- 8 minutes ago
Alexander Woo ('In Your Dreams'), Domee Shi ('Elio'), Jared Bush ('Zootopia 2'), Liane-Cho Han ('Little Amélie or the Character of Rain'), Maggie Kang ('KPop Demon Hunters') and Ugo Bienvenu ('Arco') join THR in our Animation Roundtable.
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00:00I think we're constantly gut-checking ourselves, but I think, as everyone else has said, you also have to really follow your passion.
00:07I think it has to come out of what you care about the most.
00:10I don't know how you would tell a story without that sort of being your guiding light.
00:17Welcome to The Hollywood Reporter's Animation Roundtable.
00:20I'm Scott Roxborough, and let's meet our guests.
00:22First, we have Hugo Bienvenu, the director of Arco, which is a release with Neon.
00:27Jared Bush, one of the directors of Zootopia 2, Disney release.
00:32Leanne Chauhan, one of the directors of Little Amelie, or The Character of Rain, which is going out on G-Kids.
00:39Maggie Kang, the director of K-pop Demon Hunters, a Netflix release.
00:44Dominique Shi, one of the directors of Ilion, a Pixar film.
00:48And Alexander Wu, one of the directors of In Your Dreams, a Netflix release.
00:53Thank you all for being here. Thank you so much for taking part.
00:57Thanks for having us.
00:57Really happy to be here.
01:00Maybe we can start with more of a general question.
01:07What makes a great animated filmmaker?
01:10What is it that makes a great animated filmmaker in your mind?
01:14Patience.
01:16You have to be a super collaborator.
01:20You have to have a lot of stamina.
01:22It takes a while to make these.
01:24Yeah, you have to be, like, slightly masochistic.
01:28Because it's a painful and long process.
01:32And you have to love it.
01:34You have to love the pain.
01:35And the payoff of, like, watching one beautiful second of animation that you've boiled for months over.
01:44I think you have to also love evolving a story that you're not coming in with a story that stays for however long it takes to make.
01:54But it's this constant evolution that's aided by all that collaborative help that you're getting.
01:59And also, for me, it's like knowing every field, every field of the work, you know, every, you know, every métier.
02:09In France, we say métier.
02:10Every craft, every craft, because there's a lot of craftsmen and different, I don't know how to say, there's storyboard, there's animation.
02:19And to me, it's good to know every part of the job so you can explain and also work on it, help people work on it, and find solutions for them sometimes.
02:29You also have to, like, spin a lot of plates at the same time.
02:34Sometimes it's, like, hundreds.
02:36Sometimes it starts off at, like, five.
02:38And then it starts to become, like, ten and thirty and then a hundred.
02:43Because every single sequence or scene is in a different part of production.
02:49Yeah, I think you also have to love animation.
02:51I mean, it seems like that's an obvious thing.
02:54But I don't know that's the case for everybody.
02:56I think you actually have to love the medium in order to be a successful filmmaker right now.
03:00I think you have to be a real nerd about animation.
03:03You have to know the history of it.
03:05You have to know the technique of it, the craft of it, to really take advantage of everything the medium has to offer.
03:11Because it's such an incredible medium.
03:13You can do so many things in it.
03:15It's so versatile.
03:16So, I think being a real, you know, having really deep nerd love for animation really helps when you're directing.
03:26Well, this is a very deep nerd love place.
03:29So, you're at a very safe space.
03:31Maggie, maybe I can start with you.
03:36K-pop Demon Hunters has been a, you know, an amazing phenomenon, a cultural phenomenon across music, across film, across animation, of course.
03:45But you have spent a long, long time with this project.
03:50You were developing it long before Netflix came on board.
03:54I wonder, what kept you going over all those years, developing it to this original story, untested idea?
04:02And what kept you going all that way in order to get to this point?
04:07Passion, I think, is you really need that.
04:12I knew I wanted to see this movie.
04:16And that's the thing that really drove me the entire time.
04:19And every step of the way, you get, you're rewarded with just little small milestones.
04:26And like Tomi was saying, you know, a second of animation comes in and you're like, yay!
04:31This is like one second of, I don't know how many seconds.
04:33But yes, passion and just wanting to see this thing live.
04:40You're creating something out of nothing, which is, I think, the hardest thing to do as a human being, to like create something out of nothing.
04:50And when you see it slowly come together and then you start to build a team that is helping you see this vision through, it just keeps fueling you, no matter how hard it gets.
05:03What's been like to see this sort of cultural phenomenon that your film has become?
05:08I mean, what's been the sort of the, I don't know, the most interesting, strangest, or a joyful piece of fan-created art that you see come out of what you produced?
05:18Oh, fan-created art.
05:18I love the little fan theories.
05:21One of my favorite ones was like Rumi's holding the sword, her sword, and it's just Genu like coming out of it.
05:28It's not just Genu like that.
05:29But I love seeing all the fan theories, and one of my favorite things is just reading through the comments and fans just really understanding the story and the characters and their backstories and speaking on it like they were in the writing room with us and figuring out these characters and the depth of these characters and the nuances.
05:51Because a lot of things are kind of left unsaid in our movie, and purposely, because we just wanted to imply a lot of backstory, a lot of history, and the fact that the fans pick up on it and are sharing it with each other, I think has been one of the most rewarding things.
06:13Hugo, maybe go to you with ARCO.
06:16This is your first feature animation film.
06:20What was it about this story or this central character that compelled you to make this?
06:27What was sort of your personal connection to the story that made you want to take the leap and do feature animation with this film?
06:34I do science fiction since 10 years almost, and one day it appeared to me like super clearly, okay, we're living in a bad science fiction movie.
06:42And I thought, okay, it's because mainly, I think, because of us, because we're always telling a bad future story, you know.
