say it's easier to teach someone the tools than to teach them how to act?

McQUEEN: Absolutely. Definitive - no question. There's no way we would hire someone as an animator who only had technical skills as opposed to animation skills. I could teach anybody our software in about an hour. I could teach you enough to allow you to start animating. But to teach somebody what makes a good performance...how to make it appealing...how to make a character seem alive...how to make a character appear to be thinking...self-motivated action... things like that are so much more difficult. Like how to communicate an emotion...

That's what we do all the time. We get reels in where clearly people have a good sense of motion - they know how to make something move in a pretty entertaining way - but you look at their acting and their performance and it's like, "Ehhhhhh..." It's not that great.

PLUME: Conversely, do you see poor technical skills but great acting skills in reels?

McQUEEN: That doesn't bother me so much, if somebody shows me a "Sphere Boy and Cube Man"...where clearly they haven't spent any time modeling or lighting or rendering or whatever...but the motion or the performance is all there, it's like, "Ah! That's perfect!" That would be all that I would ask for.

PLUME: Because you know you could train them on the software...

MCQUEEN: Yeah, and the onus is so not on them to do anything technical, really. Your technical responsibilities here are really pretty limited - you never have to model, you never have to light. You don't have to know how to write a renderman shader.

The great thing is, everybody here is very specialized, but everyone is just as committed as you are to telling a story - through their art form. The modelers take a lot of pride in the models they make, and they really try to convey the essence of the characters through the models they create - and they hand that off to us. We try to tell the story as best as we possibly can through performance and acting and whatnot - and we do the best possible job we can. Then we hand it off to the people who try to communicate story and emotion through lighting and color. Every time you try to do the best you can in your little slice of the pipeline, and then you hand it off. Every step along the pipeline there are people who are just as committed as you are, but in their own discipline.

Everyone is shooting for the same goal - they're all trying to tell a story. For example, you look at the montage for "Jessie's Song" in Toy Story 2: the animation's really good, but the lighting has this nice, really warm honey color and everything has a little bit of bloom to it. That really helps nail the emotion of that sequence. That's a great example of lighting telling a story just as much as the animation, and the song work really well. There are all these different elements that are just working together, pulling towards the same goal.

PLUME: So, basically, that's how you would describe Pixar?

McQUEEN: Everybody trying to push this big huge rock up a hill, but everyone's trying using their own...

PLUME: Everyone's got their spot on the rock...

McQUEEN: Exactly - that's exactly right. It's exactly like pushing a big, heavy rock up a hill.

PLUME: How often does the rock try to fall back down?

McQUEEN: Always. It's doing nothing but trying to fall back down...

PLUME: What exactly does a Supervising Animator at Pixar do?

McQUEEN: Here, it sort of changes from film to film. Generally, I'd say that what we do is we help the animators realize the directors' vision. The directors can say, "We want Woody to look sad in this shot." So we will help the animators make Woody look sad. Also...depending on the show...sometimes we only have director time for an hour or two in the morning, and then we're pretty much on our own for the rest of the day. So supervising animators...or directing animators...are here to act as almost surrogate directors when the directors aren't around. You look at someone's shot, and you try as best you can to nudge them in directions that you think that the actual directors will want the shot to go in.

PLUME: So it's like an assistant coach...

McQUEEN: That's exactly right. It's almost like looking at a shot, you have to run it through several filters. The first one is what do you think the shot should be - "what do I think the shot needs to tell the story?". There's a reason for every shot being in the film, so the primary thing is, "Okay, why is this shot in the film?" It's here for a gag...or it's here to get a laugh...or it's here to convey the idea that - like Woody is having second thoughts about Andy's room...or whatever...so you have to make sure that it's clear.

Then you start to put it through several other filters like "how entertaining is it?", "Cinematically, how does it look from a compositional point of view?" Then you have to think...knowing what I know about John Lassiter..."What's he going to look for? What does he always look for in shots?"

He always looks for things stopping in the middle of a shot and not staying alive. We call it keeping a character alive - just a subtle drift. Even if you're standing and waiting for a bus, you're not standing absolutely stock still. You're moving a little bit. You're shifting your weight, you arm might be moving, you'll reach up and scratch your ear --something like that. It's that little subtle motion that...certainly in computer animation...seems to be really noticed if it's not there.

PLUME: It looks like a still...

McQUEEN: Yes. Even in hand drawn animation, there is something about the quality of the line where....even if it's a held cell....it still has an organic feel to it. Whereas computer animation, if it's not moving, it looks dead. That's one of the things I know that John always looks for. So when I'm looking at a shot, I think, "Well, is that happening?" Sort of a pre-check before we show it to John - I like to be able to head things off before they get to him as much as possible.

PLUME: What do you think is the most difficult thing to work on in a shot?

McQUEEN: For a lot of people, the most challenging shots are shots in which there is no dialogue. If someone's saying, "What, you thought I did it?!?" it's really clear...depending on the dialogue or the actor who's reading the line...it can be pretty straightforward in terms of what the character is doing. What would be an appropriate gesture for that line?

