Shorts was shot at Robert Rodriguez’s own stages in a decommissioned Austin airport.
Updated: Oct 4
If you are looking for where Shorts was filmed, the answer is Austin. Robert Rodriguez wrote it, directed it, shot it, co-cut it, co-scored it and supervised its visual effects, and he did nearly all of it at Troublemaker Studios, his own facility in converted hangars at the old Robert Mueller Municipal Airport in east Austin. The Texas Film Commission’s filmography lists the shoot as April 24 to June 26, 2008, in Austin, Lakeway and Spicewood.
One thing to get right up front, because it gets conflated constantly. Troublemaker is not Austin Studios. Both sit on the same decommissioned airfield, which closed in 1999, and both work out of old hangars, but they are two separate facilities. Troublemaker is Rodriguez and Elizabeth Avellán’s own operation on roughly 22 acres of the former State Aircraft Pooling Board site. Austin Studios is the city-owned complex that the Austin Film Society runs, just west of it. The Austin Chronicle, covering the Mueller redevelopment in 2003, put them side by side and noted the two sets of hangars were used by different tenants. Avellán described them in 2010 as neighbors separated by an access road. Troublemaker also rents AFS stages, which is part of why people merge the two.
What Rodriguez actually did on this picture.
The Variety credits block for Shorts is the single most useful document about how this film was made. Rodriguez is credited as director, writer, producer, camera, co-editor with Ethan Maniquis, co-composer with Carl Thiel and George Oldziey, visual effects supervisor, and re-recording mixer with Brad Engleking.
That is eight jobs on one studio picture, and it is not a vanity list. It is the whole cost structure of the film written out in the credits. Elizabeth Avellán produced with him. Dan Lin, Hunt Lowry, Mohammed Khalaf and Edward Borgerding were executive producers. Warner Bros. released it in association with Imagenation Abu Dhabi and Media Rights Capital, from a Troublemaker Studios production.
Rodriguez told ComingSoon in August 2009 what the stages were worth to him: “I don’t think there’s another filmmaker who has got dedicated stages in the states. It’s really a very rare thing.”
The number that explains the model.
Production designer Steve Joyner gave the Austin Chronicle the arithmetic in October 2010. He was talking about how Troublemaker worked generally, around the release of Predators rather than this film, so take it as the department’s standing math and not a line item from this budget.
Joyner: “The normal ratio of raw construction materials to finished set is about three to one. So $1,000 of lumber, after paying labor costs, makes about $3,000 worth of set.” Then the part that matters: with his team and their equipment already standing in the building, he put the cost at about a third lower.
His reason is one sentence long. “I’m not flying someone in from LA. I’m not putting them up in a hotel, I’m not hiring a rental car.”
That is the entire argument for a resident crew, made by the person who signs the lumber orders. The savings are not in the lumber. They are in the travel, the per diem, the housing and the rental cars that a fly-in department carries before it builds anything.
What was built, and what was not.
Troublemaker’s hangars hold sound stages, craft workshops and art studios, with what the production notes call the largest green screen in Texas, and an on-site art department that makes its own sets and props. Editing and music went into a converted garage at the Rodriguez family home a few miles away. Warner Bros.’ own notes say the crew could work through a day’s practical and digital decisions without a negotiation.
Greg Nicotero, whose company did the special makeup effects, described the triage: “Everyone knows, this shot’s a visual effect, this shot’s a KNB puppet, this shot’s a visual effect, and we hand off responsibilities for what best serves the movie.”
I want to flag something I could not verify, because the series says where it went looking and came up short. A story circulates that the suburban street of Black Falls was built inside a hangar. I found no source for it, and the contemporaneous evidence points elsewhere. The production notes describe an art department assistant standing watch on set to make sure the right colored cars went past at the right moment, which is a real street and passing traffic, not a stage. A June 2008 Austin real-estate post claims the Ridge at Lantana subdivision in southwest Austin was used. That is a thin source and I am naming it as one rather than repeating it as fact.
What is documented is the design thinking. Art director Caylah Eddleblute on the palette: “I think one of the first lines in the script describes a McMansion neighborhood, which gives you so many cues immediately. I came up with the color palette idea, which was all the grown-ups are in beiges, because basically when you grow up you become beige and when you’re a kid, you’re in color.”
