The Spine is a 2009 animated short by Chris Landreth

Chris Landreth

Chris Landreth is an American animator working in Canada, best known for his work on the 2004 film, Ryan. He has made many CGI animated films since the mid-90s, including The End, Bingo, The Listener, Caustic Sky: A Portrait of Regional Acid Deposition, and Data Driven The Story Of Franz...

 about a married dysfunctional couple, created in Landreth's "psycho realist" style, in which characters' mental states are reflected in their physical appearance. Voices for the couple were supplied by Gordon Pinsent

Gordon Pinsent

Gordon Edward Pinsent, CC, FRSC is a Canadian television, theatre and film actor.-Early life:Pinsent, the youngest of six children, was born in Grand Falls, Newfoundland, the son of Flossie ; originally from Clifton, Newfoundland, and Stephen Arthur Pinsent, a papermill worker and cobbler;...

 and Alberta Watson

Alberta Watson

Faith Susan Alberta Watson , known professionally as Alberta Watson, is a Canadian movie and television series actress.-Early life:...

.

Landreth has explained his animation style as "a kind of surrealistic portrayal of real people and what I do with the surrealistic part is to make people's emotional, psychological and spiritual state kind of very evident on their faces and in their body so that they look …scarred in a way that reflects their history."

The Spine was produced by the National Film Board of Canada

National Film Board of Canada

The National Film Board of Canada is Canada's twelve-time Academy Award-winning public film producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary, animation, alternative drama and digital media productions...

 in association with Copperheart Animation and C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures, with the creative participation of Autodesk Canada

Autodesk

Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational corporation that focuses on 3D design software for use in the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media and entertainment industries. The company was founded in 1982 by John Walker, a coauthor of the first versions of the company's...

 and Seneca College

Seneca College

Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology is a Canadian public college in the greater Toronto area. Seneca College is currently Canada's largest college with approximately 108,000 students.-History:...

's School of Communication Arts. It is Landreth's second film with Copper Heart and the NFB, having won the 2004 Academy Award for Animated Short Film

Academy Award for Animated Short Film

The Academy Award for Animated Short Film is an award which has been given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as part of the Academy Awards every year since the 5th Academy Awards, covering the year 1931-32, to the present....

 and the 25th Genie Award

25th Genie Awards

The 25th Genie Awards were held on March 21, 2005 to honour the best Canadian films released in 2004. The awards took place at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in Toronto.Andrea Martin was the host.-Best Motion Picture:...

 for Best Animated Short for his previous work, Ryan

Ryan (film)

Ryan is a 2004 animated documentary by Chris Landreth about the Canadian animator Ryan Larkin, who in later years lived on skid row in Montreal following a history of drug and alcohol abuse....

.

Writing

The screenplay

Screenplay

A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 for The Spine was written by Landreth while enrolled in a professional screenwriting workshop at Ryerson Polytechnic University. Some of the story was based on what he'd seen, 20 years earlier, at a group therapy session for couples, where it seemed to Landreth that portraying a dysfunctional relationship would make for an interesting story. It took Landreth just two hours to put the outline together, but completing the story took a year. The Ryerson workshop helped Landreth to flesh out his story and as of 2009, he continues to meet with his writing group once a month. Landreth also credits the production teams from the National Film Board and Copperheart for their creative input.

Production

Producing The Spine took two years, with the first year devoted mainly to development. The film was a more ambitious project technically than Ryan, and so required a much larger production team. Animators from Seneca College, which had been involved in Ryan, played a much larger role in the making of The Spine, with Seneca College people doing "about 95% of the animation," according to Landreth. Seneca professor Sean Craig, who had worked on Ryan as a student, was an animation director on The Spine. The film also utilized the input of C.O.R.E., including a team that did most of the computer rendering. The film was principally created using Autodesk Maya and Houdini

Houdini (software)

Houdini is a high-end 3D animation package developed by Side Effects Software which is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. It is a rewrite of the PRISMS ecosystem of standalone tools. Its chief distinction from other packages is that it has been designed as a purely procedural environment...

 3D software.

Release

The Spine had its world premiere at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival

Annecy International Animated Film Festival

The Annecy International Animation Film Festival was created in 1960 and takes place at the beginning of June in the town of Annecy, France. Initially occurring every two years, the festival became annual in 1998...

, followed by a North American premiere at the Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto. In August 2009, Landreth presented the film at SIGGRAPH

SIGGRAPH

SIGGRAPH is the name of the annual conference on computer graphics convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization. The first SIGGRAPH conference was in 1974. The conference is attended by tens of thousands of computer professionals...

 in New Orleans.

Awards

The Spine received the award for the best film at the Melbourne International Animation Festival

Melbourne International Animation Festival

The Melbourne International Animation Festival or MIAF is an annual animation festival held in Melbourne. Supported by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, the Australian Film Commission and the Melbourne City Council, it is Australia's largest animation event. Over the course of the...

, and was named best animated short at the Nashville Film Festival

Nashville Film Festival

The Nashville Film Festival , held annually in Nashville, Tennessee, is the oldest running film festival in the South and one of the oldest in the United States. In 2009, Nashville Film Festival received close to 2000 submissions from 86 countries, programmed nearly 260 films and had an attendance...

. It was also nominated for the Genie Award for Best Animated Short

Genie Award for Best Animated Short

The Genie Award for Best Animated Short is awarded by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television to the best Canadian animated short film.-7th Genie Awards:* Michael Scott, Richard Condie, The Big Snit* Ishu Patel, Paradise/Paradis...

 at the 30th Genie Awards

30th Genie Awards

The 30th Genie Awards were on April 12, 2010 to honour films released in 2009. Nominations were announced on March 1, 2010.-Controversy:Despite having won three awards at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and having been selected as Canada's submission for Best Foreign Language film at the 82nd Academy...

.

External links

• Making of The Spine and Complete film online, National Film Board of Canada
  National Film Board of Canada
  The National Film Board of Canada is Canada's twelve-time Academy Award-winning public film producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary, animation, alternative drama and digital media productions...
  
   (Requires Adobe Flash
  Adobe Flash
  Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
  
  )