How difficult was it to put a crew together?
That’s a good question. When we decided to come back, some of the animators had been retrained and others had left the studio. So we brought back a lot of them that had left the studio. Also, Peter Del Vecho the producer, and his production crew were fantastic. We challenged them, don’t just do it the way that you have always done it at the studio. Ed Catmull is president of Pixar and Disney Animation. He is fantastic for constantly rethinking the way you do everything. He challenges everybody—just because you’ve done it that way before doesn’t mean it’s the best way. You may learn from something. And he always encourages people to try something. If it doesn’t work, you know what, there’s no finger-pointing. Learn from what doesn’t work. And so Peter Del Vecho and his group were fantastic. They rethought every aspect of the production process, and it was really exciting. For instance, there was one thing I had recommended to them that they should try, and that is there is a stage that we have put into our filmmaking process over time. And that is a stage that we call the layout stage. Now Disney’s always done layout, which is after you’ve figured out the story, you have to then decide how that story is going to be staged, and you work out where the animation’s going to go, and that layout is then given to the animators. And what we’ve started doing is taking and cutting a version of the sequence that we’re doing in just the layout form, so we can actually look at the filmmaking, look at the camera work, look at the timing, look at all that stuff—we can sit back, dim the lights in the screening room, hit play and watch just the layout version. And you want to make sure that we direct the audience’s eye exactly where we want them to look at every single scene, and if the cutting works. And in classic animation, they would always lay out the scene, do all the work, and then just hand out the animation, and not look at it cut together until after the animation’s done, and then they would do all sorts of corrections afterwards. That was just the way they always did it. And I said no, why don’t you try this way? And I challenged Rasoul Azadani, the head layout guy, to try this. And so he tried it. And after the first sequence he says, I’m converted, this is fantastic. And so they had far fewer corrections at the end of the production because of this layout stage. And it’s something that we brought over from Pixar, the way that we did it. So as with this kind of thing, we challenged them all the time. But also I learned a tremendous amount. We also believe very strongly in animation dailies, where all the animators get together in the screening room and show everybody’s work, no matter what stage it is up there, and everybody has the opportunity to make comments or suggestions. They didn’t used to do that. It used to be more of a one-on-one thing, but I said that there’s something about building a team, getting all the animators together, and they did that as well, on THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, and it worked fantastically. So we rethought every aspect of the production process.
How committed is Disney to doing another classic, animated movie? How many are in the pipeline?
Well, we’ve announced Winnie the Pooh, which we’re very excited about. It’s animation done very much like the original Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, and Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. Those are the two that Walt Disney and the Nine Old Men made, and that’s what we’re patterning our Winnie the Pooh after and that’s all we’ve announced so far.
How do you bring the audience back to classic fairy tale animation?
To me, it’s very simple. Hard work, making a great movie. I’ve always believed that. I have this saying. Quality is the best business plan. I believe so strongly in that. I’m the biggest fan of animation. You know, I love the history of animation, I know it well. One of the things we did, we got together, John Musker, Ron Clements, all of the animators, and we got together and we really talked about what style of animation that we wanted to do. And we took a look at the history of Disney animation. And if you know Disney animation, there is a style that I call Walt Disney’s personal style. You might say even it started from Steamboat Willie, the very beginning, and it just kept being developed, and Walt Disney kept pushing his artists to become better artists. And, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio and Fantasia onward, and it was the same kind of style that went through after World War II and into the ‘50s, and I think Lady and the Tramp, if you know that film, it was kind of the pinnacle to me of Walt Disney’s style. There’s a particular caricatured style that is so representative of the artists of the Walt Disney Studio and Walt Disney himself, and it really reached a zenith with Lady and the Tramp. After that, the next movie was Sleeping Beauty, which is stunning, but it was very stylized. Eyvind Earle took the style and took it into a much more stylized look at things, which was very popular in the ‘50s. And after that was 101 Dalmatians, which is fantastic as well, and it brought on this new graphic style in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s. And so they started to become more stylized after that. And so we all narrowed in on Lady and the Tramp as being like something we wanted, because, when you look at it, the characters are very round, right? The animators were at the height of their skill in drawing, being able to make you feel like there was a roundness, a solidity to these characters, even though they were very animated. After that, they became somewhat more stylized. Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmatians became much more about stylization, with sharp corners and those kinds of things. So we all looked at and said we that we wanted to emulate this beautiful, round style that really was at its best in Lady and the Tramp, even down to the painted backgrounds. And when you watch it, you don’t think about the stylization or the artistic style. You get swept away in the story, and that, to me, was the goal, that you could look at any frame in The Princess and the Frog and it’s worthy of framing and hanging on your wall, it’s that beautiful, right? But we didn’t want you to stop and think about the art at all. We want you to get swept away in the story. And the beauty of the art work matches so beautifully with the storytelling, the characters, the music and everything. In all of the films that I’ve ever made, both at Pixar and at Disney Animation, honestly, it just that there’s a heart to these films. It’s the way that Walt Disney used to make films, and it’s what I’ve always loved about his films, it’s this warmth, this heart that’s in them. Walt always said for every laugh there should be a tear, and it represents the balance of heart and humor. And the humor always comes from the characters, not just a bunch of funny lines. It’s from the characters, the personality of the characters. So all these things wrap together to make this the particular style that we wanted to get, which is so classically Disney.
