Kim Ngo: Hi Mike. Thanks for sharing your story with IntimateMath. Can you start by telling me how old you were when you started your first animation business?

Michael Huber in His Office at Cogswell

Michael Huber: I was 24 when I founded Gravity 3D. At the time, I got a loan and bought a really expensive computer because that was the only tool you could use if you wanted to do animation. I wanted to be an animator so bad that I took out an enormous loan for $50,000. The computer I bought for animation was $35,000, and the software was $15,000. It was amazingly expensive at that time because there were very few tools that would do animation. Do you remember the Fry’s commercials? Do you remember Chippy, the computer chip flying around? Gravity 3D was responsible for that.
That was me … it looked really bad, too. I look back at those and I go, “Oh man, how embarrassing.”

However, I knew I really wanted to work on films and not commercials, so I made the jump down to Hollywood.

Kim Ngo: How exciting! You ran after your dream. Tell us about the Hollywood experience?

Michael Huber: I decided to change the name of Gravity 3D to Huber Films, so that I could finally do the film project I’d dreamed of for so long.

Before that, I had worked at a number of companies. I worked for Digital Domain, Disney Feature Animation, and EA Video Games. In Hollywood I worked on movies like Blade II , Titanic , Armageddon , Scooby-Doo , Black Hawk Down , The Fifth Element , Minority Report , Godzilla, and The Matrix Revolutions so that I could get experience and jump back into my own thing.

Michael Huber Being Silly at the British Museum

Hollywood can be tough if you’re the creative type who wants to do your own thing. Everything is set up on the studio level. You have to know people to move ahead. You can have a great story or script stolen from you in a blink of an eye, so you really have to keep original ideas to yourself. It’s always best to have a good lawyer there.

Kim Ngo: Why did you leave Huber Films?

Michael Huber: I kind of missed the camaraderie of working with a lot of people. In Hollywood, I was always working on my own, so I decided to put it off for a while. And the idea is I’m going to bring it back, I want to have my own company.

Kim Ngo: So you’re hoping that Huber Films will come back. Will you bring it back to Silicon Valley?

Michael Huber: Yeah, I would definitely do it in the Bay Area. Pixar, PDI DreamWorks, IM Digital, Lucas Film – they’re all here. That’s one of the big draws of the Bay Area; it’s so tech centric. Everyone who’s doing anything involving a computer is pretty much here. Hollywood is the entertainment capital of the world, but as far as animated films, the Bay Area is really the central place for it.

Kim Ngo: Why did you leave big name companies like Disney, Digital Domain, EA Video Games and why would you walk away from working with directors like Pixar Wolfgang Petersen and Steven Spielberg?

Michael Huber: That’s a good question. The last film I worked on was Poseidon Adventure with Wolfgang Peterson. He was also the director of Troy, for example. The main issue was that I was doing their films. I had a realization that I was never going to get anywhere doing films for other directors.

Kim Ngo and Michael Huber

Kim Ngo: But that’s how you get your foot in the door, right?

Michael Huber: It was a foot in the door. Usually a director will only take a couple of people under his or her wing, if any. Some directors want all the glory for themselves. I think a lot of people in Hollywood have these aspirations, where they want to direct or do something cool, but frankly, there’s a lot of competition. I figured if I was going to be a director, I needed to make it happen for myself.

Kim Ngo: You’re ambitious. Can you tell me that you’re going to be able to compete
with Pixar? I want to hear how hungry you are.

Michael Huber: On some levels, yes. I think even the film we just created, The Offering, is on many levels, competitive with what they’re doing, especially considering the amount of production value that we created, for the amount of money that we had, which was almost nothing.

You look at the quality of what we’re doing versus what they’re doing versus what we are doing – and it’s competitive. But I do have to say thank you to them because they loaned us 80 seats of their own software to help us create this film. As a matter of fact, some people from Pixar saw our trailer, and they want to screen it at Pixar.

Kim Ngo: Tell us a little about Project X, in the simplest, hottest way possible.

Michael Huber: I will start by going back a little further. When I was in the middle of production for my first film with Huber Films, I needed some help. I had been invited to this Japanese animation school called Digital Hollywood, LA. They wanted me to lecture on Huber Films’ production process and my involvement in the film industry (especially about Godzilla) as an animator and animation director.

I told them about the project I was working on, which was Shade, my first film. The students were really excited. Tons of them immediately volunteered, like “Oh, can we help you with your film?” I thought, “Well, that sounds like a great idea!” So I bought a bunch of computers and set them up in my apartment in Malibu, CA. It turned into an awesome little production studio right in my apartment. And of course my wife wanted to come home from work and enjoy the apartment, but you know, it was filled with all of these Japanese students.

Mike Huber in China

I thought to myself “This is a fantastic production model.” Get students to work on your film, and work out a deal with their schools so they get credit. The production model was perfect. It wasn’t very expensive and the students were good. I took the better students and trained them in this internship program I had created and then did a portfolio review of the best ones. I’d been in the industry long enough that I had a good idea of what looked good and what didn’t.