Whereas shots like Woody standing at the grate in Al's apartment...and he's thinking, "Should I leave and go back to Andy's room or should I stay with the Prospector?"...and the Prospector's talking to him saying, "Andy... Is he going to college? Is he going to take you on his honeymoon?" There's no dialogue for Woody in any of those shots, but you have to convey a tremendous amount of inner turmoil and decision-making on Woody's part - and shots like that are difficult.

What I recommend people do in situations like that...especially if they're saying, "Geez, I don't know what to do. What would he be doing?"...is to write down an internal dialogue for Woody. What's he thinking inside? Let that guide your performance. Same thing is often you'll have a sequence where it's ABABABABABAB...back and forth...where Woody has a line, then Buzz has a line, then Woody has a line. When Buzz has a line, write down what Woody's thinking as Buzz is saying this and let that guide your performance for Woody in that shot. Anticipate his rebuttal. You want to see him thinking about what he's going to say, and have him have...like...inhale a little before he says it. Often, the anticipation to a line can be just as important as the actual line itself.

PLUME: How does one go from being an animator to a supervising animator?

McQUEEN: I had directed some interstitials after Toy Story that weren't terribly good, but the experience I had directing here...and the experience I had had outside of Pixar... I guess that would be it. It's not a terribly clear career path.

The fella who I brought up as a directing animator on Toy Story 2 was a good animator and appeared to enjoy helping other people get the most out of their shots. So it's like, "Whelp, that's all you need." It's certainly not a glamorous position. It's far more rewarding to just animate, I think. There, you have a much clearer sense of what you're doing and what you have done. You can look at the film and say, "I did that shot."

On Toy Story, I animated 7 or 8 minutes of the film. I can show you I did that shot there and that shot there, whereas on Toy Story 2, I probably only animated 2 or 3 shots. Any satisfaction I derive from my participation in the film is based on me pushing the big rock up the hill with everybody else - not, "I did these specific shots." It's a more global, "Boy, I'm glad we all did such a good job."

PLUME: In that undefined path, is it almost like a battlefield promotion?

McQUEEN: Yes - that's a good analogy.

PLUME: It comes out of nowhere. but once you've got it, you've got to work with it...

McQUEEN: Yeah. You have to run with it.

PLUME: What is your position on "Monsters, Inc."?

McQUEEN: Same thing - supervising guy. I'm supervising with Rich Quaid. He was the supervising animator on A Bug's Life, so we're doing pretty much the same thing.

PLUME: How far up the hill is that rock?

McQUEEN: They're still hammering out the final little bits of story. We're going into production in several weeks, I believe. Right now, we're doing final model testing. Before you actually start production, you want to make sure all of your model...your Buzz's and Woody's and Rex's and whatnot...you sort of have to anticipate what you're going to need them to do in the film, and build the models so that they're capable of doing that. Because you don't want to be halfway through the show and realize that...oh geez...Buzz needs to be able to pull off his arm or his leg - and the way we've built this model can't do that!

That's just a big hiccup in the production pipeline. At worst, it means you actually have to build a different Buzz model - Buzz-dot-removable leg or something. From just a tracking and...and a keeping- the-show-organized point of view...that's kind of a pain.

PLUME: So, knowing that they're still working on the story, you have to anticipate any action...

McQUEEN: Yeah, for the most part. There are some things you can't anticipate, but there are generally things that you know about the characters - even if they're not in the storyboards. You have to build characters so that there are, like, attach points on their shoulders - so that if another character should grab him by the shoulders and shake him, an attach point on the shoulder will allow you to really nail the contact between the hand and the shoulder. A character may need to pick up a glass...or pick up a table...or pick up a chair...or something. You know there will be a certain level of interactivity among all the characters, so you have to build them appropriately.

PLUME: Of the films you've worked on, including what's coming up, which has interested you the most, in concept and execution?

McQUEEN: It would be a tie between Toy Story and Toy Story 2, I think. As a concept, I think Toy Story was probably the most interesting because it had never been done - and none of us really knew what we were getting into. There was sort of a sense of adventure as we were working on it. We really did feel like we were all fighting the good fight.

Toy Story 2...in terms of how an idea was implemented...I think would be my favorite. From the outset, people were flat on saying, "Aw no. We're not going to do it. We're not going to do a sequel. Pixar doesn't do sequels." After awhile, they're such great characters, you think, "Aw, what the hell? Why not do a sequel? There's definitely a great story in there - we just have to find it!" Going back to these same characters again, and having it not be tiresome.

McQUEEN (contd): It was almost like going to a high school reunion where you met all your old pals. It was a great film to work on - it was a real animator's film, I thought. It had a nice broad, dynamic emotional range. It had really high highs and really low lows. It was great working with Tom Hanks' voice again. It really makes a huge difference. As an animator, all you have to work with are the models and the voice - and the models for Woody, Buzz, and all those characters across the board are really fun to work with. But without a really great voice...and a great actor behind them...there's not a lot for an animator to work with. Tom Hanks is just - I can't tell you what a pleasure it is to work with his voice. There's so much to take from his performance.

