Oscar Shortlist Interviews: Director John Musker Shares His Favorite Shot From ‘I’m Hip’ (Exclusive)

As awards season hits its stride, we asked the filmmakers behind each of this year’s 15 Oscar-shortlisted animated shorts to share their favorite shot from their film and explain why it’s special to them. The pieces are being published in the order that materials were received.

In this piece, we’re looking at I’m Hip from animation legend John Musker, best known as the director (with Ron Clements) of many of Disney’s beloved animated features such as The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, and Moana.

I’m Hip is a musical short about a self-absorbed cat who tries a bit too hard to convince the world of his “hipness.” The jazzy film is based on the 1980s song “I’m Hip,” originally written by Dave Frishberg and Bob Dorough as part of a cabaret comedy act.

Below is Musker’s favorite shot from the short and why it’s significant to him:

This shot, sc. 35, is one of my favorites in my short I’m Hip. The lyric is: “I enjoy any joint where there’s jive!” I wanted the cat to dance a fun, energetic jive with his girlfriend Imogene in the midst of a lively club with other dancers.

As I did with other shots where the cat is dancing, I shot a live-action dance reference that I adapted loosely.

My choreographer was Mark Ballas, one of the most creative dancer/choreographer pros on the ABC TV show Dancing with the Stars. Mark danced for this with fellow DWTS pro Daniella Karagach as the girlfriend Imogene to his cat. I loved what they did, a superfast jive with flicks and kicks. But I had seen period footage of jives that involved “aerials” where the partner gets tossed in the air. So I didn’t use Mark’s jive for the cat, but adapted some crazy jitterbugging/Lindy hopping. I found a way for the cat to toss Imogene between his legs and over his head.

I was really pleased that their outlandish dance moves feel convincing. But I wanted to use Mark and Daniella’s jive dance as well, so I used that as a basis for the stylish African American patrons I designed on screen left. I was happy I could capture Mark’s dance, but still keep the animation loose and cartoony. Dan Tanaka did an amazing job of keying both couples over my rough animation. Ken Slevin did double duty on this shot, doing both the layout and the background. I love how his linear work here dovetailed with layout lead Jennifer Yuan’s adaption of jazz album cover artist David Stone Martin’s style in other key layouts.

Claudio Acciari, who did visual development on this shot, drew a thumbnail of huge revolving hexagons coasting through the shot behind the dancers just to “jazz” it up. Ken suggested making them jazz LPs and 45s rather than hexagons, which I thought was brilliant. He also came up with all the record labels, which are parodies of real classic jazz labels, making Verve records “Voive,” Fantasy Records became “Fantasia,” etc. He also designed the grooves of the records and picked their colors. Then Talin Tanielian, my compositor (and much more), used After Effects to spin them and send them on different paths through the shot (paths determined after several experiments Talin did with speeds and arcs.)

I also animated a caricature of Tami Stevens, my ballroom dance instructor, whirling into the shot briefly on the right as a shout-out to her. We blew down the couple I animated screen left, and Dan re-cleaned up their hair and hemlines, and we re-used them on the right. We also decided to make the cat and Imogene partly transparent during the early section of the shot but kept them opaque when they cross in front of the dancers on the left so they would still “read” clearly.

Lastly, after the left and right couples were painted, Talin shifted painted areas on them to offset their lines as part of Hip’s graphic style. Above all, you don’t see any of the sweat that went into this, but just a fun kinetic romp, both graphically and in the abandon of the dancers. You’re not meant to see the details of what I’ve described but rather to be immersed in the liveliness and exuberance of the dance. My creative collaborators did so much to help me communicate just that, and I think it succeeds, and that’s why it’s my favorite shot!

Read the other entries in the series:

• Flóra Anna Buda on 27
• Tal Kantor on Letter To a Pig
• Dave Mullins on War is Over!
• Bret Parker on Pete
• Yegane Moghaddam on Our Uniform
• Karni Arieli and Saul Freed on Wild Summon
• Rita Basulto on Humo
• Jared and Jerusha Hess on Ninety-Five Senses
• Stephen Vuillemin on A Kind Of Testament
• Gabriel Augerai, Romain Augier, and Yannick Jacquin on Boom
• Priit Tender on Dog Apartment
• Stéphanie Clément on Pachyderme
• Lucija Mrzljak and Morten Tšinakov on Eeva
• Dan Abraham and Trent Correy on Once Upon a Studio