So why couldn’t you have done Ray or Louis with computers?
Eric Goldberg, one of the great animators, he did the character of Louis the alligator. I’ve known Eric for a long time. He did the genie in Aladdin, and he wanted to do Louis. And there is a way that Louis moves, we call squash and stretch, with the bounciness of all his fat and the liveliness of him. And when it’s done in traditional animation, there’s a believability to a character moving around like that. If you were to do it in computer animation, it would be done totally differently, and I think having Eric animate him the way he did it, it’s so perfect. It’s the squash and stretch. It’s the weight. It’s the believability of this large character being able to move around quite like that. And the same way Dopey, you know, there is a flexibility, a squash and stretch bounciness that he’s got that I think is so perfect.
John, I just want to go back to the story. Why do you think we still need fairy tales after stories about bugs and cars and robots have worked very well?
Disney, what’s at the center of every Magic Kingdom that the company has? It’s a castle, right? It’s at the core of what Walt Disney did, even though he didn’t do just fairy tales. He did a lot of other stories. But there’s something so perfect about a sincere fairy tale in animation. I don’t believe audiences have outgrown a sincere fairy tale. I think there’s a lot of heart to this. And we haven’t seen one in a long time. The last fairy tale that Disney Studios has done is 1991’s Beauty and the Beast. And I’ve always felt that you don’t want to do them every single movie, but it’s nice to do one every now and then, because it’s something so perfect for our audiences, perfect for the parks. It’s the princess brand—we don’t do it because of the products and stuff, but because it’s such an important thing for this company. And I love sincere fairy tales. There’s something really special, and it’s the thing I used to love as a kid growing up watching the Disney films.
Which one was your favorite?
Well, of the fairy tales, I think I liked Cinderella, because I loved the mice. I loved the balance of it—the fairy Godmother, when Cinderella gets her gown and the pumpkin gets turned into the coach, and then the music kicks in and they’re heading to the ball. It’s great filmmaking, you know? It’s fantastic, so I really loved that one.
The trend now seems to be stereoscopic, 3D films. What do you think of 3D?
Oh, I love 3D, are you kidding? We’re doing all of our computer animated films at the Disney Studio in 3D. Bolt was in 3D. You know, Disney has done two before I got here. They did two movies, Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons. At Pixar we’re doing all of our films in 3D now, which I love. I’ve always loved 3D. I have a collection of 3D cameras and I took a lot of 3D photography, mostly in the ‘80s, and even in 1988, when I got married to my wife Nancy, we took our wedding pictures in 3D, which was really cool.
Did you have live frogs for research?
The animators definitely had some frogs and watched how they moved and hopped. And alligators, too, they saw a bunch of gators. Fireflies are pretty hard to judge, so we mostly had to make up Ray.
Could you tell us a little more about the research that you’ve done in New Orleans in terms of music, specifically?
We went down to New Orleans. We listened to a lot of music. We studied jazz and the history of jazz and zydeco. The New Orleans Jazz Fest was a great place, because they had different stages for all the different styles of music. And the problem was we wanted to have it all, because all the music is so appealing, and I think that’s what’s so great about the music from that area, is it’s so unique. It only comes from there and it’s so appealing, jazz and zydeco and Dixieland and gospel, there’s something about it. Randy Newman was so familiar with all those styles. It’s a part of him. And, you know, it’s funny, it has seeped into the scores and the music he’s done for all the movies I’ve worked on. There’s a little bit of jazz that finds its way into Randy’s music. I knew he would be perfect to work with us. And he was fantastic, and I think that the opening song is a real anthem to New Orleans. It’s so special. And getting his friend, Dr. John, to sing the song, it’s one of the great moments in my entire career. We went to New Orleans to record that song, and sitting there with Randy Newman and Dr. John in a New Orleans recording studio with these fantastic New Orleans musicians playing this music, and going out and having a great meal, it was absolutely fantastic. And it was right around the time of the Jazz Fest, too, so we were able to see Randy Newman and Dr. John perform as well, and it was just really a magical time.
Why was having an African-American lead so important to you?
It’s what John Musker and Ron Clements wanted, and I supported them in that. With the type of story that they wanted to tell, they were very interested in doing that.
You are running three companies now?
Yes, the Pixar Animation Studios, the Walt Disney Animation Studios, and Disney Toon Studios, that does the Tinker Bell movies. So those are the three animation studios that I oversee, and then they call me principle creative advisor to Walt Disney Imagineering.
Is there still time for you to direct a movie, or do you feel a little bit sorry that you now have so much responsibility?
No, right now I’m not directing. I do direct the Cars Toons, the little short cartoons that we’re making of the Cars characters. I do get to direct those, which I’m very happy about. But I’m not directing any feature films right now because I’ve got plenty to do. I do very much. I love what I do. I’m happy as a clam. Are you kidding? Look what I get to do. I get to work with John and Ron and make these films, and Toy Story 3 is coming up, and Cars 2 and look at UP, working with Pete Docter, and Bolt was fantastic. I just love that. And wait until you see Cars Land at Disney’s California Adventure. Summer 2012, baby, you’ve got to come see Cars Land, it’s fantastic.
Thank You, John.
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