It was a summer job with a company he had never heard of that Torbin Bullock only took to pay his way through college.

But those three months turned into a 23 year career with Pixar making blockbuster movies such as Toy Story, Monsters, Inc and Finding Dory.

Now the California-based Film Editor is in Belfast this weekend as keynote speaker for the inaugural Capture Conference, launched by Belfast Photo Festival to coincide with the 2018 Belfast Photo Festival Compact.

Speaking to Belfast Live before flying to Northern Ireland, Torbin talked about how he got into the industry and had some words of advice for aspiring film makers in Belfast.

Talking about how he got into the film business, he said: "The short version is I grew up in the Northern California film business, my father was a film editor and that meant a lot of how I spent my summer vacations was trying to help him in film post-production. It's like if your dad is a plumber you learn how to pipe fit.

"Just like every teenager I would complain about going and to move editing rooms and all these various things. So I didn't really know anything about animation, the way I made my way in was in looking for some other job in order to do something other than what my father did.

"The way I got to Pixar was that I had been going to put myself through city college to get an education in anything else and needed to have a decent paying summer job and a guy I had worked with doing menial film business things before then was working for a company I had never heard of before called Pixar in a town I had never heard of in the bay area called Point Richmond on probably one of the worst possibly titled movies I had ever heard of which was Toy Story.

"I remember at the time saying, 'Really let me guess, is it a story about toys? The title is terrible'.

"It was going to be a three month job and I didn't know anything about animation but I was doing what was known as conforming 35mm film, were you take 35mm film print and you reconstruct the movie coming out of the computer on to film, that was how you had to do it in the mid 90s.

"Everything took so long to print the film that you had to physically run a film conformer to do that and I had done that as an apprentice on a couple of shows in between going to school and this was going to be a summer job.

"So I came in not really knowing anything about the company except there was Steve Jobs the Apple guy was part of this. But everyone was super weird and super interesting and what they were doing was super interesting and Toy Story was probably the hardest job I have ever had before in terms of complexity and hours.

"At the end of it I was fascinated with what was going on and wanted to stay and had to negotiate my way on to the next movie by taking the motion and making myself scarce, but it was at that point I thought this is more interesting than anything else I am doing on the outside.

"That three month job turned into an eight month job and then into a 23 year career.

"One of my favourite quotes is by a producer Robert Evans, a weird and wacky guy from the 70s, and he has a great quote about luck which is, 'Luck is where opportunity meets experience', and I got pretty lucky in that I found myself in a place that just happened to need the skill set I had built up over the previous five to eight years."

Having worked in animation since the early 1990s, Torbin is known for his work on films such as Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc, Cars, Brave and Finding Dory where he also voiced hapless sea lion, Gerald.

During the conference, when he will be keynote speaker, Torbin will take part in a panel discussion on the use of photography in animation alongside Colin Williams, Creative Director at Sixteen South, and Ruth Ducker, Brown Bag Films. He will also deliver a keynote talk about his experiences working in the golden age of 3D animation on countless classic and record-breaking box office hits.

Speaking about what young people could do to get into industry, he said: "I think it's still the case but certainly at the time the greatest asset that a young person has is enthusiasm and flexiblitity. You asked what I tell young people who want to get into the film industry, whether it's animation or live action.

"The cornerstone of your career is built on having two of three years of people saying, 'Hey can you do this thing', 'Can you start tomorrow?' and you say 'Yeah'.

"You take any opportunity you can to learn something new and then where luck comes into it is when you happen to find yourself in the situation were the things you have been doing and learning in the meantime they just happen to be relevant to person standing in front of you at that moment.

"When I found myself at Pixar suddenly it wasn't just the fact I knew how to deal with 35mm film but I also had a pretty decent knowledge of how to operate a computer."

He added: "I found myself in the position that a lot of that experience was relevant and it was the wild wild west of new technology, everybody was figuring it out at the same time, no one quite knew what they were doing and I was sort of used to that having grown up int he film business."

Torbin Bullock
Torbin Bullock

Torbin said there were more opportunities now than 10 years ago to tell your story and then have an audience see it.

He said: "I am seeing a lot of amazing stuff outside mainstream film making, just what people are doing on the Internet or YouTube or just telling stories in every nook and cranny and finding their audience doing some really cool work with not a lot of overheads, just raw enthusiasm and creativity and that's really exciting. I think that's more the future of film making."

Talking about coming to Belfast, he added: "Part of the reason I am excited to come to Belfast Photo Festival is I had met Michael Weir a few years ago completely socially through a friend who also works in photography and it was talking to him he started telling me what was going on.

"I know being a Game of Thrones nerd that they were doing it in Ireland I just didn't realise there was so much stuff going on. I think the best thing I can say for people working in Belfast and Ireland in general is I think even though America and Hollywood is still the entertainment focus of itself, film making has become an increasingly international market place.

"The tools to make and tell stories with images and sound it's so much easier to create that without a giant mechanism that is known as Hollywood, there are so many exciting things happening in Europe right now, again Northern Ireland is a good example, I keep hearing so many friends of mine going to work in Paris, London. The American film business has a lot of energy is being put into and understanding the audiences around the world, so taking this full circle around, what I would mostly say is to any young film makers in Belfast is don't be discouraged, it's all about making work. There's ways people monetise it in a million different ways.

"The more personal or original it is, the more you will find an audience. Even in the face of these giant Marvel movies and superhero franchises, outside of theses huge events the great majority of things being made are stories gong back to character with Game of Thrones being a fine example of a very extensive giant events but all driven by character and performance. Character and performance as we have seen in history of film making all comes out of personal experience, so the personal experience of a young film makers in Belfast is going to be both important and unique by its very nature, so wrap your arms around that and figure out how to tell those stories as best as possible."

Belfast Photo Festival is delighted to welcome Pixar Editor, Torbin Bullock to the inaugural Capture Conference, and to celebrate the festival is hosting a special screening of the studio’s classic, Toy Story. A Q&A with Torbin Bullock will precede the film.

  • Venue : QFT
  • Date : Saturday 9 June 2018
  • Time : 14:00
  • Ticket Price : Family Ticket £30 (2 adults, 2 kids), Student/Child/Senior £7, Full price £10

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