06:50And if we just imagine the worst, it's just going to happen.
06:53And because human beings have the ability of bringing to the world their ideas.
06:59And I think if we want better things to happen, we have to imagine them first.
07:04And that's what gave me the will to do this movie and to put all my forces in it and to try to not criticize, just to create the possibility of a better future.
07:17Yeah, that's what gave me the will to do this movie.
07:19And when did you get Natalie Portman on board as a producer?
07:25She arrived in 2023, 2024, at the end of 2023.
07:30And we were like, we finished, we were finishing the animatic of the movie, but because we really, we produced ourselves in Remembers, this animatic, because it was really difficult to finance the movie on a script, because nobody understood.
07:48So we financed it, we did this animatic, and she saw this animatic, and she told us, what do you need from us?
07:56And then we decided to co-produce.
07:59And it went super fast.
08:00We financed the movie in like a few months, and launched the production, and it took us one year to finish the movie after that.
08:10Jared, I imagine it wasn't too difficult to get financing for Zootopia 2.
08:17But I want to know, what is it like to take on the sequel to one of the most successful and beloved Oscar-winning animated films?
08:26Yeah, well, as you said, no pressure at all.
08:31It was very easy jumping in there.
08:33I was actually hired to come to Disney in the first place 15 years ago for the first Zootopia.
08:38That was my first job at Disney Animation.
08:40So the world of Zootopia brought me here.
08:43So it has such a special place in my heart.
08:45And I'd say from the beginning, we wanted to feel like this was an expansive world, and we had a sense that there were a lot of stories to tell.
08:56I will say that it is very different jumping into a story where audiences know the characters, or they have a very specific connection to the characters.
09:06And to your point, we do have to walk this line between making sure that an audience is able to follow this character journey and see characters that they know, but also continuing to push boundaries.
09:19It's so important.
09:20And so I think more than anything, what we really tried to focus on was the character story.
09:25You know, in a continuation story for me, what I care about the most is the, you know, is how these characters progress through it.
09:32And for Nick and Judy in this story, we knew we wanted to interrogate their partnership more in the first film.
09:41You know, I think they'd been partners for about 48 hours to crack that case.
09:45Now what is sort of the next question?
09:47So, yeah, I think this is where having so many people have eyeballs on it and so many people here care.
09:54Because we, in our building here, we have fans of the movie that also wanted to create something special.
09:59And so I think we're constantly gut-checking ourselves.
10:03But I think, as everyone else has said, you also have to really follow your passion.
10:07I think it has to come out of what you care about the most.
10:10I don't know how you would tell a story without that sort of being your guiding light.
10:14I mean, the world has changed quite a bit since the first Zootopia film as well.
10:20I'm wondering, did that influence how you approached this film?
10:24I'm thinking particularly the sort of one of the core themes of the first Zootopia movie is the theme of diversity and almost multiculturalism, if you want to say it that way.
10:32Those terms have been sort of politicized since then.
10:36Does that make it more challenging to go into this film?
10:39Well, you know, it's interesting.
10:40I'd say what we really tried to do more than anything on the first film as well was use this movie to talk about human nature and the ways that we as humans interact with one another.
10:52And I'd say when the first film came out, obviously there was a lot of conversation about the themes of that and bias and stereotype.
10:58That was a major talking point.
11:01I think it felt very topical at the moment that the movie came out.
11:05But this is part of human nature.
11:07So I think something that we really tried to think about then and also now is what is sort of an evergreen situation that we may want to hold a mirror up to?
11:18And so whether that was talking about bias and stereotype for the first film, obviously those stories would resonate 10 years before that and 20 years before that and 50 years before that, as they will into the future.
11:29So I think one of the things we really tried to do in this story was to say, okay, there's sort of this DNA that we have in this world of animals, but how are we going to use our themes and evolve them so it feels like a continued conversation that's kind of always been?
11:46And because we as humans sort of we make the same mistakes over and over again, how do we talk about those?
11:54And Liancho, maybe I can bring you in with little Amélie.
11:59It's a very interesting story about a young Belgian girl growing up in Japan, very much cross-cultural story.
12:09Is that what drew you in or what was sort of the emotional core of the story for you?
12:15Actually, as you say, it's from a book, it's an adaptation from a book and from the book author called Amélie Nottombe, she's actually quite famous in French, in France.
12:25And I discovered the book when I was 19, so more than 20 years ago, actually.
12:30And I was not really a bookworm at that time.
12:33I was more into, you know, pop culture, Japanese animation, video games.
12:38But I was so moved when I read that book, moved by this unique gaze of this two and a half year old Belgian girl born in Japan who believes she's God, actually.
12:49And in this, of course, fascinating country, which is Japan, I mean, I was in love with Japanese culture that time, you know, because I watched a lot of Japanese anime and also this very poignant relationship with Nisho-san.
13:05And what really moves me is the evolution of this girl where she believes she's God until she has this disillusion to understand, you know, what life is, that you cannot control everything, you know, and how she bumps up, you know, to still love life.
13:26And, Domi, with Elio, it wasn't your original film, right, because it was developed before and then you came on as a co-director.
13:38Was that a particular challenge to sort of make the project your own?
13:42And what did you sort of latch on to in the story that sort of became the core of the film for you?
13:46The original idea came from Adrian Molina, and it was directly kind of inspired by his own life growing up on a military base.
13:56Being the weird kid on the base, but then when he had to step away to start Coco 2, Madeline Sharafian and I were brought on to kind of help finish the movie.
14:12But then with Strikes, we kind of ended up moving the release date, and that gave us a little bit more time.
14:20And, you know, at Pixar, we just take every free second that we can to try to plus and improve and see what more we can do with the film just to make it the best version it can be.
