Yair Landau is the former president of Sony Pictures Digital and the director of a new animated short opening today called "Live Music." We asked Landau to share the story behind Live Music's creation as the first production from Mass Animation, a worldwide crowdsourcing of animation on Facebook done in partnership with Intel, Dell, Autodesk and Reel FX Entertainment.


When moviegoers sit down in select theaters tonight to see the opening of the new animated feature "Planet 51," they first will be greeted with a 5-minute, computer-animated short that resulted from the collaboration on Facebook of 58,000 people from 101 countries. Set in a musical instrument shop, the short "Live Music " tells the story of Riff, a rock 'n' roll guitar, who falls in love to the wrong song but ends up with Vanessa, the classical violin of his dreams.

What makes this short unique is that it is the first result from an ambitious project called Mass Animation to collaboratively create animation on Facebook. Started in August 2008, Mass Animation enabled animators from around the globe to join the creative process from anywhere. They could animate with tools and models provided through Mass Animation, submit and view them through an application on Facebook and vote on the best animated shots. In the end, 51 animators' shots were selected for inclusion in "Live Music."

As someone who's been involved in movie making for 19 years, I was passionate about Mass Animation because I realized it could open the animation process to a wider array of creative people. The premiere of "Live Music" marks a milestone for animated film because it shows that you can have an impact on the creative process no matter where you live in the world. Social media—and specifically Facebook in this project—enabled us to connect with animators we never would have reached before.

As participating animator Cyrus Cords put it, "In the middle of Minnesota opportunities like this don't happen."

The selected animators hailed form 17 different countries—ranging from Australia, Brazil and Russia to India, Kazakhstan and the U.S. —were between the ages of 14 and 48, and were composed of over 20 percent women.

Animator Gregory Naud of Belgium said he found the experience motivating. "It's cool to be part of a big international project," he said. "For those who don't have the chance to work in USA, for example, it was a great opportunity."

I hope you'll be as inspired by the short as we were in creating it through mass collaboration on Facebook. Take your own peak behind-the-scenes of its production by checking out the Mass Animation Facebook Page and watching the video below. Don't forget to download "Live Music" today from iTunes and for your mobile from Myxer to watch the full short.




Yair is stoked about the release of "Live Music" and grateful to all the talented people who made it happen.