Netflix recently acquired three animated shorts for Oscar consideration. One of those films features the talents of five recent Sisler High School grads.
A global collaboration, Cops and Robbers features the work of over 30 international animators and production companies, including former Sisler students John Hildawa, Chantal Philippot, Aaron Raymundo, Anjali Sidhu and Matthew Tardaguila.
All five are graduates of CREATE, a Sisler post-high program that provides students with educational pathways to creative industries, including graphic design, interactive digital media and motion picture arts.
Cops and Robbers was released on Netflix on Dec. 28. It’s available to 200 million homes across 195 countries in over 30 languages.
“It didn’t seem real at first, it didn’t process,” said Sidhu regarding the Netflix/Oscar news. “We are only 19 years old, so Netflix and the Oscars felt like something that wouldn’t even be in question for the next 20 years. But, if feel really great. It’s a great opportunity in our careers, but also the work mattered to us because it was a message that mattered to us.”
Cops and Robbers is an animated adaptation of a video poem by American actor Timothy Ware-Hill. The Broadway performer posted the video online in response to the killing of 25-year-old Black man Ahmaud Arbery, who was fatally shot in February while jogging in Glynn County, Georgia. Ware-Hill performs the poem while jogging in a residential area.
The Sisler connection started in June, 2020 when CREATE department head Jamie Leduc received a phone call from Jan Philip Cramer, head of animation at Digital Domain in Vancouver.
Cramer – known for his work on Avengers: End Game – had visited Sisler in the fall of 2019 and was impressed with what he saw.
“Phil had just got off the phone with Arnon Manor (Cops and Robbers director) who had found this amazing video by Timothy Ware-Hill,” Leduc said. “Arnon was trying to galvanize animators and artists from around the world to create a statement, a call-to-action type of thing, related to the Black Lives Matter movement.”
“Phil called me and said he was recommending us because he absolutely fell in love with our students and program when he was here.”
With support from Leduc and Sisler teacher Bernard Alibudbud, the Sisler students were given two weeks to animate a five-second segment of the three-minute video poem. Along the way, the budding animators received constructive criticism from Ware-Hill and Manor through online video chats.
“They talked to us as if we were any other industry person,” Philippot said. “We were like a studio where we had a job to do. They gave us some instructions, we gave them our work, and then we had conversations on how we could make it better. They were really professional about it. They didn’t treat us like students. We were actually part of it.”
“They were very good at making our voices feel heard and they never took away from our ideas, they just added to them,” Sidhu said. “If they didn’t completely agree with something we were doing, they never made us feel like we were going in the wrong direction. Instead, they just voiced what they had to say and let us think on it.”
In addition to Manor and Ware-Hill, Cops and Robbers was produced by Lawrence Bender (Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting) and executive produced by Jada Pinkett Smith, SPIN VFX president Neishaw Ali and Bender script consultant Janet Jeffries.
The short also contains the spiritual Soon I Will Be Done performed by Brittany Howard of Grammy-winning rock band Alabama Shakes.
Ware-Hill and Manor told online publication IndieWire that they made Cops and Robbers “for all the Black men, women, and children who have been victims of racial profiling, police violence, loss of life and other injustices just for being themselves.”
Philippot said it was a privilege to contribute to a piece so relevant, important and meaningful.
“We just want people to understand that there’s more to animation than Disney and all of those happy things,” Philippot said. “It’s expressing emotion and real-life. It’s just a different manner of bringing you reality.”
WINNIPEG — Five former students from Sisler High School could potentially receive some hardware for the work they did on an animated short film that is on Netflix.
The students, who have all graduated from the high school and are part of the CREATE program, helped contribute animation to the film entitled, ‘Cops and Robbers.’
The film started streaming on Netflix on Dec. 28 and Sisler High School says it could be up for Oscar consideration.
Anjali Sidhu, one of the students who worked on the film, said it is amazing that they could receive that kind of recognition.
“I don’t think it has processed to be completely honest,” said Sidhu. “Keep in mind, me and the people I worked with, we’re 19 barely 20, we are just out of high school. Of course going into this industry it is a possibility some of it could end up on Netflix, but the Oscars is like a whole other ballpark.
“Regardless of whether or not it gets nominated, it’s insane that’s it’s even in the picture.”
The film is based on a poem which was posted on Instagram by Broadway performer Timothy Ware-Hill in response to the killing of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery.
In a news release, Sisler High School said Arnon Manor, one of the directors of the short, saw the video and wanted to do more with it.
The film was a global collaboration and saw work from more than 30 international studios.
It was produced by Lawrence Bender, who has done work on Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting, with Jada Pinkett Smith as executive producer. It also features a song sung by Brittany Howard who is part of American blues rock band Alabama Shakes.
The students got to be part of the project after the head of animation at Digital Domain in Vancouver visited the school back in 2019 and was impressed with the program. When the project was started he called the CREATE department head asking if students wanted to be part of the project.
Sidhu said it was ‘really cool’ to do a project with people of that calibre.
“We didn’t initially know that these big names were going to be attached. Even in the beginning it was exciting because we knew it was something important. I feel like adding those big names made it that much cooler.”
Sidhu said she and the other students worked on one of five sections of the film. The section features a white woman and a Black woman walking down the street. The white woman doesn’t acknowledge that the Black woman was waving at her.
Sidhu added that while it is a short timeframe in the film, a lot of work went into it.
“There’s a lot of trial and error at the beginning,” she said. “It was fun going through the process of it because we started with the concept art. So we had five or six different versions.”
The CREATE program is run by Sisler High School and helps students “educational pathways to creative industries and hands-on experience in the media production industry,” the school said in a release.