Dec 13, 2016

'Book of Life' Director Jorge Gutierrez to Create VR Project "Son of Jaguar" for Google Spotlight Stories

"Book of Life" director Jorge Gutierrez will produce his next film, "Son of Jaguar," for Google's Spotlight Stories project.

Spotlight Stories, part of Google ATAP, will explore the possibilities of interactive and immersive 360 storytelling with real-time rendering through both mobile and VR platforms. Filmmakers who have created Spotlight Stories include Jan Pinkava ("Windy Day"), Glen Keane ("Duet"), Shannon Tindle ("On Ice"), and Patrick Osborne ("Pearl").

"[Jorge's] completely unique voice and perspective is what drove me to follow him over the past year and a half to land him to do our next Google Spotlight Story," said Google Spotlight Stories' Executive Producer Karen Dufilho told Cartoon Brew.

Gutierrez saw filmmakers and animators like Keen, Osborne, and Tindall creating Spotlight Stories and was convinced to try the vr format." I genuinely felt like what could possibly go wrong," he says. "As a filmmaker and an artist, you have to embrace what scares you. I was very scared, and it felt good because I hadn't been scared of this medium in a long time."

Gutierrez says his lucha libre-themed short fulfills the promise of a Mexican wrestling movie poster he loved as a child. Although the film itself was "terrible" and did not live up to the thrilling poster image, Gutierrez now feels he has the opportunity to finally step into that world through VR." I was the kind of kid in a movie theater who would run up to the screen at the end of the movie and touch it because I wanted to get inside."

"Son of Jaguar" builds on themes Gutierrez has explored in "Book of Life" and the Nickelodeon television series "El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera" (co-produced with his wife Sandra Equihua) :

"Everything I love deals with tradition, family, what it means to be the next generation, and how to live unashamedly in the history of where you come from. Lucha Libre is a symbolic version of that. Oscar Wilde, who I love, said, 'Give a man a mask and he will tell you the truth. So this film is about that. This short film is set on the Day of the Dead, so it deals with lineage, family, history, and what it means to be part of something bigger than yourself."

The project officially launched last week and is slated for completion in summer 2017. Reel FX, the Dallas, Texas animation studio that produced Gutierrez's "Book of Life," will produce the animation for the project. Paul Sullivan, art director of "Book of Life," will join the project, and Sandra Equihua will design the characters.

David Eisenman, who produced Patrick Osborne's "Spotlight Story Pearl" (now an Academy Award nominee), will produce "Son of Jaguar. "Son of Jaguar" is different from previous Spotlight projects. Eisenman said of how "Son of Jaguar" differs from previous Spotlight projects: "This is a narrative-driven VR film. It's a very promising investigation of the first-person perspective in narrative-driven VR productions. We're going to give it a shot."

Gutierrez said.

Gutierrez also has other goals in mind with his first VR project." Emotion is what I am most obsessed with, trying to make you feel something.

"Then I punch you in the stomach," Eisenman adds.

"And then I'll make you spit love," Gutierrez concludes, adding, "And then I'll take off my goggles and grow a mustache."