PLUME: And it also comes back to the fact that you've built the world with Toy Story, and in Toy Story 2 you can play in it...

McQUEEN: Absolutely.

PLUME: With the success of the second one, have there been rumblings about a third?

McQUEEN: No one has said anything. Honestly, I don't know where you would go after the second one. If there was a third one, I have a tremendous amount of confidence in John (Lassiter) and Andrew (Stanton) and Pete (Doctor) and their ability to tell a story. I think that if they did choose to do a Toy Story 3, I'm confident that it would be a story worth telling. If they didn't have a story that was worth telling, they wouldn't tell it. No one has said anything, but I'm sure Disney would love for there to be a Toy Story 3 two months from now, because it's clearly a very popular film. But I'm sure that Pixar won't do one unless we have a story that's every bit as compelling as Toy Story 2.

PLUME: How would you describe the difference between Pixar 5 years ago and Pixar today?

McQUEEN: It's a lot bigger. It's unfortunate, but to me, the sense of adventure is a little less than it was on Toy Story. When we worked on Toy Story, part of the fun was that no one knew what we were doing. We didn't know what we were doing - we were just sort of seeing how it went. We were probably pretty na?ve about the entire process, but that's part of what made it fun.

With A Bug's Life, it was like, "Geez, I wonder what the second one will be like!" Some problems were still there that had existed in the first film...some new problems came up...and we'd solved some old problems. Then with Toy Story 2, after a while, the sense of adventure drops down - but it's always more than just a job. It's always really exciting the first time you see a character come to life on the screen...the very first shot that's animated on a film...that's always an exciting moment. But I'd say, in general, it's a teeny bit more impersonal - but that's only because it's a much, much larger company now. A little bit of the sense of adventure has disappeared, but that's primarily because we sort of know what we're doing now.

PLUME: It also seems that Pixar has a remarkable retention rate for employees...

McQUEEN: I don't know where else you'd go. If this is really what you want to do, I can not think of a better place to do it. We write our own stories. I mean, for all intents and purposes, we're creating our own destiny - we're our own bosses. Our relationship with Disney is really good. Disney acts as a mentor, more than anything else, helping us shape the story and market the films - they're second to none with that. But they trust us implicitly, I think, with our animation and our story. It's almost scary, because, after Pixar, where do you go? This is it. If you don't like it here, you probably shouldn't be in the business, because it just ain't gonna get any better than this.

PLUME: So do you foresee a long future for yourself with the company?

McQUEEN: Yeah, I guess. After this, I guess you go teach somewhere or something. The last thing I would do is go into another production environment. If I was going to make a change from here, I would probably just go teach. In terms of working with terrific people and learning a lot on every project, this is the best place to be. This is where they're doing the projects you'd be proud to show your daughter. Doing anything in this industry is difficult. Doing effects is hard work...doing a CG character in a live-action film is really hard work...doing an all-CG movie is really hard work. I can't imagine putting that much hard work into something, and having it suck when it came out. We've been pretty lucky that it hasn't happened in our previous three films, and I don't see it happening in the films in the foreseeable future. I can't ask for more than that.

PLUME: Do you see yourself in any other position in the company? Would you eventually like to direct?

McQUEEN: Absolutely not. I see the kind of pressure that comes with the position of being a director and...boy...that doesn't appeal to me at all. Also, the job I have now is absolutely perfect. The only thing I really care about in a film is the performance of the characters, and in my job, that's all I have to deal with. I don't have to deal with the voice talent...or what the shaders look like...or how is the lighting in this shot...things like that. I have a very department-centric view of what a film needs to work, and for me it's a good story and good performances. Everything else, to me, is sort of superfluous. It's really nice, but I don't want to spend my days agonizing over decisions that I don't think are terribly important.

PLUME: So your concerns lie in the position you have now...

McQUEEN: Absolutely - I do have the best job in the world, no question. Everybody should be jealous. This is so what you want to do.

PLUME: Knowing the tapes that you see...and what you look for in them...what is the path to Pixar for an aspiring computer animator?

McQUEEN: I would say performance - acting. Just work on your acting and your motion. As I said before, you've got to make a character look like it's thinking - like it's self-motivated. Convey emotion through acting, through pantomime. If a character's sad, don't just put a sad face on him, try and convey that emotion with everything.

With the composition of the shot in the frame...with the pose of the character...how the character carries himself...how the character moves...what gestures does he do when he talks. Everything about the shot...about the character...should say something about the character's state of mind at that moment. For me, that's all it is. I don't care how well something is rendered, or how well it's modeled, or anything. The only thing I care about is motion - the performance.

PLUME: So you're looking for the art, not the numbers...

McQUEEN: Absolutely.

Courtesy of FilmForce's Kenneth Plume, 2000