Director Trevor Jimenez and production designer Chris Sasaki discuss their collaboration on the hand-animated, dialogue-free short film created as part of the Pixar co-op program.
Written and directed by Trevor Jimenez, the hand-painted ‘Weekends’ was recently shortlisted for an Oscar nomination, and has also been nominated for an Annie Award for Best Animated Short Subject.
In a new featurette making the rounds online, director Trevor Jimenez and production designer Chris Sasaki discuss their collaboration on the Oscar-shortlisted and Annie Award-nominated short film Weekends.
The story of a young boy shuffling between the homes of his recently divorced parents over the course of a year, the painterly short film Weekends blends surreal, dream-like moments with the domestic realities of a fragmented family in this hand-animated dialogue-free film set in 1980’s Toronto.
Weekends was produced as part of Pixar’s co-op program, which allows employees to use Pixar resources to produce independent films, but without full-fledged studio support. Working closely with Sasaki, Jimenez oversaw a crew of 27 animators and artists to bring the project to life. The 15-minute short film, which was written and directed by Jimenez, was recently shortlisted for an Oscar nomination, and has also been nominated for an Annie Award for Best Animated Short Subject.
Currently available for a limited time to watch online, Weekends has screened at more than 66 international festivals, winning 22 awards to date including both the Special Jury Prize and Audience Award at the Annecy International Animation Festival, as well as top prizes at the Warsaw Film Festival, Nashville Film Festival and Edmonton Int’l Film Festival, qualifying the film for Oscar submission four-fold. The hand-painted short was also selected to screen as part of the 20th Annual Animation Show of Shows, the yearly traveling showcase dedicated to bringing hand-picked short films from around the world to U.S. theaters.
Watch the new video, which features interviews with Jimenez and Sasaki, as well as concept drawings and designs and animatics, in the player below:
Want more? Check out “A Personal Story,” detailing Jimenez’s journey as a filmmaker, and click through to AWN’s in-depth interview: Within a Dream: Bringing Emotion To Trevor Jimenez’s ‘Weekends’.
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.