14:36And so Maddie and I kind of looked and examined at the character Elio and really tried to infuse him with a drive that the both of us could really kind of connect with and relate to on a personal level.
14:54And that was this, like, desire to be abducted by aliens and this obsession with being abducted by aliens and wanting to find a place where you belong.
15:06And that essentially was the emotion, that personal kind of aspect that Maddie and I brought to the project.
15:16I have to say, and apologies to Maggie, to Alex and to everyone else who had great music, incredible music in your film, but I have to say, you're opening Needle Drop, Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime is my favorite, Needle Drop, Cinema this year.
15:34Was that song always in your mind, or did you have any other options that you were thinking of?
15:39Yeah, you know, we were playing around with a bunch of songs.
15:43At some point we cut in Intergalactic by the Beastie Boys, but that felt maybe a little too on the nose.
15:50I always felt like that song really spoke to this, like, loneliness and ennui of kind of just living your life one day after another.
16:03And it just felt like, and I love how pretty and ethereal and kind of alien the opening is with the synths.
16:12And it just felt like David Byrne is kind of, I feel like he was probably an alien boy at some point in his life too.
16:21So a lot of things kind of drew us to that song.
16:27And when we cut it in and watched it for the first time, we were like, yes, this is it.
16:32So yeah, that's amazing.
16:35And Alex, can I bring you in?
16:38This project, In Your Dreams, it's also your first sort of feature debut as a director.
16:45You worked with Pixar for many years before you set up your own company to make this original.
16:51I mean, I think I've heard you tell the story before of how you actually cracked this story,
16:56because you were working on it for a long time.
16:58And the idea of doing a film set, an animation film set in the world of dreams is something that's been around for a long, long time.
17:05But it's incredibly difficult to sort of manage to pull it off.
17:07How did you, what was sort of the key moment for you where you actually did crack it,
17:11where you realized, okay, this is how I can make this movie?
17:13So yeah, yeah, so when we started the company in 2016, we spent that first year just sort of like playing and dreaming up ideas for TV shows and movies that we wanted to see that we felt like nobody else was making.
17:28And one of those ideas was an animated movie in the dream world.
17:31And we just couldn't believe that nobody had done it yet.
17:35We were like, this is such a goldmine.
17:37I mean, it's a universal human experience.
17:40Everybody in the world dreams, everybody across cultures, across time dreams.
17:44We still don't know why we dream.
17:46So it's such like a ripe space for mythology and for fiction and for stories.
17:51And then we quickly discovered once we started developing that idea, I was like, oh, this is the reason why.
17:56Because it's so hard to give a dream movie stakes, right?
17:59One of the things that's so compelling about a dream movie is that you can do anything, right?
18:04But when you can do anything and anything can happen, nothing really matters.
18:07So how do you give a dream movie stakes?
18:11And so, yeah, we were sort of banging our heads against the wall for a long time.
18:14And then the key that unlocked this was this idea that, you know, if Stevie and Elliot found the Sandman in the dream world, he could make their dreams come true.
18:25And then suddenly there was a connection between the dream world and the real world and things that the kids did in the dream world would affect their real world.
18:33And so that was the way that we sort of unlocked it.
18:35But just having a connection between those two things is still an answer that sort of this question of what's the core story.
18:42And so for that, I sort of drew on, like, you know, my own personal experience and my own family.
18:48And when I was, like, I don't know, like six or seven years old, I woke up one morning and my mom was, like, she had her bags packed and she was at the front door to our house.
18:57And she, like, left for a little while.
19:01And it was, like, really scary for me and my brother.
19:04And I remember watching her pull out of the driveway and leave.
19:10And at that moment, all I wanted was to find a way to keep my family together and keep it whole.
19:16And I told that story to my team and they were like, that's really juicy.
19:21That's such a rootable goal for a character, especially a kid.
19:25And so it was that combination of this sort of really intimate personal story about a kid just trying to keep her family whole with this big, fantastical, adventurous, spectacular world of dreams that we felt like, oh, that's a great combination for an animated movie.
19:44It strikes me that everyone, all the films here, with the exception of Zootopia 2, are original stories never before made.
19:52Is this a sign that, despite what everyone says about IP, IP, IP, that the industry is becoming more open to original animated stories?
20:02I hope so.
20:03But I think it's, whenever we pitch, whenever I pitch something original, I still get a lot of, we're not doing originals right now.
20:11Yeah, I mean, Jared, Domi, what is the attitude within the bigger studios?
20:15Is there still, is there an openness to more original stories or is there still a lot of fear around that because of the risk involved?
20:22I don't know, you want to jump in there, Domi?
20:25Yeah, I mean, from my experience, making movies, making animated films is hard and a financial risk, regardless of if they're originals or sequels.
20:38Just because something is a sequel doesn't mean it's guaranteed to be successful.
20:42I feel like, at least at Pixar, we're always trying to figure out how to continue telling unique and original stories that everyone kind of could relate to and love.
21:05But it's been, you know, to be honest, it's been tough.
21:09Like, you know, like you all know, like Elio was released this summer and, you know, got massacred at the box office, to put it, you know, bluntly.
21:21But the people who have seen it love it and it's just a big challenge and a big conversation right now in the industry of, like, how do you push original theatrical kind of films, you know, through all of the noise, through all of the media and content that's being released?
21:43And, you know, I'm so hopeful for original movies.
21:49I feel like, Maggie, like what you've done with K-pop is incredible and such a beacon of hope and light for original films.
21:57But it took you so long to make it, too.
21:59And, you know, I hope, you know, like with the success of films like K-pop that, like, big studios will be wanting to take more creative risks.
22:11How do you feel about it, Maggie?
