Q&A Backstage at the Oscars

The movie industry celebrated well into the early hours following the 85thannual Academy Awardswinners were thrilled and runner-ups were gracious. (See OSCARS: Argo,' Pi,' Lincoln' Take Top Honors in the news section.)

Some of the acceptance speeches onstage were lengthy, others short and sweet. Backstage, the winners were able to continue their thoughts after the thrill of the moment. Yet, many of the winners were clearly on cloud nine as the significance of the win began to sink in. Here are excerpts from some of the Q&As backstage.

Best Picture

Interview with Grant Heslov, Ben Affleck, and George Clooney, producersArgo.

Ben, obviously you put a lot of work in the film as you were making it, but then after its taken on this life of its own in your story, its been so tied to your personal journey.

(Ben Affleck) I was excited about making the movie.These guys had a script, I really liked it, I called them up, [inaudible] will you put me on the movie?I was willing to let the chips kind of fall where they may, as long as we thought we did something we were interested in.

Being left off the Best Director docket and through that, how has that changed with all of the recognition that youve received and where are you with that now?

(Ben Affleck) Naturally I was disappointed.But when I look at the directors who werepeople who werent nominated as wellPaul Thomas Anderson and Kathryn Bigelow, just amazing, Tom Hooper and Quentin Tarantinothese are all directors who I admire enormously.So, it was a very tough year.

Visual Effects

Interview with Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan De Boer and Donald R. Elliott Life of Pi

In light of whats happened with Rhythm & Hues, are you hopeful that whatever happens that youll be able to keep the same culture?

(Bill Westenhofer) It was a place that really catered to the artist and supported them really well.Were hopeful that we can pull through the bankruptcy, but its a concern in all of our minds that the culture is preserved.As long as the key people are maintained in that environment, I think it will carry on.

And for the other visual effects supervisors, talk about what this means for you being able to work on a project where the visual effects are very much a part of the aesthetic of the movie.

(Guillaume Rocheron) Well, I think Life of Pi is a perfect example of visual effects contributing to the look of a film.And I think with everything were talking about now is it really shows that visual effects is part of filmmaking.[We] really try to be integrated in the filmmaking process as early as possible to give as much as we can to the director and try to make sure he can have his vision on screen.It's a turning point where were not only supplying a service, were here to actually tell stories and put them on screen.

(Bill Westenhofer) If you look at the nominees that we shared the award with, we got to the point where you can almost do anything in visual effects.And now going forward, its not going to be a question of what youve done do.Its how you use the tools to make something special.Just like any facet of filmmaking thats matured, visual effects, its got to the point where its really about the artistry going forward.

I dont know whether you guys have smartphones and have been checking Twitter, but when they played you off to the theme of Jaws and Bonanza, I had a visual effects artist tweeting, Im signing a registration card for my union right now.'Im wondering if you had any reaction to how you were treated on stage.

(Bill Westenhofer) There were some things that I did want to say that got cut off.I mentioned them right here, the visual effects are definitely in a challenging position right now, and weve got to figure out how to make this business model work, because there are artists that are struggling right now.

Animated Feature Film

Interview with Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman Brave

Could you talk about your creative process and how long it took to create Brave?

(Brenda Chapman) Well, the firm took actually eight years from begin to end.I was a year in a room all by myself writing and coming up with the basic story plot, but then you start bringing on the people who start looking at the look of the picture and help with the story, and you keep working and re-working the story.

(Mark Andrews) So once everythings kind of built you put it all together, and you start shooting it. Its this huge organic process.And its a fragile, delicate process on every step of the way.And theres a lot of plates to spin, and by the end if you just stick with it and youre passionate about it, hopefully, you have something thats really special, and I think in Braves case we managed to pull that off.

Animated Short Film

Interview with John Kars Paperman

You have an opportunity to continue what you started with embracing the legacy and extending it further with the hybrid approach.

Bill is an animation guy, so hes talking about what we did is we took the kind of old 2D animation and the newer CG animation and put them together in a way that I think hasnt been seen before.What we did is take the drawn line and the expressiveness and the hand of the artist and bring it into the 21st century. I do believe that there are different ways that animation can look, and this is one of those ways.

You talked in your speech about working for Disney and how that company has been revitalized.

What theyre doing there is great, and theyre really pushing for depth and stories that are going to last generations, you know, films for families that are going to last the test of time.

Why did you incorporate older animation in Paperman?

Im a computer animation guy, Im actually not very good at 2D animation.I cant really draw that well.But when I was working w

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