Industry Buzz:
Berkeley company’s Oscarnominated short.
Robert Kondo and Dice Tsutsumi quit Pixar in July to start their own Berkeley company, Tonko House. Now they’re riding high as the Oscar-nominated filmmakers behind the animated short “The Dam Keeper.”
“We miss the comforts of the big studio but love the feeling of trepidation and excitement with every step we take,” says Tsutsumi.
“The Dam Keeper” sets the story of a lonely young pig against the kind of lush backdrop rarely seen in independent productions. Kondo says, “We looked at a lot of European towns nestled into the Alps because we wanted a sweet town reminiscent of European folktales to emphasize the surface impression of a perfect town, in contrast to the darkness of the town and clouds held back by the dam.”
Kondo and Tsutsumi developed their “Dam Keeper” concept during a family retreat in Northern California. “We wanted to tell the story of an unsung hero and came across our memories of a story called “The Little Dutch Boy,” about a boy who saves his town by sticking his finger in a leaking crack of a dike,” says Tsutsumi. “That inspired the idea of a character whose job was to save the town every day, without the town knowing.”
Kondo and Tsutsumi spent a year writing “The Dam Keeper” on weekends and evenings while employed at Pixar. Now that they’ve set up their own operation, which Kondo sees as “a safe place for people to make mistakes so the group can help correct itself. For example, we had still-life painting sessions some mornings to help train artists to see the world through our eyes.”