ANIMATED SHORTS: WHY GEORGE MILLER IS A HAPPY MAN

[MattBrady]

by Steve Fritz

Here’s a very strange reason to thank George W. for his “war on terror.” It forced director George Miller (the Mad Max and Babe movies, just for starters), to begin production on Happy Feet.

“The reason why I did Happy Feet now was because of what happened in Iraq,” Miller recalls. “Originally, when Warner Brothers bought it, I told them this film would take some time, so let’s do the next Mad Max while we’re setting Happy Feet up. Yes, with Mel [Gibson]. But we were rudely interrupted by the Iraqi War, which was where we were going to shoot. Now we’re talking about doing it in Libya. When the war started happening, Warners came to me and said, ‘well it looks like that isn’t going to happen right away, so let’s get going with Happy Feet’.”

Miller laughs a tad sleepily, as it’s still early in the morning. On the other hand, his enthusiasm for his first all-animated feature is easily apparent. As it turns out, the man loves his animation, too.

“I got a taste of CG with Babe, which actually took about ten years to happen because of waiting for the technology to happen,” says Miller. “But like everyone, I grew up on the great Disney films like Snow White, Pinocchio and Dumbo, especially Dumbo. It wasn’t until I was halfway through Happy Feet that it was the case. Another major influence was Chuck Jones. I was lucky enough to have dinner with him twice and that guy blew me away. I mean, obviously, I’m an action director, too, but I just love the way his rhythms work.”

A QUICK SPOILER

Like Dumbo, this new feature tells the tale of a character who doesn’t fit in with the group, but ends up being accepted in the long run. It stars Elijah Woods as Mumbles, a penguin who can’t sing but can dance his feathery little carcass off. While his mother, Marilyn (Nicole Kidman) loves him anyway, his father Memphis (Hugh Jackman) and flock leader (Hugo Weaving) have problems with this bird without a “heartsong.” Acceptance comes in the form of a feisty nonconformist bird, Ramon (Robin Williams) and his Adelie Amigos (rising Latin comics Carlos Alazraqui, Johnny Sanchez III, Jeff Garcia and Lombardo Boyar). They find him “so accidentally cool” they start learning his incredible steps.

END SPOILER

This film is nothing more and nothing less than an all-ice, all-bird Busby Berkeley spectacular. Miller even hired top dancers Savion Glover and Kelley Abbey to create and motion capture all the steps. If that isn’t enough, comic geek, this will be the first time we will ever hear Hugh Jackman actually sing in a film. In other words, it’s got all the makings of a great holiday spectacular.

Not that it didn’t take Miller a long, long time to direct this project. Still, give the man who can make pigs talk, he knew that going in.

“To be honest, the principles of storytelling at the core are the same,” says Miller. “The biggest issue was setting up the pipeline. Animal Logic (who did the animation—ED) did FX projects before this. Turning it into a full-blown storytelling unit was the big thing. That took a lot of time.

“When you do live action, it’s all about the synchronicity of doing the film. You set up the scene, point the camera and let it all happen. Setting the camera and the lighting, telling the actors what to do and all that; you do it all together. It’s like shooting straight from your gut. It’s only in post-production can you sit back and say ‘why did I do this’ and worry about how to fix it.

“With animation you work on every detail,” Miller concludes. “Now this means it takes a lot more time to do, but the advantage is you get to control every detail of what you are doing. You can think about it in ways you never could with live action. I also came to realize that with animation everybody had to have input from me, from the top down. Even the animators who were working on such things as the snow and clouds needed input from me to know what they had to do. I found it very enjoyable.”

Miller also found working with the voice actors a joy. This was in part because he did a lot of the recording in radio style. In other words, he somehow managed to get the likes of humongously busy actors like Jackman, Kidman and Williams in the recording room at the same time and work off each other instead of working around their schedules and plopping them in isolation booths.

“The big thing I knew from live action is acting is a body contact sport,” says Miller. “The sound engineers weren’t too happy about that, but even they had to admit what we got was really, really good. I mean we even managed to put Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman and Elijah Wood in at the same time because they knew doing things together would be very good for the film. We also had Elijah sit in with Robin and the Adelie penguins.

“[In just about everyone’s cases,] They were in the middle of movies, but they still had the weekends. That was basically it. In terms of the songs, it was when they had time and those they could do more on their own. The only crime of it all is you had all these fantastic faces, and we had to make them all look like penguins. But when I closed my eyes and just heard their voices, I knew they were doing it.