22:12I mean, I don't know about everybody else's experience, but, you know, when you first start pitching a movie, you immediately talk to marketing.
22:21And they're always trying to, I don't know, that's kind of my experience.
22:24That's fascinating.
22:25I'm, like, learning so much from this.
22:27So marketing gets involved and has a very big say on what kind of films get made at a certain studio.
22:33And, I mean, I truly believe that the K-pop of it all, of our film, got it, you know, made and got it greenlit.
22:42And I was just like, I'm going to take this K-pop idea and make it the most Korean personal movie that I can make as a Korean creator just to see Korean representation on screen.
22:55And, you know, just like linking the mythology of our hunters, hunter women to Korean shamanism and just to be able to show the history of Korea, of Korean music, Korean dance.
23:12It's a very short sequence at the very beginning of the movie, but just as a Korean person and seeing and hearing from other Koreans as well, it's just such a, it's just, we've never had that representation, like, of our culture, of, like, these women just in different garb, like, traditional Korean garb.
23:30Like, we've just never seen that before.
23:31And, and my parents, I just, the first time they saw it, they were like crying.
23:36And so, I don't know, I, I'm a, I'm an animation kid that grew up in, in the big studio machine.
23:45I mean, I, I spent most of my career at DreamWorks and, you know, we're always thinking about what, what can we sell?
23:51Like, what, what is marketable?
23:53Like, what, what, what is, because like we said, animation can be at the big studio level, they're very expensive to make.
24:01So, you want less risk, which is, we always talk about the four quadrant thing.
24:07How many, like, what, what are the ideas that are going to get the most eyes on this, on this product, on this film?
24:15And so, I think that's just kind of how I'm thinking all the time.
24:18I'm always thinking about ways to, like, kind of link the marketability of an idea with something very personal.
24:25And then making, and finding a story within that, with a character's journey that is very universal and relatable to anybody.
24:34I think, for me, that's, that's kind of my recipe.
24:37And that's how I like to think.
24:39I think that makes a lot of sense.
24:40I mean, really, the reason I think studios want to do sequels is because there's, it's really a marketing angle, right?
24:49Because you've got a built-in audience.
24:51And so, it makes selling the movie a lot easier.
24:55And I think Maggie's right.
24:56Like, if you're able to find an angle in an original that makes it really easily, easy to market the movie, it makes the studio's job a lot easier.
25:05I mean, even for my film, like, it's a movie about dreams.
25:07And that's the big marketing piece because everybody dreams.
25:10Everybody's had that experience.
25:11If I just made a movie about a kid trying to keep their family together, I don't think any studio would have wanted to make that.
25:19But because I combined it with this big sort of fantastical world and this universal experience of dreaming, I think, you know, Netflix was really excited about it.
25:30I'd also say that, you know, I think that doing sequels only isn't a long-term business plan.
25:40You know, I think it's so critical to keep original stories coming through.
25:43I know that we're doing a lot of that here.
25:46Obviously, we've had sequels for the last two years, including Zootopia.
25:49But moving to the future for us, I think it is that kind of what's the new thing that's going to surprise people.
25:55And I'd say everyone's films here, which I really, what really came to the forefront is you can really get a sense of personality and what filmmakers care about.
26:04And I think that translates to the audience.
26:06I think audiences want to be surprised by something, to see something that feels unique and has a distinct perspective.
26:14So I think that's a real critical thing that we do as we're moving forward because it's really hard to know what an audience is going to deeply love.
26:21But I will say that sometimes they don't know what that is until a movie comes out and they really fall in love with it.
26:29And I think so much of that has to do with the distinct flavor of these movies.
26:33And originals are such an important part of how we do that.
26:36And it's so funny because every single idea was once an original IP.
26:41Exactly.
26:41So at some point, they were very up for all these IPs to be made.
26:49And now there's this fear, which hopefully we can't do.
26:55I answered also as an author, as a writing guy.
26:59To me, when you write an idea, even if it's a sequel of something you already did, you always have a pressure.
27:05I wasn't thinking as a producer, I was thinking as a notary, you always want to do the best with the idea that's before you, you know.
27:15But can I ask you and Nancho as well, because you work within the European, the French system.
27:21Obviously, you don't have as much money as you would in the U.S.
27:25I think we are a hundred million less than every film.
27:31More money, more problems, though.
27:35Do either of you see any advantages, though, in the European system in terms of creative freedom, in terms of, you know, the ability to take bigger risks?
27:44At the very beginning, when you're writing, it's hard not to limit yourself because you know you're never going to have the money to do whatever you want, you know.
27:50But at the end of the day, you write whatever you want and you have the final cut and you do.
27:56But also, I think it's different and Jan maybe will answer differently because also I made my studio because I wanted to control everything, the craft.
28:06I wanted to control the writing.
28:07I also wanted to control the way of doing it in terms of production and to protect the teams.
28:13And it's different because when it's your company, you take risks differently when it's not the case.
28:21And also, well, it's really, every way of doing it is different.
28:28And I couldn't answer generally for all the European authors or French authors.
28:32But it's true that in France, as there's not as much money, as you said, Maggie, we are in a way more free because there's less pressure, less economic pressure, I think.
28:46It's true, we have this amazing system with a lot of public foundings, but also different private foundings.
28:56And for example, our movie Little Amelie was, I think, around 9 million euros budget.
29:01But still, of course, it takes much more time because you have to convince a lot of different people, you know.
29:08I mean, our movie started, I think, seven years ago, but now eight because it's been a year we have finished it.
29:13But yeah, it takes much more, like, much more progressive.
29:17You have to convince, you know, slowly all the different investors to go to development and then later to script writing and then production, of course.
29:26So it's quite progressive.
