Princess and the Frog

At SDCC, we were fortunate enough to sit with Disney Directors Ron Clements and John Musker for The Princess and the Frog. The Princess and the Frog is a return to the traditional 2D hand-drawn animation that Walt Disney fans know and love.

The musical The Princess and the Frog is set in New Orleans and shows us what happens when a beautiful girl named Tiana kisses a frog prince. Randy Newman does the score as well in the musical.

As we were getting ready to set up for the interview both Ron and John talk about how they attended San Diego Comic Con 20 to 30 years ago. They spoke about how the scale has changed and how it used to be about comic books and it was a sub culture. Of course they pointed out how there were no women there (everyone looks at me and we laugh).

Q: How close are you to finishing the film?
A: We’re pretty close. The film is all animated. We just finished animation totally last week. But there are different stages in the film. We are done with story, animation, we’re putting in color and we have 40% left in color over the next three months.

Q: Is the color computerized?
A: Yeah, it’s still sort of hand painted but there hasn’t actually been cells since Little Mermaid and that was the last.

Q: What is your favorite part of the film?
A: I like the music scores, I think Randy has done a good job. There is a number of good ones. A character that is like a voodoo fairy godmother she sings a song called, “Dig a little deeper”. There are things about all the characters that I like.

Q: What are some surprises in the movie?
A: There are twists that I am not going to give away that have to do with the emotional aspects of the movie. But there’s something with the ending of the movie that we’ve done that is very Disney-esque and yet very different than anything that has been done in a Disney film. There are aspects in the story that kindof look at Disney in a new way, re-examine Disney and what Disney is about and what Disney means to people.

Q: Is there a point where you thought 2D animation was dead?
A: There was a point where we thought, absolutely that 2D is dead. Michael Eisner had turned his back on 2D and felt it had no future.

Q: Now that it’s back do you have any nods or homage to older 2D?
A: I would say yeah that there are lots of nods and easter eggs in the movie.

Q: I heard that every 2.5-3 years will be a hand drawn film?
A: 2.5 – 3 years is the plan and there are two different ones on the board and we’re thinking the next film will still be a hand drawn film but after those. I think that actually sounds good, because if you did one every year you might lose the novelty of hand drawn.

Q: Has the break that you have had from feature film making impact your style at all?
A: Some productions techniques that Lasseter brought from Pixar. One of them is animatics of their sequences that is a stage between storyboarding and animation. Take every shot in the movie to plan where the camera went, lighting, and staging.

Q: Have you heard the racial criticism about the character in the movie?
A: All the criticism has been from people who have not seen the movie who don’t know the characters of the movie or the story. From the very beginning when this film was announced there have been issues. But everyone who has been involved with the movie and has seen what it is and that’s including from the very beginning and wanted to be sensitive to what we were doing. So we did alot of consulting. We’ve since previewed the movie, and the reaction we’ve gotten from everyone who has actually seen the movie that knows the story has been very very positive. If people have concerns, see the movie and a lot of the issues will go away. We feel good about the movie and it works for all audiences the way we hoped it would.

Here is the first trailer for the Princess and the Frog:
Here is a recent feature on the villain in the Princess and the Frog:

Ponyo

Disney and Miyazaki teamed up to release Ponyo, a story inspired by Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale, “The Little Mermaid”. The story follows a young and eager fish named Ponyo on her quest to become human. The following list of American voice actors are pretty impressive with Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon,Tina Fey, Frankie Jonas, Cloris Leachman, Liam Neeson, Lily Tomlin and Betty White all with parts in the film.

Hayao Miyazaki is one of the most influential and much loved directors working in animation today. He’s one of the few Japanese directors to have achieved general public success for his work.

Ponyo has a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes and if you haven’t had a chance to see it yet, go to the theater now. Here are a couple clips from the film:
During SDCC 09, we were fortunate to sit with Miyazaki to talk about Ponyo, his career and everything else. At the interview was Miyazaki, translator, and
John Lasseter. Enjoy the interview!
Q: In your movies we see alot of movies with concerns for the environment and what not and older characters that are greedy. I was wondering if you believe that people are born with a conservative mindset and learn to be greedy over time?
A: I don’t think we are born with a natural tendency to try to protect the environment. It’s something we learn if we are educated or brought up with manners to protect or care for the environment. At some stage in our lives the greed factor became stronger and now we are faced with horrible environmental situation. I think it’s if you are taught manners toward the environment or not.

Q: We hear so often on the differences between Japanese and American animation. Can you comment on the similarities?
A: The similarity is that actual people are the ones drawing the animations. And they are working with the same kind of feeling every day. Can’t I get better, can I draw better, can’t I draw more quickly those are the kinds of things we are thinking about. [laughs] When I meet animators we can really understand each other right away. Everyone is very honest with how you feel.

Q: Does your inspiration come from your dreams?
A: I try to fish out my own dreams by dangling fishing line into my subconscious but they don’t catch very well. When I get stuck on ideas I realize the surface of my brain that isn’t helpful anymore. I have to go way down into my subconscious. When I have a pipe into my subconscious is when I can release something more interesting that might resolve a dramatic situation or scene in films. But I have to come to real difficulties and really struggle with it for that subconscious to work.

Q for John: When did you first Miyazaki?
A: I went over in my first trip to Japan at a conference called Nikograph. The person taking care of me worked for Studio Ghibli during the movie Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind . He contacted them so I got over to visit. Prior to that, Miyazaki-san came over with a group of Japanese animators to Los Angeles and talked to a lot of animators in Los Angeles and that is when we first met. The first trip was November of 1987. I went to visit the studio and he was in production on My Neighbor Totoro . He appreciated my work and then he showed me around the studio and I’ll never forget the backgrounds were so beautiful. But this one cell of the catbus and I just looked at it. I didn’t need any translation…a bus that is a cat? I have to see this movie. Every chance when I go to Japan I visit him and when he comes over he visits me. I volunteered to help in every way I could with the english versions so Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and now Ponyo as well. I want this country to see his films because once you see him you love him.

Here are pictures from the Disney Animators panel at SDCC (look for other interviews to come soon!):

Miyazaki's Ponyo

Viz Media announced today that they will be producing a series of new releases based on Ponyo, the new animated film from Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki.

Viz Media will offer a 4-volume full color Ponyo film comic, a Ponyo picture book, and the ART OF PONYO. The film will be released by Walt Disney Studios in North America on August 14, 2009.

Ponyo is a retelling of the Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale “The Little Mermaid”.

“Hayao Miyazaki is without question Japan’s most celebrated animation director, and we are privileged and extremely excited to announce the release of this new collection of titles in support of his newest film, PONYO,” says Gozalo Ferreyra, Vice President Sales & Marketing, VIZ Media. “The film garnered rave reviews and grossed more than $165 million during its initial theatrical run in Japan, making it that country’s highest grossing movie for 2008. In an age of computer graphics, Miyazaki made a very bold choice to animate this film by hand. As domestic audiences have come to know and love this creative visionary, we look forward to them discovering PONYO and this new collection of impressive releases from VIZ Media!”

We hope to have more coverage of Ponyo from events at San Diego Comic Con. An interview with Miyazaki is unconfirmed at this point.