00:08Oh, my God.
00:32Oh!
00:51During movie making...
00:52...sometimes you find...
00:53...characters that really stand out...
00:55...and become this happy surprise in the story.
00:58And Scrat was one of them.
00:59Scrat was one of the characters that we developed for Ice Age 1,
01:04and it came from a need to find an opening sequence for the movie.
01:07So we went through Peter's drawings, and there it was.
01:09We added the saber teeth, and we gave him an acorn,
01:12and his whole issue was born.
01:14And that's when the idea of that glacier sequence
01:16became the opening of the movie.
01:18Very simple storyline, no dialogue,
01:20just having this little character just run for his life
01:23with the one thing in mind, the nut.
01:25People just loved it.
01:27Everybody who saw that sequence just so identified
01:29with this poor little guy, that he just got a life of his own,
01:33and we just ended up using him throughout all three movies.
01:36Scrat sequences are a dream in a way because it is pure animation,
01:40just to have fun and do slapstick and not be tied down by dialogue.
01:45But after three movies, it does get challenging
01:47because it's okay, what have we not done with this guy?
01:53The most important thing in the Scrat's universe is his acorn.
01:57That's all he cares about.
02:00And writers came up with something brilliant
02:02by coming up with the one thing
02:04that could possibly compete with that,
02:06and that's Scratay.
02:08Scratay is the perfect foil
02:10because she's beautiful, she's cunning,
02:13she's everything that he isn't.
02:22When I was designing Scratay,
02:24I knew she had to be the opposite of Scrat.
02:27So she had to be beautiful, she had to be smart.
02:30All the things that he's not.
02:31Scrat is this nervous, twitchy character,
02:36not particularly well-groomed.
02:39She's elegant and smooth.
02:41He just wanted her to look as beautiful as she could be
02:44because Scratay has to look at her
02:45and just fall in love immediately.
02:47So we give her long eyelashes with a little bit of blue,
02:50so we just make her really feminine and funny.
02:58Scratay did start out being a lot more instinctual,
03:01and then we started seeing her look.
03:03Playing against Scratay actually worked a lot better,
03:05and that sort of started to mold her personality.
03:08Her movement's really different
03:09because she's very straight with her poses.
03:12Scratay will pop and just jerk into a motion.
03:14She'll do a swirl.
03:17The uglier and the more disheveled and pathetic you get Scrat,
03:20the funnier he is.
03:21But you always have to make sure
03:23she's looking as good as possible,
03:24and that's where the comedy is,
03:25the contrast between the two.
03:28And we kind of thought,
03:29what if both Scrat and Scratay have the same goal, the nut?
03:34Like, we can create this great, fun little kind of like spy versus spy
03:37kind of thing that they keep, like,
03:38trying to outsmart each other to catch the nut,
03:40and then therefore, by doing that, they find love.
03:44Then the concept came up with a love triangle.
03:46Scrat, nut, and girl. Scratay.
03:48The Scrat sequences in general are not scripted.
03:51They are all invented in story and with the director.
03:55Carlos definitely had the idea of, you know,
03:58the Scrat arc, meeting the girl,
04:00and a basic idea of what would happen,
04:02but as far as every individual sequence,
04:05they leave it to us.
04:07Oh!
04:09The first thing we do is the first rough pass,
04:12rough, dirty, awful-looking drawings,
04:14and then you pitch them in front of the whole room.
04:16You act it out, you do voices,
04:17you're really trying to get the room to laugh.
04:19And then falls like a rock.
04:20No!
04:23Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out!
04:24Get out! Get out! Get out!
04:25The Scrat tango sequence.
04:27That was my assignment, and I thought,
04:28well, okay, they need to be fighting over the nut.
04:30It's gotta be fun and funny, and...
04:32So then the next part was me just trying to sketch out
04:34the choreography, seeing how it would work with their tails,
04:37and bringing squirrel-ness into a human dance.
04:40Just weeks of just doing gags.
