May 11, 2018

The production of "From Burbank to Wuhan: One Small Step" was a major global collaboration for Taiko Studio.

Animator Shaofu Zhang spent more than two years at Walt Disney Animation Studios working on some of the most successful and profitable animated films of all time.

Among his credits are "Big Hero 6," "Moana," and "Zootopia," three of Disney's top four domestic box office hits of the modern era. In December 2016, however, Chan left the security and comfort afforded him by the major studios and went independent.

That year, Taiko Studios, Chan's brainchild, was founded, named after the Mandarin word for "space" (tàik.ng) and after the term "taikonaut" used primarily in the English-language media to refer to Chinese astronauts. The studio's signature short film, "One Small Step," premiering this Saturday at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, California, tells the story of Luna, a Chinese-American girl who dreams of traveling to the moon.

Chang invited several of his Disney colleagues to join him at his new studio in Burbank, a few minutes drive from his old home. Andrew Chesworth and Bobby Pontillas, animators on such hits as "Moana," "Zootopia," and "Anna and the Snow Queen," joined as head of development and art director, respectively, and soon became co-directors on "One Small Step." 2011 Chesworth joined Disney in and says he felt it was the right time to go.

"We showed up at Disney and did nothing but hits in a short period of time. Other people who had been at Disney for 20 years were like, 'I've been waiting 10 years to work on a film that would be this successful or this beloved,'" Chesworth says. It was the kind of work that scratched an itch." We had five years to get the thing of a lifetime."

Chang envisioned Tyco as a truly international studio that would produce animated films that could bridge cultural gaps. It was not enough to work with already established Chinese studios; Chang wanted to create an intercontinental studio with offices in both the U.S. and China.

And he did just that. Located in Wuhan, roughly halfway between Beijing and Hong Kong, Taikoo's China studio now consists of a team of 12 people and is led by animation lead Eric Lee, a friend of Chang's from the Academy of Arts in San Francisco. Lee had worked at the startup in the past and liked the atmosphere, so when Zhang called him up, he jumped at the chance to work again in a more intimate environment.

To facilitate both the successful production of One Small Step and to lay the groundwork for Taiko, Chang himself relocated once a month beginning in January 2017, traveling between Burbank and Wuhan. While the bulk of the short's production took place in Wuhan, the Burbank team handled the bulk of the directing, and Chan was determined to have his international colleagues work seamlessly as one team. [To accomplish this, the Burbank crew held video conferences with their Wuhan colleagues almost daily, ending as soon as they arrived at the office at 9:00 AM.

Chesworth says the 15-hour time difference was rather convenient. 'The nice thing about it is that both parties don't have to interrupt their work. We see their feedback, they see our feedback. So the day always starts with new information.

Still, there were times when communication broke down, mainly due to the obvious language barrier. While Chang and Lee spoke both English and Mandarin fluently, most of their colleagues in Wuhan and Burbank did not. The team made use of interpreters, but they also frequently engaged in old-fashioned pantomime and, logically, drawing.

"It allowed us to write better notes, frankly," says Chesworth. "Because you had to prioritize the clearest way to communicate and deliver that idea, and you knew it would take effort to communicate it, so you had to choose your battles wisely."

Andrew Taylor Jennings, Tyco's head of pipeline, also He is from Disney.

Andrew Taylor Jennings, Taikoo's pipeline director, is also a Disney alumnus, but says connectivity was also a big issue. He flew to Wuhan to mirror Burbank's server setup and tried to make sure the two were in sync. Later, when faced with issues related to Chinese Internet regulations and the use of virtual private networks (VPNs), Jennings troubleshooted via video chat with a very patient Wuhan colleague.

"When you're a startup and you're small, a lot of the solutions to these [technical] problems, unfortunately, are to buy bigger and better equipment or hire someone [in China] to provide a secret connection," he says. It's fun."

According to Brandi Braxton, Burbank's production coordinator, organization was also key: the two teams slept opposite hours, so videoconference review meetings were recorded so that the Wuhan production could refer to them with questions ...

Logistics aside, CG supervisor and character rigger Joy Johnson says that excitement pervaded every stage of the collaboration, and everyone was constantly learning from each other. She jokes, "They showed us the moon festival and we showed them the pumpkin spice latte."

"The animators, writers, and modelers (in Wuhan) had ideas that came completely from them that were not in the storyboards or scripts and were not talked about at all," Braxton says. We shape and form how the film generally progresses, but a lot of the detail and creativity comes from the other side as well."

For co-director Pontillas, working with the animators in Wuhan gave him the perspective to make the short film itself more accessible to a wider, international audience. The most important thing for me is learning how to communicate with people from different cultures in an impactful way," he said. How to communicate in a way that resonates with them. ......"

Chang sees the situation a little differently. 'The big thing that struck me is that there's actually very little difference. There are a lot more similarities," he says. There is a misconception, or preconception, that Chinese culture is very different from American culture, when in fact it is not. There is a universality to our lives that is reflected and resonates in the stories we are trying to tell."

Many projects seem to be bubbling under the surface of Taiko, but Chan and the others are keeping their future plans under wraps for now. Chang has been working on "One Small Step" for just over a month since he began submitting it to film festivals, but he says it is already a full-time job. As for distribution, he seems intent on exploring the film's potential in China.

"It's like the Wild West here [China], where there are no established players that have been around for decades and the market changes very quickly," he says.

"It's good in that they are ready and willing to look at new things and see what's different."

Furthermore, Chesworth says: "[When we] talk about the American market, we are talking about a mature market with very defined audience expectations. American audiences have a general idea of what American animated films are like. In China, on the other hand, which is growing and developing rapidly, there is an opportunity to help shape those expectations, both in terms of the way the film looks (and feels) and the kind of story it tells."