00:08I've been thinking for many, many years about the notion of making a music-driven film where
00:14music was part of the narrative. I shared these ideas with Garth, the director, over
00:20tea in London, and he lit up.
00:23My next show is going to be, drum roll please, a singing competition.
00:30It's one of those ideas that you, as a storyteller, you can instantly see the potential for in
00:34every direction.
00:35What I saw in Buster as a producer, he began to see in Buster as a writer-director.
00:42I could take a lot of characters and I could put them all through this extraordinary process
00:47of trying to make their dreams come true through music. And music is such a powerful way to
00:54tell a story. It makes everything so universal.
00:57What did he say?
00:58He said $100,000. A hunch?
01:09Her face doesn't need to be so sad, it just needs to be lost.
01:14He comes from some experience with live action, so animation has been all very new to him,
01:19but he's been the most enthusiastic learner.
01:22The face kind of moves as if there's a thought going through his head. I thought, yeah, I'll
01:26be fine. See, I've done live action movies and loads of things like that. He'll be fine.
01:30It was totally different. And it's like working on a giant, like, production line. Moving your
01:37movie from department to department. So it began, obviously, with the script, but then very
01:41quickly started to design the characters of the world.
01:54There are a lot of great things about making a movie with illumination, but one of the best
01:58ones is working with Eric Guillaume, because instantly your world is unique.
02:05We wanted it to be beautiful, and we wanted it to be a world that, you know, you could
02:09really, to quote Chris Melodandry, crawl into. We went for a California-style city, sort of
02:17somewhere, I think it's kind of a match between San Francisco and Los Angeles with some Miami
02:22three sort of color schemes thrown in there just to sort of keep it delicious. We had
02:26those influences, and then just infused all of that into our set desires. All the animals
02:31in the movie are based on a sort of human caricature. It was important that the audience watch
02:38this movie and recognize the characters in it, even though they're animals.
02:42Yes, that was very bad.
02:45We've got characters of all sizes. There's little characters, there's big characters, enormous
02:50characters. They all live in this world together, which is really special.
02:54Can I have everybody back to the stage, please?
02:58With the casting, we'd stare at Eric's designs, and we'd begin to listen to voices.
03:03You're joking me. We're going to be spicy, no?
03:08I mean, I would do it, but I, no, I just, no.
03:11Because like my dad always said, don't let fear stop you from doing the things you love.
03:16You like that, Carl?
03:17The actors don't just give us voices to work with, but their personalities are completely
03:22influenced the way each individual is being animated.
03:25What? Are you okay?
03:28Oh, yes, I'm fine. Thank you.
03:30How are you?
03:38For us to make a movie of this scope with this many characters takes an army, and we have
03:46probably 400 people who work at least a year in various departments bringing this to life.
03:53Like, don't we have people that do all this stuff?
03:55One of the most wonderful things about writing and directing an animated film is you get to
03:59push every single button that there is in movies.
04:02You can do something dramatic.
04:03You can do something ridiculous.
04:05If it fits, it works.
04:07And that is very much the spirit of our movie, that universality and that infectious optimism.
04:12That feeling of touching an audience and just lightening their day, it has become a hallmark
04:20of what an illumination film is.
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