In Aaron Blaise’s Snow Bear, a polar bear tries to stave off loneliness as he endures the changing landscape and seasons of the Arctic.
Awards Buzz spoke with Blaise about directing for the first time since Brother Bear was released back in 2003 and the motivation that got him to write and direct this short:
“Well, it’s funny. I’ve been a part of a lot of projects in the last twenty years. Some of them didn’t get made, other ones were smaller projects. But the last major feature, yeah, was Brother Bear, twenty-some-odd years ago. It was after Brother Bear that I was working in Florida when we made that film at the Florida studio with Disney. Disney shut that studio down and we all transferred out to California, and I was out there. But it was during that time that I lost my wife to breast cancer. So I was really emotionally adrift. So I left Disney in 2010 after twenty-one years and I came back to Florida. I started my own business, which was my online art education, which is creatureartteacher.com, where I teach animation and art in general. It started as this little idea – it would be fun to create an animated short and create a course on how to create your own animated short – so I thought that was the impetus of the idea. Then I thought, well, I want to make it myself because I’ve always wanted to make my own films. So I need one character, I want a simple environment. And then I started reflecting on my own emotional journey over the years with the loss of my wife and all of that. I wanted to create something that was metaphorical, and so that’s what Snow Bear became.”
Watch the video above to hear about his experience making this film into something real and the cinema that’s impressed him most recently.
Snow Bear is on the Oscar shortlist for Best Animated Short and is available to watch above on YouTube.
