00:00Bravestar the movie. I wanted to do something with Native Americans. In space. Cowboys,
00:12Indians, rockets, heroes, and bad guys. And we had the perfect way to do it.
00:19New Texas was the roughest of planets. They needed a thousand lawmen. They got one.
00:25Bravestar. Possessing the eyes of a hawk, the strength of a bear, the ears of the wolf,
00:32and speed of a puma, Marshall Bravestar used his powers to protect the innocent.
00:38Aided by his sidekicks, 3030 and Judge JB, Bravestar faced the evil Stampede,
00:44his servant Tex-Hex, and an ugly array of rogues. But every legend has a beginning,
00:50and the feature film Bravestar the Legend told it. Called by many critics one of the most
00:55dazzling jewels in the crown of Filmation Studios, Bravestar featured astonishing effects,
01:00heart-pounding action, and moral lessons. Now, you can strap on your lasers, mosey on into the
01:07dusty streets, and learn how this dazzling and dramatic science fiction feature film came to be
01:12from the writers and artists who created Bravestar. Saddling up with Bravestar, the Legend.
01:19And so it begins.
01:26Bob Ford and Steve Hayes wrote the movie. Bob is an extraordinary guy, and he put his whole soul
01:37into doing something that he really felt eminently appropriate for him.
01:44The fact is, he was the guy you saw in the poster, leaning up against the wall, and all that stuff
01:51in the background, stuff flying in the sky. Indians, cowboys, you name it, he did it.
01:58Tom Katerinovitz was the director. And actually, I think it's his first feature direction that
02:05he ever did. And he had worked on the storyboard, and he really knew this. He knew the picture
02:12backwards and forwards, and he brought a lot of his own feelings into the thing. The kiss
02:18was his idea.
02:20Every year I go back to where I grew up in Detroit for a fishing trip with old friends.
02:27And in about 1985, 86, I went back from my fishing trip in the fall, came back to work
02:32after a week to be called up to the production head's office, and I thought, well, I'm in
02:37trouble now. I don't know what I did, but I did something. And that wasn't unexpected.
02:41And I got there, and they said, you're going to direct the Bravestar feature. And I was really
02:45surprised. I'd seen some of the development, thought it was pretty cool. I just never really
02:50thought about it. And all of a sudden, I was directing this feature film. And so I was thrilled
02:54by it. And dove in, started looking at all kinds of westerns, all my classic films. And I was trying
03:00to figure out a way to make it for the budget they had, and make it look like far more than
03:04its budget. Something I call geometric filmmaking. If something costs a dime, make it look like
03:08it costs a dollar. Don't just double how it looks. Make it like ten times better. And just
03:13figure out how to do it with different aspects. So it was a really great challenge, and I
03:17really appreciated getting the chance.
03:20Bravestar had to be the most anticipated show after He-Man that I worked on. All of us were
03:28so excited about what we were going to do with Bravestar that we just couldn't wait. Everything
03:35about it was exciting. Bravestar came along. We had our storyboard department, our layout
03:48department, our animators, all really fine-tuned to a high level. And so we were all ready to do
03:58this project. Bravestar had a master plan. We were not just doing a series, we were doing
04:07a feature film that would launch the series and be followed up by the regular episodes.
04:13So we were working on the feature. My role primarily was one of coordinating storyboard
04:21production. And also just some continuity things with the layout department and with storyboard.
04:32And dealing with the various props and settings and locations, we had to understand the world
04:37of New Texas and the characters to adequately present them for the big screen.
04:43I'd like all of you to meet a few of my deputies. They're all going to help me make this the
04:50kind of planet I like. The characters in the movie are Bravestar. Obviously he is the star.
05:00He's American of Indian descent. With a great, great bad guy. Tex Hex. Which actually he was
05:11developed for another series we were doing. And I liked him so much I said, let's save him
05:16and do a picture around him. And that's how all this started. Judge Bean was really based
05:21on the real character, Roy Bean, the western judge who was a hanging judge. But we have a young
05:28lady in this, so we didn't call her Roy. We called her Judge Bean. And the prairie people
05:35were the little animals that are always included for the funny parts.
05:41Looks like you outgrew me fair and square, Marshall. Too bad I don't play by the rules.
