Rango marks the first full-length animated movie to be produced at ILM.
Its an excellent piece of cinema, and richly deserves to be seen.
Rangoalso marks the first animated movie to be produced by ILM.
Ad content continues below
Heres how we got on…
Can we start by talking about your position.
Your role in the process is the animation director.
So, youre presumably the link between director, Gore Verbinski, and the animation team at ILM.
Or is that a bit too simple?
Tim Alexander and I and John Knoll were.
Tim was the main visual effects supervisor, and John as well.
And we all worked together.
And we would usually have the artists in the room with us.
So, there was that, as well.
It went the other way, as well.
Animation traditionally, at least in recent times, is a two director job.
Was this one then Gore, and the three of you within ILM, pushing this forward?
Id have been animation supervisor.
But hes very hands on.
Hes not a micro-manager, but he wants to see every stage.
He knows what he wants and hes not sending us on safaris to find this and that.
He knows where hes going.
And everybody likes a strong hand on the tiller.
Which is so rare.
Thats extremely rare in animation.
It is, it is.
But I think, particularly since this was our first animated feature, it helped us a lot.
We just felt very confident about the story and moving ahead with it with a clear vision.
We didnt have the demoralising thing of everyone having to stop work and redo whole chunks of the movie.
Because youve never tackled anything before where ILM has controlled the frame from start to finish?
Its a good point.
The company that comes in and does their bit and hands it off to them.
This was more, though.
He stressed this from the beginning.
He came and had a big meeting with the artists and said, This is a different animal.
I want to be in partnership with you guys.
Im inviting you into my family to be part of this from the beginning.
And I think that was a huge morale boost.
Everybody yearns to have more creative input, and more people are included in the circle.
He really wanted everyone to think of it that way.
The timeline was we went down for first visits with Gore in January, February 2008.
And at that point, the story was up in note cards on the wall.
There was art work.
They had the story team together.
Those guys were beavering away and that part of the process was pretty conventional.
So, that was conventional.
I think what was unconventional about it was that it wasnt taking place in a studio.
They werent getting studio notes at this point.
They were able to do what they wanted and get that down.
While that was happening, Crash McCreery was beginning to put together the characters.
There was Gore, Jim Byrkit and Crash McCreery.
There wasnt a giant team or group think and focus groups.
It was these guys, in this house, trying to do what they wanted to see.
Paramount became a partner along the way during then.
Priscilla was one of the first characters.
So, then we start animating, and in November of last year, we wrapped.
The rodent hideout, for instance.
There were some last minute changes going into, and after, the Christmas break.
Trimmed a few frames out of this shot.
Massaging the cut time a little bit.
For all intents and purposes, we wrapped then.
Were the changes coming from test screenings or from Gore directly?
It was Gore tightening up the film.
Its longer than your usual animated film.
That struck me afterwards.
90 minutes, 100 minutes is about the norm.
Youre just a little longer than that?
I think without credits now were close to 100 minutes.
I think at one point it was 106 minutes without credits.
It got tightened down.
Here, youre populating the entire film.
Is there a difference when co-ordinating the interaction between two animated characters and a human and animated character?
Because Ive no idea which would be easier.
You know, its a trade off.
Ive thought a lot about that since we started the project.
But theres less of a burden with something like this, when its one-hundred percent stylised.
Theres also no effort needed in terms of integration.
Integrating stuff is a whole slew of problems that has to be overcome.
On the other hand, were creating everything in the frame.
Its more of a blank slate.
There is a framework.
Theres a storyboard and a layout, which they get from a layout department.
So, they have some foundation that theyre building on.
And, of course, theyll have Gores direction.
He usually keeps it light.
Hell explain what a shot, or an individual group of shots function is in the story.
Where the character came from, where hes heading next, what his mental state is.
The kind of acting notes you might expect.
Its kind of up to them to go for it.
Its awesome, particularly for the animators to be able to do stuff.
For one thing, visual effects is generally more action driven.
Action, as a whole, has its own problems.
A really great sequence can be difficult, or more difficult to pull off, than acting.
And yet, you have some exceptional action sequences in this film anyway!
The animators got to do both.
It was really fun, too.
The sequence you kick off with, with the camera zipping around the road, is quite brilliant.
And Gore is a very camera-savvy director.
For instance, they established a lens package for the film.
Were not going to have arbitary focal line lenses.
And they stuck to it.
But, in general, it was always a specific lens, and he knew what it was.
And I think with camera movement as well, he wouldnt fly the camera around.
This should feel like the camera is a on a technocrane or whatever.
That was always the goal.
Fabricating anomaly was Gores favourite expression.
He always wanted that awkward, weird, uncomfortable feeling, rather than broad slapstick.
I mean, there are some broad moments inRango.
There are a lot more moments where characters are standing there looking at each other.
That was a tricky thing to get to for the animators.
It was a case of dont just do something, stand there.
It doesnt have to move all the time.
Another example is like the mariachi sequences.
There was classic appeal in the design.
Theyre probably some of the most appealing characters we have in the film.
But those guys have classic appeal.
And theres a lot of reference online.
Theyre not playing around.
Its a serious business to them.
Theyre proud of what they do.
And theyre here to tell the story of the hero.
Its a very important job that they do.
Thats what he really wanted out of these guys, that they look totally serious.
That was another of those little journeys we had to take.
I think thats another thing, too.
Elgin, the cat at the bar, definitely look likes hes got a backstory.
And theyre all meant to feel like theyve got interesting stories to them.
One thing I wanted to talk to you about is eyes.
Rango, as a central character, isnt an easy one to sell to us.
Was it the hardest thing for you to hammer down?
It was the scariest thing.
Right from the beginning, they had those great drawings of Rango and he always has those eyes.
Jim and Gore had gone to a vivarium in Southern California, right when they were just starting out.
So, when we started with Rango, I was worried.
I loved the design, but I was concerned with having his eyes almost entirely covered with flesh.
The worry we had, though, was are we getting used to him?
We loved the idea, and we went for it, but I was absolutely worried.
Just bumping those up a bit made him a lot more accessible.
You kind of go, Lets just try bumping his pupils up a little.
And we did, and we get it rendered, and we go, Oh, yeah.
What are the other microscopic changes that weve not made?
You have to trust that theres some validity to what youre doing, otherwise you kind of get paralysed.
That was one thing.
And its not just left-right-up-down.
It was every permutation of that.
It was kind of a long road to get those eyes working the way we wanted them to!
One last question, then, and it might sound a bit odd.
But when did you first get the gut instinct thatRangowould work?
Where was the point it clicked?
Not that I thought it was failing.
Just that I continued to worry.
You never knew how the whole film is hanging together until its done.
We had some inkling, because our story reel didnt continue to change once we started working on it.
But still, you dont know.
You just have your fingers crossed.
And that was our first lump of stuff that all looked great and was presentable.
And I think that was really the point where momentum started to build.
Excitement began to overpower fear!
Rango is out today.
Check back next week for our chat with ILMs Tim Alexander, too.
