00:00It's my favorite ride, and part of why it was my favorite ride is because it was so cinematic.
00:23New Orleans is a magic place, the food, the colors, the culture, but I really love the
00:29music, and you did a really good job with music in this movie. How important was to you really
00:36focus on that element?
00:38I think it's always where I start. I always have to build a playlist. I always have to
00:43know what a movie sounds like before I can direct it or even write it, and I was lucky
00:48enough to find who I hope is my lifelong collaborator with music, Chris Bowers, on my TV series,
00:56and we're able to talk about music really, really early in the project because it's so
01:02essential to the DNA of how I start to put images together, and the thing about New Orleans
01:07that's so wonderful is that it is the birthplace of jazz, and jazz is really the—it's
01:15one of the—it's got this amazing sort of history of combining spookiness and humor,
01:23really going back, you know, to its birth, and it just felt so integral to understanding
01:29the city and understanding the sort of tone of both the ride and eventually the movie.
01:36So, you know, by the time Chris Bowers is building a score, we'd have had so many conversations
01:40about what this thing should sound like, and we spent a lot of time listening to a lot of
01:45Quincy Jones scores because Quincy Jones, you know, famously sort of is combining jazz and
01:52classical music, and many other composers too, but that was a real—that was a real touchstone for us.
01:58How important was that period, the 90s, for your movie?
02:04Uh, the 90s?
02:05Yes, yes, I felt like these movies was more influenced by 90s movies, 90s culture, yeah, yeah.
02:13I see. No, we were—yeah, that's right. I mean, I would say it's probably like late 80s,
02:19early 90s, but it is the sort of before CGI comes in to that sort of fantasy horror kind
02:27of family movie, you know. I'm thinking about movies like Clue, I'm thinking about movies like
02:33Ghostbusters, Little Shop of Horrors, The Frighteners is a really good one too, more in the 90s. But yeah,
02:41those movies that sort of rely on practical effects that include and incorporate kind of
02:47the latest in technology, but there was an understanding in films then that you really
02:51had to build most of the effect in camera, and that has this amazing quality that even though,
02:57you know, modern movies we can push the limits in terms of what an audience can see,
03:02it's hard to beat those movies because there's something physically tactile about everything.
03:07You really feel like you're there, even when it's like stop motion effects and it's claymation,
03:12and it's, you know, maybe even feels a little chintzy now. It's still—you believe it,
03:17you buy it more than you buy just sort of pixels whizzing around the screen. So that was definitely
03:23a touchstone for us, and I had a lot of movies on the playlist for my team to watch from
03:29that era.
03:30How many times did you get into the Haunted Mansion to prepare for this movie?
03:38Once I got the job, maybe three or four times, but I had spent a lifetime riding that ride. I
03:45used to
03:45work at Disneyland. I can't even—hundreds of times. I mean, really, truly, it was my favorite ride.
03:53And part of why it was my favorite ride is because it was so cinematic. And as I was going
03:58to film
03:59school and, you know, making little student films and not really having near the budget I certainly
04:04had on this one, I would always just dream of being able to kind of, you know, do something with
04:09that much detailed production design and special effects work. So it's a real dream to get to do this movie.
04:17You are also working on the Landor Carlissian TV show, and Rosario Dawson is Ahsoka Tano. So
04:24is there any chance that we will see Ahsoka chasing ghosts in the Star Wars world or not?
04:31I have no idea. That's so far above my pay grade. I have absolutely no idea.
04:38Yeah, that would be super fun, though, because I certainly love Rosario, and I love—we rode,
04:44to, you know, we went to sort of the Star Wars section of Disneyland, and she is just the queen
04:50of Star Wars right now. I mean, she is so happy in that universe, and the fans are so happy
04:56with her.
04:57That would be a—that would be a dream come true. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye.
05:02Thank you.
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