06:01I did some early animation on 30-30. I did the run cycles and some of the more broader animation of,
06:09broader meaning the more exaggerated animation of 30-30. Because he was like a sort of a very
06:16dynamic, sort of extroverted character. And you could do a lot more with his face than say the more realistic characters.
06:24I did a lot of physical action of 30-30 doing things. I always kind of enjoyed him because he was so over the top.
06:31He wouldn't just enter a room. He'd blow the door off. Or he wouldn't just tap somebody on the shoulder.
06:37He'd put his fist through the wall and grab you and pull you through. And that was kind of fun.
06:42To have a character that's so out there and everything was enjoyable.
06:46Without question, my favorite character in Brave Star would have to be 30-30.
06:53I really liked the character of the horse. I liked the voice. I liked the fact that
06:57he could change from a mechanical horse into this humanoid kind of figure.
07:02Everything about it was fun to me. I liked the relationship between the hero and his steed.
07:07He had good lines. Drawing him was fun. Animating him was fun. The relationship was fun.
07:12Everything about that was what I really looked forward to on the feature.
07:15And I thought the sequence where they meet was probably the best sequence in the movie.
07:19It was got to do the mood. Got to do everything we've been talking about with shadows and environments
07:25and pacing and action and comedy and drama and male bonding.
07:30Everything that goes into making a good little piece was in that sequence.
07:34I'm not going to try with me. I'm not going around.
07:41As I recall, one of the most interesting roles I had was Brave Star.
07:47Now, before this, I'd started to get a reputation of doing, you know, character voices.
07:51I'd do the villains on things. I did the Ghostbusters. Wait a minute now.
07:56So I do all sorts of, you know, interesting ducks, dogs, and villains, but I was never a leading man.
08:02Well, here I was given the opportunity to be a leading man in a character voice or in a cartoon series.
08:09And I didn't have the equipment. I was still a little bit green and like a tenor.
08:13So I had to go down as low as I could.
08:15And I remember that Lou told me, look, we don't want any big butch guy here.
08:19We want to have a kind of a gentle hero.
08:21So I thought, well, I'll try to do him like he's a hero, but he eats quiche.
08:25So I got his, and I remember telling myself, Pat, keep low.
08:29So that's where I got this and just did a slight Texas accent and that was Brave Star.
08:34So of all the wonderful, joyful performances and series we did, that sticks out in my mind because it was such an opportunity.
08:41Me too.
08:43You're afraid?
08:44Of course. Did you expect me not to be?
08:46I tried to record with a full ensemble cast. And in general, that's how it worked.
08:52And it worked much better. It was sort of like a radio play.
08:56And the actors could play off of each other and you get better performances.
09:00And I let them get crazy and ad lib and, you know, get their juices going.
09:05And then sometimes I'd have to rein them in a little bit like, okay, let's go back to the script, please.
09:09But in general, it was an ensemble and we'd go through the show from beginning to end.
09:15So you have a real sense of continuity and it's a real story as opposed to just little isolated sentences that don't mean anything.
09:26At Filmation, they didn't have guests.
09:28So what happened is the entire cast did every single character that was on the screen.
09:33Even Erica and Lou would come in like Cobbler's Elves at midnight and all of a sudden magically come up with the extra characters.
09:41And so we really got to work out.
09:43Now, when we recorded these, we always did them in order.
09:47We never would, for example, if I had a scene with myself as Brave Star and Thunderstick.
09:52You're going to get it now.
09:55And who's telling me what I do?
09:57Well, I'll tell you.
09:58You know, we had to go back and forth with it.
10:00So, hi, how you doing?
10:02I'm doing pretty good.
10:03What's he talking about?
10:05Well, I was talking about whether you guys got together.
10:07Well, I didn't know about that.
10:09So we had to go one after another.
10:11Now, sometimes we'd take a pause between those lines, but we never went in, as some production companies do,
10:17and do one character and then do the next character and the third.
10:21One of the amazing things when you're working with truly gifted voiceover actors is that the number of completely different voices that can come out of them is phenomenal.
10:36That it's a sin if you don't use all those.
10:42So why get twelve people when I can have four people who can do twelve people great?
10:48That's really what made the most sense.
10:51We weren't casting with names like goes on nowadays.
