Pixar Animation Studios is challenging people’s expections and redefining the shape of animation films. With its latest film Borrowed Time, Pixar hopes to expand its target audience by featuring darker, more adult themes. Pixar’s Lou Hamou-Lhadj says that their goal was to bring a shift into the notion that animation is a genre meant for children. They want animation films to be able to tell any kind of story.
Animation for kids has never really been Pixar’s motive if you really think about it. Remember Toy Story 3? When Andy and the gang were headed towards the incinerator? What the heck was that! Even Carl Fredricksen From Up left us shattered for quite a while.
Borrowed Time takes it a step further; a couple of steps, if you will… The short film was started as a side-project that animators Hamou-Lhadj and Andrew Coats wanted to work upon. “We really wanted to make something that was a little bit more adult in the thematic choices, and show that animation could be a medium to tell any sort of story,” they say. The film has been featured at several film festivals across the world and is available on Vimeo for a short while.
The film centres the theme of facing the mistakes you’ve made in the past and owning up them. Borrowed Time centres around one character, a Sheriff, who, as he arrives at a cliff, relives his past. Limping towards the edge, the man witnesses broken fragments from the time that once was.
(Courtesy: Vimeo/Borrowed Time)
Pixar’s animation never disappoints. From the Sheriff’s scruffed-up clothes to blood spatters on the broken pocket-watch that stayed frozen in time, the animation looks very realistic and enables the audience to feel the morose that befalls upon the character. The Sheriff’s horrified face after the accident too was done remarkably. Watch the short film here yourselves and experience the gloom first-hand:
