“The Krill is Gone”

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Synopsis

Voiced by the incomparable Tom Kenny (Sponge Bob) with Jill Talley, “The Krill is Gone” brings comic awareness to the looming danger of man-made global warming on the fragile ecosystems deep within our oceans. As this ominous tale begins, our host – the Robin Leach-like Plankton Emiliania Huxleyi — introduces us to his undersea world just seconds before he is devoured by a ditzy Krill, who quickly sheds her shell in a successful maneuver to outwit a predator only to have trouble sprouting another. As the tour continues, we spot a celebrity tuna who looks and talks suspiciously like Al Gore, dodge a swarm of deadly jellyfish, and watch in horror when the dastardly source of the problem is finally revealed.

Director’s Statement

“Wow. The making of ‘The Krill is Gone’ was one of the longest and most satisfying pieces of animation that I have ever worked on. Matt Briggs has this amazing ability to charge a project with so much positive energy that it begins to develop a momentum of its own, and that was certainly the case here. Over the year and a half that we were in production on the ‘Deep Green’ animations, almost everyone at Bent who was involved in the project demonstrated a level of performance that exceeded my already high expectations. Because of the group’s commitment to creating something that was deserving of the talents and vision that Matt had already brought to the film, the project constantly evolved—becoming a richer and nuanced telling of the tale of a krill in crisis. “From the beginning, the Krill piece was conceived as a 2D collage of animated cutouts assembled and animated in After Effects. But as the character designs began to appear from Huy Vu’s drawing board, and the CG modelers breathed life into these characters, it became clear that the spot was taking on a life of its own. Ray DiCarlo, the Executive Producer at Bent, made this clear, after taking a long and appreciative look at the work coming out of the CG lab. ‘You know we have to do this in 3D,’ he said quietly. Coming from any other EP, I might have been shocked to hear that I was being asked to take a more expensive and laborious path on our shoestring budget, but with Ray I wasn’t so much surprised as delighted. He is always about the quality. And so the project continued to morph. “The original script that Matt and Clark Taylor had sent was great fun, if epic. I was reminded by David Daniels that we weren’t remaking ‘Lawrence of Arabia,’ and with his and Chel White’s input and a constant flow of new takes and line revisions between Clark, myself, and eventually the great voice talent of Tom Kenny, we ended up with a telling that could fit within the constraints that we assigned ourselves. Certainly one of the most pleasurable afternoons of the project was experiencing Tom’s and Clark’s playful exchanges as they explored character voices and performances. I’ve sat through a lot of recording sessions but this is one that I will always remember. Great chops those two. “Perhaps the largest challenge to the project was the creation of a vast and diverse undersea world that could be composited and adjusted to the needs of the animation created and performed in an entirely different platform. After Effects was both the compositing and editing tool for this spot, and I was often confronted with a need for unique solutions that were both fast and effective, and so I often found myself seated at the hem of the Bent compositors. Led by fellow ‘Deep Green’ director Randy Wakerlin, this group was almost always in house working on one deadline or another, so I had an almost constant access to the fruits of their collective creativity. In the end, it was Orland Nutt who had the last look at the Krill animation, bringing a depth and polish to it that one might expect from a master oil painter, if not a digital Compositor. “In the final sequence, as the comic fish is drawn into the trawler and above water, we were confronted by the special challenge of creating an image that was at once explanatory and bit threatening–but also familiar, even iconic in its subject matter. The angularity of the Expressionists with their angry color palettes seemed a perfect contrast to the soft shapes and cool colors that had filled the undersea world. This was an important image in the animation and ultimately the film itself. I knew it. Matt knew it. Dave Manuel knew it. I finally found an opening in Dave’s schedule long enough for him to execute it. His delicate touch with direct and reflected light interwoven with a world that is at once real and caricatured allowed us to bridge the gap between these two worlds and to achieve a lasting and powerful final image. Thanks to Dave, and everyone who worked so hard on this animation.

Jeffrey Bost