29:27But you still have, you know, the same issues, you know, especially in our movie, because the book we decided to adapt is not a children's book.
29:37It's for adults.
29:38And with MyList, we always wanted to do, like, an intergenerational movie that speaks to kids, but also adults in a different way with different layers.
29:48And, of course, in our world, everyone has an opinion, an opinion about what the kid can understand or handle, you know.
29:56So it's always a battle, you know, between, of course, the production part, financing part, you know, and the artistic part.
30:05We have sometimes different vision about this, you know.
30:09So it's always still, even though we are more independent, let's say that, it's always, I would say, a struggle, especially when we are talking about, yeah, target.
30:20It is interesting to see the number of the films that we're talking about go to places that you don't often see sort of family-friendly animation go.
30:29I mean, Domi, I even think that's the case a little bit for Idio, because it uses sort of, I don't know, almost horror themes within its structure.
30:39Was there any sort of pushback from that?
30:42Did you get any notes saying, you know, take out the scary monsters?
30:44I do remember Pete Docter being a little bit concerned that it was maybe too intense at first.
30:54But then when Maddie and I pitched the idea in the storeroom, but then we just had to prove it out.
31:01Like, we assigned the scene to, like, a very talented story artist, Lee Tang.
31:07It wasn't even a full script.
31:10It was just kind of like, it was like an outline with beats of, like, Olga kind of, like, you know, kissing the clone on the forehead.
31:18And then he goes to bed, and then she opens her mouth, revealing a single hair.
31:24And, yeah, like, all of that was kind of just written very generally.
31:29And we gave it to Lee.
31:31He knocked it out of the park.
31:33It was, like, the first pass.
31:34He played it for us.
31:37I think Pete was in the room, too.
31:38And then we were all, like, laughing and, like, ah, like, feeling super tense and grossed out.
31:44But it was, like, gross and funny and scary.
31:47And you just can't deny when, like, a scene works in the room because you play it, and then you just feel the energy in the room.
31:54And people are, like, excited or there's, like, a stir.
31:57And that, you know, the idea proved itself out.
32:01And it totally worked.
32:02That scene was my favorite in the whole movie.
32:04The minute I saw it, I was, like, that is so Domi.
32:12Jared, I mean, I don't need you to speak for the studio system, but are there certain topics or even approaches that are still sort of taboo when it comes to animation?
32:24I mean, honestly, no.
32:26I know that that's, you know, something that people talk about a lot.
32:29I'd say that since I've been here, the only thing I've ever felt are people saying push farther.
32:36I think it's so important.
32:37We talked a lot about, you know, brave storytelling.
32:40I think that's actually what audiences want.
32:42I think there's always this fear of do we need to manage this for audiences?
32:46But in my experience, people like to be pushed or they like when they see a filmmaker taking chances.
32:52I think it's critical.
32:53So I'd say no.
32:55I'd say a big challenge that a lot of us have is how do you reach a very broad audience?
33:01And I don't mean that in a way that says, like, you have to sort of find something in the middle for everybody.
33:07But I think as we're going through our stories, you want to have a part of it that really appeals to adults, part of it that really appeals to kids, but all around the world.
33:16And I'd say that's, for me, a really fun puzzle because it doesn't mean that one joke has to work for everyone.
33:22It has to mean that there's these little there's candy and toys for everyone to discover as they're moving through the story.
33:28It's true, but you're talking about taboo in our movie, we met a lot of taboo, especially about death, because our movie is actually quite about death.
33:37Of course, it takes place in Japan post-World War, so 30 years later.
33:42So, of course, there's still some scars in there, you know, and so it was a big topic, I must say.
33:49It was very hard to convince, but I would say it really depends on how you show it, because we're still in the point of view of a two and a half year old.
33:57Little girl, right?
33:59But, you know, my son is eight, and he's very curious about death, you know.
34:04It just depends on the way, how you explain it.
34:08You have this scene in our movie where Amelie is asking, why do we die?
34:13And it's actually the same question that my son asked me two years ago.
34:18And you just, instead of trying to escape from him, from this question, Nishio-san actually tried in her own way to explain to Amelie, it's just the way we filmed it, it was not like a graphic with a lot of violence or whatever, or even on the opposite, we didn't try to mannerize the situation, because it's still a very tough history, what happened in Japan, you know.
34:43And it's not even our history as well.
34:45So we just have to try the right balance, but not escape from it.
34:51So that was one of our big challenges, of course, you know.
34:54So, yeah, to get convinced to explain that, no, kids can understand and handle more than what we think.
35:02Yep.
35:02And at the core, we're all trying to make our audiences feel something, you know.
35:06And I think it's so important as you're going through, even if it's a difficult subject, I think at the end of the day, we're trying to elicit an emotional response.
35:13And so that's where sometimes taking on more difficult things is a way to do that.
35:18I just don't know about everybody else, but from my experience, I feel like every risk I took where I felt, is this too much?
35:26Am I doing, are we going too far?
35:29It was always the right choice.
35:32So I feel like, I really feel like when you have that fear, it's the right thing.
35:39Like you should lean into that fear and just go for it.
35:44The emotion, you know, the emotions are muscles.
35:47And this is the role of stories, is to muscle these emotions.
35:51And so when we're in the face of a situation, we don't fall, you know.
35:55And to me, this is the only role of fiction.
35:57So if we're doing this job, it's to do this work for people too.
36:02And it's true about emotion.
36:04I believe that when you have watched a movie, of course it's great when the movie is great and you're happy about watching it, you know.
36:11But it's even better when it stays inside of you because the emotion really put a little mark on you, you know.
36:16And somehow, almost sometimes when it's even better, actually determine what you would be as an adult, you know, that could influence that, you know.
36:24Because the movie was emotionally so strong, you know.
