The tubes of Twitter and the blogosphere have been full of talk about the recent Empire interview with Fantastic Mr. Fox cinematographer Tristan Oliver, who (in the posted bit of text) suggests that Wes called in the film.
Since we haven’t read the full interview, we don’t plan to weigh in on a out-of-context comment. There is some discussion on the Yankee Racers forum… join in!
I feel like these are two things being squished into one statement. Considering how long it takes to just capture a few seconds worth of stop motion animation, I’m not sure that it’s really necessary (and in fact would be rather annoying) if the director is on set sitting around as animators work on moving an arm a few inches over the course of several hours.
Then again, the allegation about Wes not understanding the process and the frustrations for the animators when changes were being made mid-stream might have been alleviated if he was on-set more often. It seems like Trey Parker and Matt Stone fully realized what a frustrating and fiddly process doing stop motion is because they were so involved with the day-to-day work.