The booger monster was an in-house first.
Troublemaker Digital Studios delivered the creature sequence, 55 shots, and it was the company’s first major organic-creature work. fxguide reported in January 2010 that the creature was built in Mudbox and XSI and scaled to fit a four-foot hallway, with animatics in previz and post-vis on returning footage. Rodriguez cut a mini-trailer before the greenlight to set the look and help the financing along.
On the day, visual effects supervisor Jabbar Raisani played the monster himself. “I had to wear a green suit. That’s me in there, with a stick, hitting all the stuff off the shelf and then running off the set. Digitally, we then added the Booger Monster where I was.”
Who is in it.
Jimmy Bennett carries the film and narrates it as Toby “Toe” Thompson, telling five stories out of order. Jon Cryer and Leslie Mann play his parents. William H. Macy is Dr. Noseworthy. James Spader is Carbon Black, the chief executive of Black Box Unlimited Worldwide Industries. Kat Dennings is Toe’s sister Stacey.
The kids are the film. Jolie Vanier makes her debut as Helvetica Black and gets an introducing credit. Trevor Gagnon is Loogie Short, Devon Gearhart is Cole Black, Jake Short is Nose Noseworthy, Leo Howard is Laser Short, and Rebel Rodriguez plays Lug Short. Rebel is also where the story came from.
At the 31st Young Artist Awards in April 2010, that group won Best Performance by a Young Ensemble in a Feature Film. Vanier was nominated on her own for Best Young Actress.
The money.
Warner Bros. opened it wide on Friday, August 21, 2009, on 3,105 screens. It took $6,410,339 that weekend and came in at number six, behind Inglourious Basterds, District 9, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, The Time Traveler’s Wife and Julie & Julia.
Box Office Mojo records $20,919,166 domestic and $8,053,342 international for $28,972,508 worldwide, which is the figure that places it at forty four on this list. The Numbers has the same domestic total but a higher international one, for $29,870,801 worldwide. The two sites disagree by about $900,000 on the overseas side, and this series uses Box Office Mojo throughout.
The budget figure in circulation is $20 million, published by The Numbers. No studio confirmed number exists, and Box Office Mojo publishes none, so read it as reported rather than confirmed.
One more thing worth saying plainly. Shorts does not appear in the state’s Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program records I checked, so nobody should assume this picture was built on an incentive award. The economics here are a facility and a standing crew, not a grant.
Why people love it.
Justin Chang reviewed it for Variety on August 9, 2009, and called it “more zippy, diverting fun from Robert Rodriguez’s family filmmaking factory.” He singled out Vanier: “the most memorable perf belongs to young Vanier.”
Marjorie Baumgarten covered it at home for the Austin Chronicle on opening day and got closest to what the film is doing: “Rodriguez really does seem to have a direct line into what makes the little rascals laugh and relate.” She also noted that the technical wizardry is dialed back here compared with his other work of that stretch, “which helps Shorts connect with kids on a basic human level.”
My read.
The cast is incredible, and it is a completely over-produced kids film, which I mean as a compliment. Campy fun sci-fi, and a huge cast that makes the movie feel much bigger than it is.
The producing lesson is home turf. He stretches the budget by doing everything in house on his own ground. That is the entire story of this picture and it is why a family comedy with a reported $20 million budget looks like it cost more.
This is one of many Rodriguez entries on this list, and his eleven will keep showing up as the countdown climbs. The system he built on that airfield is the reason.
What this means if you are scoping a Texas shoot.
Nobody reading this owns a hangar. The transferable part is narrower and more useful than “build a studio.”
It is Joyner’s sentence. Every dollar a department spends on travel, lodging and rental cars is a dollar that does not appear on screen, and a resident crew removes that line before the build starts. Texas has the depth to staff most of a show locally in the major markets, and it thins out in specific departments. I have written about where it thins out.
The previous entry in this countdown is number 45, Necessary Roughness, and the other Troublemaker entry on the list so far is number 47, Grindhouse. The full countdown lives here. If you are scoping a show in Texas and want the honest read on crew and facilities, start here.
Next in the countdown: number 43.
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