36:27That's really, yeah, like the gold that you try to aim every time you try to do a movie.
36:34Like it stays forever inside of us, yeah.
36:36Yeah, I feel like, I don't think any theme is taboo for us in animation.
36:43I think it's more just about execution and like how do we utilize the power of animation to explore this theme in the best possible way.
36:53Like something that live action or documentary could not do.
36:57Like how do we explore grief or death or like belonging or loneliness?
37:02Like how do we do that with animation in the most interesting and evocative and emotional way?
37:10And does that freedom now extend to types of animation?
37:14I mean, you know, 3D animation is still very dominant in the U.S. system.
37:22Though, Alexander, I mean, you played around a little bit.
37:24You have a couple of experiments within your 3D.
37:28The two European films that we have here are both 2D animation.
37:34Is, I mean, is there more openness to different forms of animation so that everything doesn't have to be 3D CGI in order to be sort of seen as a broad popular movie?
37:46I mean, I sure hope so.
37:48And I think you're seeing that with the rise in popularity of anime.
37:52I mean, I think it's like the fastest growing medium, you know, at least on streaming because it's just exploding.
38:01And I think it gives me so much faith and hope in younger audiences.
38:05They see animation not as a genre and not as kids, you know, content, but it's for everybody.
38:12And you can tell so many different types of stories.
38:14And I think, you know, the Japanese filmmakers know that even the French filmmakers know that I think the American and the Western filmmakers were, you know, I think the people in the industry know that.
38:24But audiences in the West are a little bit slow to catch up to that because it's just been dominated for so long by, you know, family content.
38:34And I love family content and my film's a family film.
38:37But I also love, you know, stories that really, you know, tell more mature themes and deal with more mature themes.
38:44And, you know, even not just in thematics, but in the sequences that they're presenting.
38:50You know, ultra violent animated movies are cool.
38:55Anime does that so well.
38:57And I'm so like Blue Eye Samurai is so cool.
39:00I'm so glad it exists.
39:01And I think that, yeah, if, you know, if the, if this trend continues, hopefully that trickles up to, you know, the bigger studios.
39:12But luckily we also, you know, the new parents, they have been grown up with animation, Japanese animation.
39:19And we can, of course, you know, so we have hope that the parents of today will also teach their kids, you know, to watch also more animation and teach them with more mature animation as well.
39:31As they grew up.
39:32Jared, obviously you couldn't do everything on Zootopia 2.
39:35How restricted were you in terms of what you could do visually, stylistically?
39:39Because people are going to expect the characters to look like the characters in the first film.
39:43They're going to expect a similar approach and style.
39:45Was that, did you feel that sort of at all a restriction for what you're able to do within the film?
39:51Well, I'd say yes and no.
39:52I think that as you're heading into a continuation story, people want to see the characters as they know them.
39:58So if you, if you mess with it too much, there's a disconnect where, where people are feeling like, oh, here's, here's these friends of mine that I know.
40:05But I will say it was important for us to change our visual style for this movie.
40:10The first Zootopia, Judy Hopps went on this very Capra-esque adventure.
40:15And that was really a part of the, the visual design and language of that story.
40:20This one continues to push into noir a bit more.
40:23It's a bit more world story.
40:25I mean, this is a, this is a movie about the, our differences and, and how like all of us, you know, whether we're, we're the best of friends or whether we're not, there's these, these core differences.
40:39And, and are we, as a group, are we compatible or not?
40:43We really wanted to infuse that into the visual language of this story.
40:47And so I think people watching it will feel a pretty big shift in terms of the visual language of this.
40:52So I think, I think that's really important, again, as we've kind of all been talking, I think audiences, as much as they want to feel something familiar, they also want to be challenged.
41:02And that was really important part of the story.
41:04I have a question for you, Jared.
41:06Did you keep the models, the 3D models, or did they evolve for the second movie?
41:11How did you do?
41:13It's a, it's a good question.
41:14Yes and no.
41:15So we actually changed our software and our pipeline for this film, but we couldn't do it.
41:21We couldn't do it with everybody.
41:23So some of the characters are actually in the original pipeline.
41:26Other characters are in our, in our, in our new pipeline, which is Presto.
41:29And then sometimes we have those characters in the same sequences, but they actually couldn't touch each other because it didn't, that wasn't possible.
41:37And so, or sometimes we'd build a model in both in case we had a dominant amount of characters in one or the other.
41:43So I'd say yes, and it was a, it was a very big learning curve for that because we found with all these characters that had fur, the fur actually, I'd say the way that the properties of the fur changed quite a lot.
41:57And so we'd go, here's our character.
41:59And all of a sudden they'd be like poofy out here.
42:00We'd spend weeks and weeks just trying to get back to, you know, the look of the original film.
42:05So I'd say, while I think that the new software really helped us finish the movie, the learning curve was, was pretty aggressive.
42:13That's fascinating.
42:14I hate to bring this up, but of course I can't do a panel like this without mentioning artificial intelligence.
42:19Um, and, uh, we've seen, uh, new, uh, Sora 2 and new models come out, uh, spreading across the world.
42:27Uh, um, we have, uh, now I think open AI is say they're backing a, uh, uh, an animated feature film that could be, they claim we'll spend $30 million and we'll get a $200 million style, uh, animation, um, completely upending the way this process usually works.
42:44Um, I guess the general question for all of you, uh, um, what do you see, impact do you see happening now and, and what are you afraid of?
42:53What are you maybe hopeful for, for, for the, uh, the use of AI in, in animation?
42:58I can answer first.
43:00Yeah.
43:00I was just saying, who's jumping in?
43:02Yeah.
43:02I don't know if it's the right answer, but, uh, you know, when I was 20, my first animation teacher gave me my first advice.
