If you have been following along for the last couple months, you might know that I had the opportunity to visit the Pixar Studios and meet some incredible people. What I haven’t mentioned yet was our roundtable interview with Pixar Director, Writer and Technical Director of “The Blue Umbrella”, a very cute little animated short that you will see along with Monsters University.
Saschka was born in Frankfurt, Germany and moved with his family to Hamburg when he was only 14 years old. He then went on to pursue his interest and passion for animation by attending the Animation Institute in Ludwigsburg, Germany. After graduation Unseld co-founded the animation studio “Studio So” where he produced and directed numerous film shorts and commercials.
In 2008 Sashka Unseld came to Pixar Animation Studios where he is currently serving as a director and writer for the animated short “The Blue Umbrella”. He has previously worked on camera and staging assignments for the features, “Toy Story 3″, “Cars 2″ and “Brave”. When Unseld presented the idea for “The Blue Umbrella”, he had no idea that this would stand out as one of the highlights of his career. He says that he practiced pitching the idea for a long time and was amazed at the reactions he received. Working on this project has been a real dream come true for him.
Take a sneek peek at “The Blue Umbrella” clip below:
Um, I mean, there is clearly New York, because I went on, on two trips there to take photos. Um, there is some of the characters, from the city characters out of San Francisco, because that’s just, like, the very first one on the, on the sidewalk. Um, we called her Lisa. They actually have all names because you couldn’t say, like, you know that weird metal thing in the 15th shot? They actually all have names. Um, so Lisa is two blocks down from where I live. And Lisa was part of a test I shot on my iPhone as well.
Since I have been to both New York and San Francisco, I thought it was neat that this short included shots from both of these big cities. While watching the short, I myself was trying to guess what cities were being included.
We then of course had to ask where he got the idea for this story.
Um, well the core of the story was… I was living here already since, like, four years or something like this. And it really rarely rained. And then finally it was raining. And I went for a walk through the city, and I saw an umbrella someone had thrown away on the side of the street. Um, and I took a picture of it. Like, I think, on the, on the Tumblr blog I have, the first post of that is that photo I had taken. And, um, on the… I don’t know if you I had this weird, incognito blog called Rainy City Tales on Tumblr that I actually was running during the production.
These are just a couple of the questions we were able to ask Saschka during our interview. To find out more about this short, you will have to see it next week when Monsters University comes to theaters on June 21st.
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