Steve Oedekerk finds directing a CG movie both thrilling and painful. He finds that all that control means he must determine the most minute details.

“It’s absolutely thrilling and painful,” Steve Oedekerk says of directing a CG movie for the first time. “You have such control over everything that it makes you crazy. [You determine] everything [that] comes up, [like] the shape of an ashtray. Every small thing in the world, somebody’s taking a moment and caring about the texture that we put on it and how should it look. It’s much, much, much more meticulous as a first animated project directed [by me], and from a story standpoint. If you know a story and you know what you want it to be and you’re working from the base of the characters, then there’s clearly different tools, and clearly a lot more decisions to make. And there are different rhythms to the production.

“It’s almost like you’re doing the same movie three or four times, is how I look at it. First you make it as storyboards. Then you make a layout version. Then you make it in CG.”

Barnyard — written, directed and produced by Oedekerk — is the latest project in a string of successes that began as a standup comic at the age of 23. His filmmaking career launched with an independent film, High Strung, followed by screenplays for Nothing to Lose (which he also directed), The Nutty Professor and episodes of In Living Color. He consulted on Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, after which he wrote and directed the sequel, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.

“When I did standup I lived in Hollywood for about five years (so it’s been 13 years), then I moved up, doing the Comedy Store, doing bits in TV shows, and then I got into independent filmmaking. I was there about a week, and I had to circle the block to look for parking to get a Xerox made. I swear I was there one week and I went, ‘I’m not staying here.’ It was just little inconveniences about not finding a place to park. I got spoiled with driving in front of a store and walking in.”

Oedekerk acquired an interest in CG animation, then in its formative stages.

“CG was almost not known at the time,” he recalls. “The only time you saw it was with an NBC logo or something. That was my first entrance into CG. When I saw the first program, I was enamored that it was so close to live action. I still look at CG animation a bit differently than most people. It’s a form of animation, which it is, but at the same time it’s incredibly close to live action, because you’ve got a physical space, props, lights. It’s just very similar. I got really excited because I thought, this is really the future.

“It’s funny, I thought it was a low budget technique when I first saw it. I still do. But it’s a way that if somebody had a program, and they know how to use it, they could do a visual effect they could never pay for in live action.

“I was pitching CG projects before Toy Story came out, and everybody thought I was an insane person.”

One of his concepts was what do animals do when humans aren’t looking? “I just thought it would be a cool sub-world of what’s really going on. Like animals doing practical jokes.”

Barnyard is the latest in a string of successes for Oedekerk. All Barnyard images © 2006 by Paramount Pictures and Viacom Intl Inc. All rights reserved.

But the project was put on the back burner while Oedekerk kept busy with live action, writing Patch Adams, which starred Robin Williams, co-writing Bruce Almighty, which starred Jim Carrey, and writing, directing and starring in Kung Pow: Enter the Fist. Beginning in 1999, he produced a series of film parodies starring thumbs: Thumb Wars: The Phantom Cuticle, The Godthumb, Bat Thumb, Frankenthumb, The Blair Thumb and Thumbtanic. And then he became involved in CG animation, co-writing and producing Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.

In 2002, Oedekerk created, co-wrote and exec produced Santa vs. the Snowman, the first 3D IMAX narrative, which he discussed in Animation World Magazine.

“The 3D palette is filmmaking in the future,” he says enthusiastically. “The first day I saw dailies on Santa vs. the Snowman, I was driving home and I got a call that I had gotten an Academy Award nomination for Jimmy Neutron. When I got home, I went into the kitchen and my wife was there and I spent 15 minutes telling her about Santa vs. the Snowman. And ‘Oh yeah, by the way, [Jimmy Neutron got nominated for an Academy Award].’ It was really true. That’s how exciting I think that palette is.

“There’s something arresting about it. If you really do 3D and you don’t treat it like a gag of throwing apples at the people, and really want to make it as a cinemagraphic advantage, it’s a tricky business model, because it’s almost as if you have to produce only for that. You have to respect the boundaries of when they leave the screen. If you have the benefit of doing it in IMAX, looking at a large format, making a tougher model, it’s crazy what you can accomplish.

“It’s like you’re making a movie without a screen. That’s how large that is. If you’re composing it right. If it’s just a blowup then you’ve got a gigantic screen in 3D. If you compose for it, you could be doing stuff that no one’s ever seen before. It’s the z-axis to filmmaking. It’s amazing. I could spend one full lifetime doing just that right now.”