43:09He told me, I'm sure in animation, don't try to impress, try to move people instead.
43:16And that's the rule I've been trying to follow, uh, uh, you know, so, uh, since then, you know, and hopefully for, and so the, the rest of the future, you know, and of course, what I can see with AI today is very impressive, very impressive.
43:29You know, I don't know if it's filled with soul, uh, I can still see it's still a bit empty, you know, and I still have the, how do you say that?
43:39The confidence that emotion, the craft of emotion, like Hugo said, how to muscle emotion will still be, uh, a human, I would, I would say, uh, and, uh, and I mean, I'm saying that, but I don't know, maybe not next year.
43:53They will prove me wrong.
43:54You know, I have no idea, you know, but, uh, I have the feeling that emotion is still a human property.
44:00Uh, uh, uh, uh, and I hope, and I believe really for again, many, many, many, many years.
44:05I think that, yeah, I agree.
44:08I feel like human creativity is at the very core of every single thing that we do.
44:13I, you know, um, one of the real luxuries, uh, that I have here is there's 700 people that work on, uh, any movie that we do here and everyone contributes.
44:24Everyone's idea makes it in the best idea always comes through.
44:28And it's because of all the different perspectives and points of view, um, ways of actually, you know, things that, that make these stories in these movies special.
44:36So that has to always be at the core.
44:38I don't think it would be a, uh, at least for me, it wouldn't be a Disney animated movie without that, all those different perspectives and people bringing those.
44:45For me as an artist, I know that whenever I'm trying to land an expression in the storyboard, I have to make that face in order to put it on paper and the, our animators do the same thing.
44:58There's a reason why they act after a scene, they record like a reference video and so that they can get into the character, feel it, and then be able to put that into the characters themselves.
45:09So there is this, this need of just being able to feel in order to represent it on screen.
45:17And I don't think that AI, I don't know.
45:20I don't think it'll ever be able to do that and we can tell like it's, there's like a lack of soul in it.
45:27And I don't know that, that spark, that, that human spark is ever going to come through.
45:32Yeah, I totally agree and I'm not, I'm not that worried because maybe I'm just being naive, but every time there's been some sort of technological innovation in the arts, um, there's always been a lot of fear around it.
45:47So like, you know, with CG, people are like, oh my God, 2D is going to die.
45:51And all these people, um, that art form is, is not going to be around.
45:54I mean, obviously there was a shift, but it's still around.
45:56I mean, two of our films that are represented here are 2D animated films.
46:01Um, and people still found a way to, you know, when, when, when I was coming out of college, there was this real big shift between 2D and CG and a lot of people ended up adopting, um, you know, the technology.
46:16And I wanted to be an animator, but I didn't want to use the computer because it was so clunky to me and it was so unintuitive.
46:22So I went into story because I could still draw that way.
46:25Uh, and I always felt like CG just didn't have the right human quality or human look to it.
46:30But now, I mean, they've been able, I mean, my film's CG and I hope there's a lot of humanness in it.
46:35And all the films that we watch now, there's, they're clearly able to evoke a lot of human emotion, but that's because there's human beings behind the technology and they're using it, um, just as their sort of pencil.
46:46So, um, yeah.
46:47So, you know, my hope is that AI will develop in conjunction with artists and with human beings.
46:53And that is what is going to make it great art.
46:57You know, you can't do without, without the person.
46:59Absolutely.
47:00Because AI is just giving us what we want, what we ask, but sometimes it's nice to, uh, to receive what we didn't ask, you know, uh, from some other humans to come from with our, our idea to elevate it actually.
47:11Right.
47:12And this little chaos, you know, in story when everyone is sticking together to build something, you know, that's, I'm not sure that AI can create that, you know, it will still be in our comfort zone.
47:22And also machines are not living that they don't feel the breathe, the breathe of the air, you know, they don't feel the, the heat of the, the fire.
47:31And our job is to, to tell all the, the, what is being alive, you know, and are we talking to robots or are we talking to people that live the actual world, you know?
47:42And, and I think this is the, yeah, this is why I think we're, we're going to be relevant in a future world.
47:49Yeah.
47:50Yeah.
47:50I think AI can't drive into work and have someone next to you in the car, yell at you.
47:54And then that gives you an idea that you then put into the movie.
47:57I don't, I don't think it's like those a thousand human interactions that contribute to our stories and it'll never have that.
48:04You know, in today's world, we have a lack of empathy more and more, you know, and not sure AI machines, trust machine will, you know, uh, uh, uh, maybe like that, you know, it's going to be, I don't know, maybe worse.
48:17I don't know, so it's, uh, also, um, good.
48:20I mean, I would say it's also important to not forget empathy in our movie, we try to create empathy, uh, as well for our characters, for our, for the, for everything, you know?
48:30So, um, yeah, I think that's hope, hopefully, uh, AI can still create that, create empathy for, for, for, yeah, for human beings, for, yeah, for nature, for everything.
48:41Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's inevitable, you know, AI is here, but I feel like, you know, it, it can be a very powerful tool, but we have to use it responsibly.
48:53And, um, yeah, at the end of the day, you know, yeah, like I think, uh, a human needs to be behind every choice, uh, in a, in a creative, um, work of art or, or anything.
49:06But do you believe you're, I mean, I mean, if I were, was doing prance, I would hate, hate my job, but when I'm drawing, when I'm drawing, I don't know, it's like, it's like being like in some, you know, making jazz or I don't know, it's like having feelings.
49:22It's like, like, ah, I did, I don't, I'm not making it, you know, you're, you're passing through so much emotions, so much, even doing it.