“As you can imagine, the real revelation was Robin Williams. He plays two roles in the film [he’s also the penguin’s ‘master of amore, Lovelace] and he would really amaze me with the ability to switch from one to the other. The other thing too was the guys who played the other four Adelie penguins, they are all young up-and-coming Latin comedians and they were all about improvisation. So I threw them in with Robin with what I wanted to get done, and we would rehearse it for a while. Now they are all very quick on their feet and just started fired off each other. So I would talk them through the scenario, work off the page, and then we would loosen it up. We always worked within the story, they knew the boundaries. That’s when you get gold time and time again.”

The reality is there’s gold throughout this entire film. If this film is any indication, and if Miller wanted to, he probably could become one of the best animation directors of all time. But that isn’t going to happen.

“Yes, I’m thinking of doing another animated film, “but for right now I’m going to take a month off to take my family on a little vacation in India. From there, I plan to work on a much smaller film, I have to finish the script when I get back, and that’s going to be live action. Then it will be time to finally do Max.”

So even if President Bush is now recovering from his “pummeling” last week, let’s give the thanks next week for the fact W’s actions made Miller get started on this film. Animation fans are going to find plenty to be happy about with Happy Feet.

FLUSHED FROM SUCCESS

If Simon Otto looks like the cat that caught the canary, you can’t blame him. The supervising director of Flushed Away was the man who managed to do the previously undoable, merge Aardman Studio’s unique claymation designs with DreamWorks’ computer generated technology.

Not a small feat when you think about it. But that seems to be S.O.P. for this former graduate of France’s illustrious animation school, Les Gobelins.

“First of all, Les Gobelins is one of the biggest animation schools in Europe,” says Otto. “I’m actually Swiss, so I was exceedingly lucky to get into that school. It’s such a huge entry into the world of animation, about 900 people try to get into that school every year and they only take twenty. Once you graduate, the studios literally line up to convince you to work for them. The main reason I was accepted was I was good at drawing.

“Now I started by doing traditional animation, Disney stuff, and I was lucky enough to do it. What I learned over time is drawing is only a tool. To move everything from 2-D to 3-D is all about changing the tools. You may be changing the tools, but you still wind up with the same kind of movie.”

In fact, Otto started with Disney’s Paris studio, where he got to rub shoulders with the likes of Glen Keane and Bibo Bergeron. From there, he was snapped up by DreamWorks, and worked his way up through the films The Prince of Egypt, The Road To El Dorado and Sinbad. He was also the animator of the horse Spirit in Spirit.

But then he made the move to CGI, and after ten years in the trenches found himself the head animator of Flushed Away, the first Aardman film that abandoned the studio’s traditional claymation for computer generation. While most sources are citing the sheer scale of doing the movie’s backgrounds and detail as the main reason, Otto will tell you there was a lot more than that. For instance, Otto and Aardman wanted to give Flushed Away a very Looney Tunes feel.

“Oh yeah, I did,” he concurs. “It’s funny how this group came together. We all have different backgrounds and had worked in different crews. This meant we mixed a lot of animation styles. I think the real reason for the Looney Tunes feel was when we created the characters, we wanted to keep them really simple and the situational comedy we wanted to put them in. For example, the scene where Spike and Whitey fell from Toad’s lair. The line where Spike tells Whitey to straighten out his legs before he hits the water feels like classic Warner Bros. It has that classic physical violence one expects from a master like Tex Avery.”

Another good example of the Avery/Clampett axis of lunacy is the scene where Roddy first falls into the sewer village, hitting just about part of his body possible and everything conceivable along the way.

“That was one of the earliest gags we came up with” Otto recalls. “What was really funny about that one was every time we would review it, we would come up with more things for Roddy to smash into. It tuned into one of those can-you-top-that-one things. So every month we would review it and every month we would get a new laugh out of it. To us, that really goes back to the classic 40s-50s animation.”

Another great scene is early on when Roddy is rummaging through his closet and pulls out Wolverine and Peter Allen costumes, then chucks them. While one can see Aardman being able to do that one in claymation, the traditional process would probably have not allowed for the speed in which CGI let them do it.

“What is really great about that scene is the speed at which it moves,” says Otto. “The film was really all about speed. We were doing all we could to keep the high level of speed going for as long as we can. We tried to go through a lot of stuff really fast, as long as it stayed funny as telling jokes is all about timing.

“I think it was one the many reasons why this film went CG. I get the question a lot. The obvious answer is that we couldn’t have done the backgrounds like the rat city or all of the water as well in stop motion. It would have been incredibly expensive and massive in scale. Also, things like the water would have been nearly impossible to animate to the same level in stop motion.