10:55We were casting with people who were completely professional and could do a ton of different voices.
11:01Whenever I was directing a session, I thought one of the most important things was that the atmosphere be one of fun.
11:10I was never really heavy, and if you do it my way or no way, creating an environment and fun.
11:16And what I really liked to do was kid around with the actors a lot to get them going.
11:20And I just enjoyed that whole process.
11:26Something interesting about Filmation is they did not rely on vocal effects or post-processing of the voice.
11:32For example, when I did Thunderstick in Bravestar, I played a mechanical hick and he sort of talked like this, right?
11:39So it was up to me to create that kind of mechanical sound.
11:44I really loved to get involved with all sorts of things.
11:47I loved sound.
11:50And I loved whether it was voices or whether it was sound effects.
11:53I even got to a place where when we were working on the Bravestar movie,
11:57I wanted to work on some of the sound design.
11:59There was these big sort of skeleton, huge cow kind of things at the end that were tearing down the place.
12:06And I remember getting involved with my little Mac Plus and my Jambox and mixing together Breaking Bones and Howling Wind
12:13and all these different sounds and giving those to the sound guys to lay in during that sequence.
12:19I really enjoyed the sound design work.
12:23By the time we hit Bravestar, we're getting pretty sophisticated with our sound work and the sound design.
12:27And people are really taking this stuff seriously.
12:30It may have been just cartoons, but it was real important to everybody who was working on it.
12:34I grew up loving Westerns. That's true. I used to go to Western serials and sit there for 10 hours and watch the same serial with Gene Autry and a beautiful Indian princess. It was wonderful.
12:49Bravestar the movie. Science fiction and Westerns can't do any better in life.
12:55And there's great visuals in this. We got a combination of prairies, mountains, and foreign and exotic looking villages.
13:05It's got, visually it was a wonderful picture. It is a wonderful picture.
13:10The visual look of Bravestar was pretty much set by the time I came on board.
13:19As far as what the character looked like, as far as what the story, the script had been done already.
13:24And so my job became to direct it and try to direct it very well.
13:29But they were also open to me changing things, adding things, trying to figure out how to make it more cinematic.
13:36To get me involved in the filming of the Bravestar feature, they assigned me the job of shooting and directing the rotoscope
13:43that was the live action reference for the animation for the stock package to be used first in the feature and then subsequently in the series.
13:50So we went out to Ventura, got a studio, and shot an actor and an actress going through various poses that we knew we could use for stock.
14:00And that got me familiar with what they were about.
14:02And I also was able to go, okay, well this is a western so I do need the down shot to look at the two guys walking at each other.
14:09That's going to figure in many, many episodes because people don't do gun battles in Bravestar, but there's the face down.
14:15The task at hand in doing the Bravestar feature became how to get a lot of production value for the budget
14:20while doing something that could be worked in the series without being detected.
14:25And to that end, I decided that it would be good to put shadows on characters.
14:29Now back then, very few animated products had shadows on them.
14:34If you looked at the Disney features from that point in time, they didn't do shadows.
14:37Shadows can be a real technical nightmare if you're not careful.
14:41But I thought, okay, if we just do this and we pick the sequences, I didn't do it in every one, but in certain sequences with lighting,
14:47like when Bravestar's talking to the shaman in his cave or a night scene, adding shadows gave it a production value
14:53that just really pushed it to another level.
14:56But for the TV show, because shadows are a separate level, you don't have to shoot them.
15:01And they could use it, and so that was a quality concern for the feature.
15:08When it came time to do the series after the feature film was finished, we mined a lot of, well,
15:17Kerium, we also mined a lot of animation from the feature film to use in the series.
15:24The transformation of the town, a lot of the action sequences, everything, there was just rich, excellent, excellent animation.
15:32And that we incorporated in our stock system and our same-as system, or otherwise known as our reuse system.
15:43With as much anticipation that Bravestar had, it is a tragedy that it didn't last longer.
15:49There were some things that just didn't fall into place in the right order, in the right timing.
15:56We had Toyline going out, we had a feature film that was going to go into theaters,
16:01and we had the series to come on in the fall.
16:05They had to hit at the right times to build the momentum so the series would be a success.
16:11If you need me, I'll be around.
