INTERVIEW OF THE WEEK: Disney’s Graham Allan talks to Steven Vass.
BY STEVEN VASS, DEPUTY BUSINESS EDITOR
IT might be a full year until most of us think about Christmas 2009, but Disney Animation Studios has already pencilled in that date to go back to basics. Currently filling US cinemas with Bolt, the computer-generated story of a dog that thinks it's a superhero, next year's The Princess And The Frog will be a self-conscious throwback to the traditional animation of classics such as Snow White and Cinderella.
Disney returns to its roots five years after the studio giant claimed to have moved permanently from hand-drawing, following the 2004 box-office flop of Home On The Range. Ironically, the forthcoming U-turn is said to have been at the behest of John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, the two execs who arrived to run Disney animation as part of the takeover of computer production pioneer Pixar in 2006.
Graham Allan, the Larbert-born software engineer, who ran the IT backroom of the studio before being promoted four years ago to co-ordinate strategy across the whole Disney group, diplomatically says that the decision was taken because some films are more suited to computer generation than others.
"Computer animation looks a little more like the real world," he says in his mid-Atlantic tones. "But your traditional animation lets you do things that are a little bit more in defiance of the laws of physics because you are looking at it differently. At the end of the day, it's about the ability of the characters to engender emotion in the audience."
He explains that he was in charge of the systems and software at the studio that made it possible for the animators to bring their characters to life. He oversaw the arrangement of hundreds of millions of animation files in databases. Much of the code required for the leap into computer animation in the 1990s was not being written by anybody else, so it fell to Allan to write it.
"It was infrastructure software, which sounds a little dull, but when you are doing it for animated movies it's not," he says, almost apologetically. He explains that the challenge was that artists are left-brained while engineers are right-brained, and you had to learn to think like the artists before you could make anything that was useful for them.
Allan arrived in Los Angeles at the age of 27, having previously worked for the now defunct Edinburgh computer networking specialist Spider Systems. His job at Spider involved sales trips to the US where he got to know Disney executives, who kept him abreast of job opportunities at the group.
California might be renowned for its fast cars and silicone enhancements, but Allan insists he experienced no great culture shock when he arrived. It is one of various moments in the interview when his matter-of-factness seems to betray right-brained tendencies of his own.
He says: "Because I had visited there a number of times, I was able to ease into it. There was never a wow' moment.
"But what opens your eyes the first time you visit LA is the scale of the place. New York might have a few more people but it's a much more densely packed area. Greater Los Angeles has 12 million people in it and stretches 100 miles in each direction."
Still aged only 40 and living in the leafy suburbs of Glendale close to the heart of Hollywood, his current role is director of technology strategy for the whole company. With Disney comprising everything from TV network ABC and sports cable network ESPN to theme parks and big movie studio brands like Miramax, Allan ensures that they are all technologically in harmony.
Especially in these troubled times, this is primarily about saving money, but it is also about ensuring that Disney is able to take full advantage of the multiple platform possibilities of digital media.
"There are things that lines of business can't get into without help and support from other parts of the company, or haven't even contemplated getting into," he says.
He is reluctant to get into specifics for fear that it might offend his employers, and when he finally settles on an example he apologises that it, "may be a little bit techy".
He says: "When high-definition television was being born, each of our TV businesses had to choose a format for its primary broadcasts. It was my job to bring them together and help them decide which format was in everyone's best interests."
Having returned to Scotland as part of his commitments to Globalscot, the worldwide support network of Scots-born entrepreneurs run by Scottish Enterprise, he is looking forward to a rare opportunity to combine work with a family visit to Larbert. Like all other expats attracted to the glitz of America, he normally has to defer to the niggardly US-style holiday entitlement, which in his case started at just two weeks and has now reached the dizzy heights of four. Apart from that, he works 11 hours a day, five days a week.
"I have never been married," he says plainly. "I'll say I'm happy that way. My professional life rules everything and for better or worse, that's what I have chosen to put first.
"One of the consequences is that my personal life has not grown as much as it might have. My father and his father were workaholics too. It's how I am wired.
"I don't know if I'll ever move back to Scotland," he says. "The weather is nicer in California, but I never imagined I would spend the rest of my life there."
If this is an admission that he has gone for good, he is not saying. In any case it is time for his next Globalscot engagement. He takes a quick glance at his PDA and we are led towards the door.
DISNEY: TO CGI AND BACK AGAIN
Home on the Range (2004)
The story of three cows saving their farm made just $104 million (£67m) at the box office - a seventh of what The Lion King had done a decade earlier. Disney announced that this would be its last film to use traditional hand-drawn animations.
Chicken Little (2005)
Although Disney had dabbled with CGI with Dinosaur in 2000, this was the studio's first attempt at a response to Pixar's extraordinary run of hits, beginning with Toy Story in 1995.
Meet the Robinsons (2007)
Complicated but critically applauded time-travelling caper was also given the 3D release treatment in many cinemas.
WallE (2008)
The first fruit of Disney's $7.5bn purchase of Pixar in January 2006, this robot's story made over $500m worldwide.
Bolt (2008)
Disney went CGI again for this remake of the Incredible Journey. US audiences have been cool, and the film opens in the UK in February.
The Princess and the Frog (2009)
When Disney acquired Pixar it promptly announced a return to hand-drawn features for The Princess And The Frog. The studio will return to CGI with another modernised fairy tale, Rapunzel, in 2010.
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