49:31And if I'm just like typing some, what I want to see, I don't have everything that makes my job cool, you know, and also what makes me feel better in my life because I have, uh, I have something, a tool to, to, to act in the world, you know, and to, yeah, to put my, yeah.
49:47I don't know, but I've met some, you said about like accidents happening, you know, like you go down a path and then you just end up in a place where you didn't expect, or like, you think something is wrong, but then you find that that's the right idea.
50:01And you can't really do that with prompts.
50:03Like you're, you're trying to get to like a destination and how do I get it?
50:07But, but you're not going to these other little crevices where it could be gold.
50:12Well, maybe I could just, uh, end with a very human question that since we're talking about the essence, essence of, uh, of humanity, I was fired a bit by, but Leon Cho said that the, um, that there are moments in, in, in, in, in, in film and cinema that, that, that stay within you, that stay corporally, uh, in, in your body.
50:29Can I ask all of you, just really briefly, what moment, or what is, one of those moments for you, uh, uh, from, from, from the past, maybe from childhood being first exposed to animation, or it could be also from one of your films.
50:42Is it something that you think really has, has stayed within you, uh, um, in, in, in your corporal bodies?
50:47In Spirited Away, when Chihiro, uh, receives a rice ball from Haku, uh, and then she starts eating it and crying.
50:57And then like Joe Hisaishi's piano music comes in.
51:00Like that makes me cry every single time I watch it.
51:03And it's so, it's so cute and sad and, and sweet.
51:07And, and you really feel her loneliness and her like, oh my God, like, what am I doing here?
51:12Like it's, it, and it's, it's so good.
51:14And the rice ball like looks so delicious and her like tears are very thick and they're kind of like running down her face.
51:21And then the music's picking up.
51:23Yeah, it's, it's, it's a perfect scene.
51:24And, and I eat and cry all the time at home.
51:27So it's very relatable.
51:29Yeah, when I was 16, uh, actually I discovered three, three movies.
51:35First Princess Mononoke, uh, which I will, I just go in the cinema first.
51:39And then I could have the VCD because it was, uh, released, uh, in France much later.
51:42I watched it 12 times in one week.
51:45And then, uh, the same year I discovered Grave of the Fireflies from Isao Takahata.
51:50Uh, I think I spent, uh, right after I spent one hour in my shower crying, you know, uh, and then I watched it.
51:55I don't know why five more times the same week, you know, and the same exact same year.
51:59I, I discovered another one.
52:00I don't think you know this one.
52:01It's called Roni Kenshin Tsuokuhan.
52:04It's, uh, it's, uh, and, uh, and I think this one I've watched it 50 times, you know, but, uh, you know, when you're a teenager at that time, 16, 16, uh, you're still, uh, you know, uh, immature, you know, because you haven't, uh, you know, have any experience of life, but still mature enough to try to dissociate yourself from your parents because you're also trying to build your identity, you know?
52:23So those three movies I remember really, uh, yeah, changed, uh, the, the course of my life.
52:27Grave of the Fireflies was mine.
52:29Um, I think that, that can of hard candy that she had, I used to have that as a kid and, um, seeing that in that film just devastated me.
52:41Um, I couldn't believe, uh, that that movie was made.
52:47Um, I mean, it's a, it's a war movie about two kids just trying to survive, um, the horrors of war and it's animated.
52:55Uh, it's, uh, it just, it's, I think it's one of the best, if not the best war movie ever made.
53:01Um, and then obviously Iron Giant, the Superman moment, uh, when he goes up into the sky and takes the bomb, um, I was like, you know, crying like a little baby when I saw that.
53:14That stayed with me for, uh, ever since I've seen it.
53:16I'd say for me, all of those as well.
53:19The other emotion that I remember feeling, I saw Jungle Book in theaters, the first movie I ever remember seeing in a theater.
53:26And it's also experiencing joy.
53:29You know, I think that, you know, I think in trying to figure out how to pull these deep emotions out, there is something to, especially now bringing joy to the world that I think is so critical.
53:40And that's something that I think that animation is kind of uniquely suited for.
53:45And that's something that always stuck with me.
53:46I think watching that movie for the first time and just wanting to hang out, seeing a friendship start and how much, um, joy, um, came out of that.
53:55To me, that really, uh, was something that I thought about a lot.
53:58And I think about as we're telling stories moving into the future.
54:01I think for me, um, there's a time when, uh, all the Chaplin films came out on DVD.
54:08And my dad bought all of them and we just bought, that's all we did all week.
54:12It's like, just watch Chaplin films.
54:14And the one that really impacted me was, um, City Lights, which is one of my favorite films.
54:20And just that last shot where it's just these two close-ups of the blind girl, who's no longer blind.
54:27And then, um, and, um, and the tramp and just, just being able to, like, feel all of the emotions of these two characters and in, in a movie that's silent.
54:39Um, and you, and there's so much problem solving with the characters and, you know, how does the girl find out that, um, know that, or, or perceive the tramp as like a, as a rich gentleman, even though he's a tramp.
54:52Like there's, there's stories that Chaplin, um, tells about like how he, how, you know, how, how he, how he kind of told that story without any dialogue.
55:02And I don't know, there's all these like little story problem solving things that he talks about.
55:06And I just learned so much about like telling stories just through panel mime and expressions and action.
55:15Yeah, great.
55:15No, as I say, I mean, it's, you know, uh, I just echo, uh, Jared, I think, uh, um, uh, if there's any time in the world history that we need joy, I think, uh, now is the time.
55:25And, uh, I'd like to thank all of you for taking part in this and for, for bringing, uh, joy to me.
55:30And I think to everyone who has watched, uh, uh, watch, watch your movies, thank you so much.
55:34And thank you so much for taking part.
55:36Thanks so much.
55:37Thanks everybody.
55:38It's good to see everybody.
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