“Another good reason is Roddy and Rita were slightly more realistic in their body motions with CG,” says Otto. “As many probably know, it’s incredibly difficult to do body motion with stop motion. So we chose not to do it. We can do better performances with CG, and this story really needed it.”

But for Otto, the real thrill was working with the Aardman crew.

“I’d been watching their cartoons for over 15 years,” Otto says. “I was such a huge fan already. So I simply loved working with them. I got to get really close with Nick Park and Peter Lord and all the animators who work with them.

“Aardman did do puppets so we knew how to model them. They also sent us puppets of past characters so we could understand their style. I mean I actually held Wallace & Grommit in my hands. That was an experience!

“Otherwise everything else about the characters was done in the computer. We didn’t do motion capture. I actually had been working on this film a full year before we began true production, and during that time the guys at Aardman and I spent that year creating this world. It was all about what we wanted to use from Aardman and what not, and how we were going to do it.”

And his final opinion of Flushed Away? Quite positive.

“I’m extremely proud. I’m extremely proud of the work I and the people around me did. As an experience it was fantastic. Although I admit it’s tough to be really critical, as it should be for a person who’s seen the film every day for 2 ½ years.

“When I finally looked at the final print, finally seeing the entire thing all together, I saw that it really was a blend of sophisticated acting and simplistic action. To me, what I’m really pleased with is the range of the characters emotions, especially Roddy and Rita, is really incredible. There are few films that try to do that.”

As for the future, Otto is already doing development on a new feature film, How To Train Your Dragon, which is slated for roughly 2009.

“I’m slowly moving on to my next picture, which is based on a children’s book by . It’s a coming of age story about kids who live in this fantastic Viking world. Part of their rite of manhood is to capture and train their own dragon as that’s how these Vikings fight. Of course the story is more involved, but that’s the basics.”

Don’t be surprised if Otto manages to do something incredible again.


KIDS FEST DOING AARDMAN MARATHON

Speaking of all things Aardman, if you want a proper dose of their traditional claymation work, New York City’s International Children’s Film Festival will be doing a major retrospective of their work this weekend. The four-time Oscar-winning studio has provided program including the deliriously funny Rex The Runt plus Penny, Pib & Pog, Angry Kid, Morph Files, the groundbreaking Peter Gabriel “Sledgehammer” music video, and recent installments of Wallace & Gromit and Creature Comforts.

There will be two showings: Saturday, November 18 and Sunday, November 19. Both shows start at 11:00 a.m.. Tickets are: $10.75 adult/$7.00 children under 12. The showing will be at the IFC CENTER
323 Sixth Ave (at W. 3rd St). For more info, check out www.gkids.com.


ADV STRIKES DEAL WITH SHOCHIKU

ADV Films announced it has closed a deal with Shochiku, one of Japan’s leading entertainment conglomerate, to acquire the hit animated TV series Le Chevalier D’Eon, as well as the feature films Ghost Train and Synesthesia.

Under terms of the deal, ADV has acquired North American theatrical, video to the above-mentioned films as well as video, TV and VOD rights to Le Chevalier D'Eon for North America, UK, Australia and English speaking African territories. The North American release plans have not been announced yet, but these titles are planned to be released before summer 2007.

“ADV is honored to be partnering with Shochiku to bring their excellent shows to North America,” said John Ledford, President and CEO of ADV Films. “Le Chevalier is going to be a huge 2007 anime series for our market, and we look forward to licensing more Shochiku product as the new relationship burgeons.”

Masaki Koga, the head of Shochiku’s International Business Division, commented, “We are very proud of the titles and hope that their success in the U.S. and other territories mirrors their success in Japan. ADV Films is one of the premier specialty distributors in North America and the ideal distributor for these properties. We hope to establish a long standing distribution partnership that begins with this initial deal.”


DRAGON BALL IS BACK!

FUNimation Entertainment announced today that Dragon Ball will make a return to U.S. television beginning this November. The series will join FUNimation Channel's syndicated anime block on the CoLours TV Network, part of DISH Network's basic package, on November 13. There will also be a six-hour Dragon Ball marathon on Thanksgiving Day on the CoLours TV Network. The series is scheduled to become part of the programming on the FUNimation Channel in December.

"One of the questions we get asked the most is 'when is Dragon Ball coming to the FUNimation Channel?'" explains Gen Fukunaga, president and CEO of FUNimation Entertainment. "We are thrilled to announce that it’s coming to our FUNimation Channel programming and our loyal fan base will be pleased to know that the series will be airing uncut."