16:19The Bravestar, the film, was introduced by this feature.
16:26And it introduced all the characters, basically, that were used in the features of the whole series.
16:31You got the little guys coming out of the earth, the big guys coming out of heaven,
16:35you got the Indians in the beginning, you got all the background.
16:38And the film, unfortunately, didn't find an audience.
16:43I can't tell you why.
16:48It's the fate of what happens in these things.
16:52It's the best film and the best series that I ever was involved with.
16:59It was fascinating.
17:01It may have been a little too old for the audience.
17:04I hope with this release you fans will find something that you've never seen before on television
17:10and really an extraordinary, wonderful film with great characters.
17:15I'm surprised and delighted at how many people remember my work in the 80s.
17:23I try to give them as many interviews as possible, email interviews, and be as responsive as I can.
17:31And it's always a pleasure for a performer to know that there's an audience out there.
17:36That's why I got into it, and so it's a pleasure to hear from fans,
17:40to know that I delighted them when they were sitting Indian-style in front of the TV at six years old.
17:46I think my job goes along with, you know, cereal.
17:51You know, they were eating cereal and listening and watching me.
17:54It's thrilling to think that the Brave Star movie DVD is coming out because it gives an audience a chance to find something that's been kind of lost out there as far as animation history.
18:09It was a show that came out towards the end of Filmation.
18:12And all the stakes were changing in animation.
18:15Direction was paid everywhere, so it couldn't have the hit that it should have been.
18:19And the feature had a lot to it for a young audience.
18:22It had a very scary villain.
18:24He was very dark, much more menacing than you expected.
18:27He'd be drooling.
18:28The hero was a really cool-looking hero.
18:30If I were a young boy, he'd be the kind of hero I would want to draw.
18:33The women were very pretty.
18:35They had very rounded personalities.
18:37You know, there was a real relationship in the film between JB and Brave Star.
18:41It had a message to show between about discrimination that's really a good thing that is almost totally lacking in all aspects of children's film these days.
18:51And so it's a really worthwhile project.
18:57The world is really different now from how it was when we were making shows.
19:01And I think that what we were able to do, create all inside of this country, all inside of our one little building there, is really phenomenal.
19:14I know that we stretched every cent out to put it on the screen.
19:20And I'm really proud of what we did and kind of, you know, the kind of tricks that we had to do in order to make it look like a big production.
19:31It's easy to do big things when you've got tons of money.
19:35It's hard to do big things when you don't have tons of money, but boy is it creative.
19:39And there is a lot of creativity running around Filmation.
19:42Maybe not a lot of money, but a lot of creativity.
19:48Brave Star is one of the best productions that Filmation did.
19:51It was, I think, the crowning achievement.
19:54I believe that as more people discover and rediscover it through this DVD set,
20:01that it will take its place in the halls of achievement in animation.
20:10I really believe the Brave Star feature is a genuinely entertaining movie.
20:13I know when we showed it to the whole crew,
20:16Lou rented a theater nearby,
20:19everybody seemed to love it.
20:21It was fun.
20:22It was something that everybody was so proud of working on.
20:25And the story worked.
20:26It felt like a film.
20:27It didn't feel like something that was a TV show that kind of made it to film.
20:30We really, I believe, pulled it off.
20:33And this is credit to the crew.
20:34Pulled off something that met the entertainment standards of what it should be.
20:51Here's my fondest memory of working on Filmation.
20:53Erica Schreimer used to have to, you know, keep us.
20:56We were, you know, it was chaos.
20:58And she would contain it.
20:59Although not dampen our spirits,
21:01because that's what an animation recording session is all about.
21:05Wild and woolly, ad-libs, lines that don't fit in, retake them.
21:11But we were amused.
21:12But she would keep us contained.
21:14But then once in a while she'd have to get a little taciturn with us.
21:17So at one point, I remember one show, she said,
21:19OK, knock it off.
21:20You know, let's get back to work.
21:22And she used to have a rolling chair that she used.
21:25And so just after she announces that we have to get ready,
21:28she leans back with a little bit of pride.
21:30She was a young gal then.
21:31And she went way up in the air, over backwards.
21:34And she was such a good sport that she laid there for a while
21:38and kicked her legs up just to amuse the other children.
21:42Nice memory.
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