After we got the first film done, we got it screened by the Sci Fi channel. As a matter of fact, Sci Fi ended up purchasing the viewing rights from me. So back to answering what Project X is…when I decided to return to the Bay Area to do more film animation, I found Cogswell Polytechnical Collage, I decided to give teaching a try. After a semester of working there, I realized it was a prime opportunity to build a production company inside the school, which is what ended up happening. That’s how Project X was created and our short film The Offering was produced.

Mike visiting the Great Wall of China

Project X is a similar program with Cogswell Polytechnical College, a small art and animation school here in Sunnyvale, California. We have a production company that does very high-end short films and trains students in the process. So I get to direct, the school gets a great short film, and the students get top-notch training—really the best hands on training there is. It’s a win-win situation.

Kim Ngo: And Cogswell didn’t have an animation production department before?

Michael Huber: No. As a matter of fact, that model is really unheard of in the US. We’re talking about exposing students to industry professionals to create a really high-level, high-production value project – something that’s as good as what the industry puts out. It’s not a student project, it’s really professional project. And the aspiration of the Cogswell students is to be involved in something that cool and great.

Kim Ngo: Smart!

Michael Huber: We’re done with our first film, The Offering. It took us almost two years, but the proof is in the pudding. It has amazing production value. Matter of fact, a founder of PDI DreamWorks, Richard Chuang (he’s one of the school’s backers and did the film Shrek, saw the film, and really believes in our project. So hopefully he likes the next one, which I think is going to be even better.

The Offering

Kim Ngo: Tell us about The Offering.

Michael Huber: The first film is kind of like a Bollywood dance piece and it’s quite beautiful. We even had Madonna’s choreographer, whose traditionally trained Indian Dancers helped us with the dance itself.

Kim Ngo: So what’s happening with The Offering now?

Michael Huber: We’re going to film festivals. We need to put it in front of producers and in front of people that could make that happen for us. There’s another route to go, too, and that involves getting investment capital, or creating a medium or large company to produce the film.

Kim Ngo: Which is more likely to happen?

Michael Huber: I don’t know. But if I get turned down by Hollywood, I will just build it myself. That’s how it’s been so far…

Kim Ngo: Are you afraid you won’t make it?

Michael Huber: I’ve had successes and failures, and I can’t say the failures were a bad thing because I’ve learned from them. Those mistakes have actually been good. I’ve shed tears; I’ve lost sleep over mistakes that I’ve made but …

Kim Ngo: Those are painful aren’t they? Can you tell us about some of those mistakes?

Michael Zachary Huber

Michael Huber: Well, maybe burning a relationship, being too prideful, or having an argument with a business partner…that type of thing. Getting involved with A instead of B. For example, I’m hypothetically asking myself “Should I do this commercial or that music video?” Pretend I’ve picked the commercial and guess what? WOW – the commercial didn’t have a huge following, but the music video did.

There are gambles you must take as a businessperson. Sometimes you make a series of mistakes that can almost put you under, but it all depends on how bad you want something. If you really want it, you just keep on going. You keep on moving forward. And maybe it’s not right away, maybe you take a little breather, but if that’s ingrained in you … it will keep you going. You can’t let life crush you. You have to let it build you up.

You have to create your own opportunities. When things weren’t going my way and people were saying no to me, I would just say, “Fine, I’m going to do this myself”. And now I’ve already finished two films and am working on my third.

Kim Ngo: Would you say it’s logical to do that? Does it really make sense for people to take those high risks?

Mike's Hobby

Michael Huber: I think most people wouldn’t. I think a lot of people would quit at that point. To the vast public, it maybe

doesn’t make sense. But that’s part of the paradox of that situation. If you can overcome those boundaries, you can actually create opportunity. They say, “When opportunity knocks, you should answer the door.” I think you can also create those doors. Go find it. Bust down the door and kick it down with your foot.

Kim Ngo: Are you living out your dream?

Michael Huber: Absolutely. There have been ups and downs, success and failure, but I’ve done what I wanted to do. I’m still here, aren’t I? I’ve been able to make my films, and I’m continuing to make more. If I had let my failures break me down, I would’ve quit. So the idea is, don’t quit! Never surrender. Move forward.

The Huber Family

Kim Ngo: What drives you?

Michael Huber: I want to move and inspire people. I want to show them things that they haven’t seen before. I want to make films that are different and make people think, feel, and experience joy and sadness. That’s what drives me.

Kim Ngo: Do you feel like you’ve made a sacrifice?

Michael Huber: There’s sacrifice…like giving up a salary for the thing that you really love in hopes of making a living at it. You have to look at the most important foundation of the concept and remind yourself “This is what I really want, and this is why I’m following my dream”.

Kim Ngo: What is your ultimate goal for Project X?

Michael Huber: The ultimate goal for Project X is to do a feature film. Right now, we’ve only been doing short films. We want to build it to the point where we are a large enough studio to create something along the lines of Toy Story or Shrek.

Kim Ngo: When do you think that’s going to happen?

Michael Huber: I think in another two years or so we’ll be ready. After our third film we should be ready to start it.

Kim Ngo: Thanks for interviewing with us Mike.