It will air Monday through Friday at 10:00 p.m. ET on FUNimation Channel's syndicated anime block on the CoLours TV Network. CoLours will also air a six-hour Dragon Ball marathon on Thanksgiving Day beginning at 2:00 p.m. ET. The Dragon Ball series will become part of the FUNimation Channel beginning in December.


DORA EXPLORES THE WORLD THIS SUNDAY

Preschoolers will get their passports stamped as they join Dora and friends on jaunt to France, Tanzania, Russia and China on the hour-long special Dora’s World Adventure, which premieres Sunday,
November 19 from 8:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (ET/PT) on Nickelodeon.

“Dora's first-ever global journey celebrates the spirit of friendship,” said Brown Johnson, Executive Creative Director, Nickelodeon Preschool Television. “In this special, our Latina heroine explores new languages and cultures, and, as always needs our young viewer’s help to save the day.”

In Dora’s World Adventure, everyone is celebrating Friendship Day all over the world. But when Swiper mistakenly swipes the special glowing friendship bracelets from France, Tanzania, Russia and China, Dora teams up with him on a global excursion to return them to her international friends. In France, they sing the “Bonjour” song and meet the smiling Gargoyle who leads them to the Eiffel Tower. Dora and Swiper then journey across Tanzania on an elephant until they reach Mount Kilimanjaro. In Russia, they make silly faces to get the Russian troll to laugh and open the gate to the Winter Palace. Lastly, the duo takes a train ride across China and ‘super jumps’ over the Great Wall. Along their adventures, Dora, Swiper and the preschoolers at home learn how to say hello in each country’s native language.

Nickelodeon will also support this new project with a number of different products, including a DVD, CD of all the songs and sneak previews not only on the network, but in a number of other media.


DISNEY STARTS THANKSGIVING SPECIALS THIS MONDAY

Al Roker guest stars as the voice of Normus the giant in a new episode of Playhouse Disney's movement-focused series, JoJo's Circus. The episode, entitled "JoJo and the Beanstalk," premieres Monday, November 20 (6:30 a.m., eastern) during Disney Channel's learning-focused programming block Playhouse Disney.

On Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 23 (6:00 a.m.- Noon, eastern), six hours of JoJo's Circus, including Thanksgiving favorite, "The Thanksgiving Hip-Hooray Parade," will be presented. That same day, JoJo flies proudly as a giant balloon in the 80th anniversary Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the first-ever balloon to feature "movement" – juggling.

NEXT COLUMN: All going well, we’ll have a number of reasons to be thankful next week, from an interview with Foster’s Craig McFadden and a retrospective on Russian Animation.

[Spaz_Monkey]

Check out the review on AICN. What I thought was gonna be a cute movie sounds just creepy as all hell.

Even discounting the reviwer's well-known insanity, this just don't sound like family friendly entertainment.

[sfritz]

Originally Posted by Spaz_Monkey

Check out the review on AICN. What I thought was gonna be a cute movie sounds just creepy as all hell.

Even discounting the reviwer's well-known insanity, this just don't sound like family friendly entertainment.

Hey...they market Monster House as a family movie, too, and the kids I saw loved it. Otherwise everyone's entitled to their opinion.

OH yeah...and who do you mean by insane, me or the guy from AICN? -s

[Spaz_Monkey]

Originally Posted by sfritz

Hey...they market Monster House as a family movie, too, and the kids I saw loved it. Otherwise everyone's entitled to their opinion.

Monster House goes back to my childhood, where 'family friendly' didn't mean 'dumbed down, full of poop and fart jokes'. The Goonies is a great example of that. Big. Cloak and Dagger. Space Camp. Flight of the Navigator.

But god dang! If half of what the reviewer talked about, with his - shall we say - unique point of view is true, then I'm really kinda weirded out by it.

[Spaz_Monkey]

Originally Posted by sfritz

OH yeah...and who do you mean by insane, me or the guy from AICN? -s

Trust me, AICN's guy Massawyrm is out of his freakin mind! You? couldn't say one way or the other

[Korvac]

Happy Feet looks like the dumbest movie imaginable. I'm an adult, though, and kids are sure to have a different perspective.

On the other hand, I know that if I were a kid, it would look like the dumbest thing imaginable. It doesn't help that half the time I can't tell what the heck Robin Williams is saying, and his fake accents are a little insulting.

[sfritz]

Originally Posted by Spaz_Monkey

Trust me, AICN's guy Massawyrm is out of his freakin mind! You? couldn't say one way or the other

Hey! I resemble that remark!

Guess I'll have to read this man's review for myself. I'll comment later. -s

[Robot H Brian]

You couldn't get me near AICN with a ten-foot pole and a lifetime supply of antibacterial soap.

I'm torn on HAPPY FEET. I'm starting to hear positive reviews, but Robin Williams doing his tired shtick immediately affects my gag reflex. If my wife wasn't pushing for us to take our 3 1/2 year old to it, I'd choose to see FLUSHED AWAY again.

[Ye Olde Iowa]

Originally Posted by sfritz

Hey! I resemble that remark!

Guess I'll have to read this man's review for myself. I'll comment later. -s

Steve, I don't even know if you will be able to find words to comment on this guys review. I mean, I'm just flabbergasted at what this guy has to say. I probably won't catch the movie until DVD, but I'd love to hear the reaction of a rational person who has seen the movie in regards to this insane review.

[s*p rules]

This is totally off the subject, but I think this forum is the best place to ask this question: does anyone know why Cartoon Network has taken the Fantastic Four off their schedule? Are they just screwing us again (a la Titans and JLU), or was it axed by the producers? I've noticed even the action figures from the show have been canceled. Thanks in advance for any info provided.

[Kolimar]

Originally Posted by MattBrady

Here’s a very strange reason to thank George W. for his “war on terror.” It forced director George Miller (the Mad Max and Babe movies, just for starters), to begin production on Happy Feet.

“The reason why I did Happy Feet now was because of what happened in Iraq,” Miller recalls. “Originally, when Warner Brothers bought it, I told them this film would take some time, so let’s do the next Mad Max while we’re setting Happy Feet up. Yes, with Mel [Gibson]. But we were rudely interrupted by the Iraqi War, which was where we were going to shoot. Now we’re talking about doing it in Libya. When the war started happening, Warners came to me and said, ‘well it looks like that isn’t going to happen right away, so let’s get going with Happy Feet’.”

Heheheh Funny how things come to be.

[Ye Olde Iowa]

Originally Posted by s*p rules

This is totally off the subject, but I think this forum is the best place to ask this question: does anyone know why Cartoon Network has taken the Fantastic Four off their schedule? Are they just screwing us again (a la Titans and JLU), or was it axed by the producers? I've noticed even the action figures from the show have been canceled. Thanks in advance for any info provided.

I hadn't even noticed. I'm rarely around on Saturday nights, so I was hoping once more episodes were on they'd run reruns in a different slot. I think that there is definitely the potential for superhero cartoons on CN, but lumping them onto Saturday nights definitely alienates a potential market for them (the comic book reading crowd of 16-30 males that aren't always home watching the tube on Saturday nights at 7).

[JLAJRC]

Originally Posted by s*p rules

This is totally off the subject, but I think this forum is the best place to ask this question: does anyone know why Cartoon Network has taken the Fantastic Four off their schedule? Are they just screwing us again (a la Titans and JLU), or was it axed by the producers? I've noticed even the action figures from the show have been canceled. Thanks in advance for any info provided.

I'd also would like to know. Last week they replaced it with "The Batman." I get the feeling it's not doing so well ratings-wise. My guess, it's basically canceled but it's just not official yet.

Can't wait to see Happy Feet. Hopefully it will be better than Flushed Away, which basically bored me when the singing slugs weren't on screen. Maybe a musical is what I need.

[sfritz]

Originally Posted by JLAJRC

I'd also would like to know. Last week they replaced it with "The Batman." I get the feeling it's not doing so well ratings-wise. My guess, it's basically canceled but it's just not official yet.

Can't wait to see Happy Feet. Hopefully it will be better than Flushed Away, which basically bored me when the singing slugs weren't on screen. Maybe a musical is what I need.

Informed sources say F4's on hiatus. As to why is still speculative.

I'm working on it. -s

[beta-ray]

I like Robin Williams, but I haven't seen anything from Happy Feet that makes me want to see it.

Oh well.

Who cares about all this? Keroro Gunsou (SGT Frog) is invading! That's the big news!

[psycha]

I went and saw an early screening of that movie with my girlfriend. Two words:

F#%!ED. UP.

That's all I have to say.

[sfritz]

Originally Posted by psycha

I went and saw an early screening of that movie with my girlfriend. Two words:

F#%!ED. UP.[/size]

That's all I have to say.

OK....

Now are you saying that in a good way or not? -s

[psycha]

Not in a good way.