04:41And then Carlos basically just picks his favorites,
04:44and, uh, the tango was born.
04:46The tango sequence took 33 days, about five weeks,
04:49because there's a lot of play between
04:50who's holding the nut, where it's going,
04:52so it takes a great deal of polish time.
04:54We looked up on YouTube on how to dance tango,
04:56and I think one of the coolest responses
04:58was when the storyboard artist noticed
05:00that I did a backwards ocho
05:01in one of the shots I did.
05:03So I actually have very specific tango moves in this,
05:05so it's all a collaborative effort
05:07that made that sequence extremely painful,
05:08but extremely rewarding at the same time.
05:10It's one of my favorite sequences in the movie.
05:12It just shows, like, how, you know,
05:14how fun and painful love could be.
05:16One thing about, like, the original Scrat
05:18was thinking what's gonna be the voice for Scrat,
05:20so we just put temporary voices just to see.
05:22We needed some sounds,
05:24so I, um, connected with my inner Scrat,
05:28and the noises just came voluntarily.
05:31Mostly it's effort sounds.
05:32Scrat, you know, gets surprised by something.
05:36It's a kind of a...
05:41He's getting bopped on the head.
05:42It's kind of the same sound, only just...
05:44Bang! Boom! Bang!
05:47Things like that.
05:52It matched so perfectly.
05:54We said, why look elsewhere?
05:55Like, we got the talent right here.
05:57And Chris became, like,
05:58the signature voice of Scrat
06:00and was wonderful.
06:02And then when we defined the Scrat girl,
06:04I decided, let's look inside again.
06:06Let's go through the same process.
06:08And Karen Disher, she's been doing
06:09a lot of voice temps for us.
06:12I've been doing Scratch voices since I started.
06:14So I think when they needed a temp voice for Scratte
06:17at the beginning of production,
06:19they're like, oh, well, just bring Karen in.
06:20Which is, for me, like, a lot of fun.
06:22When you can come into the booth
06:24and they're like, okay,
06:24you're falling down a cliff.
06:26You know, you're being punched in the stomach.
06:28You know, it's...
06:30It's a funny and weird thing.
06:33In terms of vocalizing,
06:35it's tricky because Scratch is so great.
06:37Chris Wedge does such an amazing voice.
06:39So how do I keep this animal in the same family
06:43but different at the same time?
06:44So, for me, that was thinking of
06:47little sexy kind of things,
06:49like little purge you could do,
06:50little come-hither squeaks,
06:52which is difficult to do.
06:56There's big furry paws to fill in a lot of ways.
07:00Pretty clever.
07:01I don't know where she gets it.
07:04I just don't.
07:05I was not expecting to end up being the voice
07:08in the movie at all.
07:10And John came to me about a year and a half ago now.
07:13He said, guess what?
07:14You're gonna be Scratte.
07:15And I was just like, shut up!
07:17Like, I couldn't even believe it.
07:19So, um...
07:20It's really exciting.
07:23The final ending where you kinda,
07:25you keep the question,
07:26is he gonna be with a girl?
07:27Oh, he's gonna get the nut.
07:28Oh, he's gonna get nothing.
07:29And we had, like, three different ways
07:31of ending the movie,
07:32and we chose one that we thought
07:33was the best for the Scratte.
07:35The nut always comes first for Scratte.
07:38Always, always, always.
07:40He can't win at the end. Never.
07:42And that's the cardinal rule,
07:43because that's the Scratte.
07:46We kinda leave Scratte
07:47where we pick him up in the beginning.
07:49He's always gonna have
07:51a certain amount of struggle in his life,
07:52no matter what happens.
07:53The Scratte.
07:54He's always gonna die.
07:54I'm not gonna die.
07:56Oh, this is fun.
07:58Oh, this is fun.
07:59This is fun.
08:00It's fun.
08:10You, we're all right.
08:11You're all right.
08:11The Scratte.
08:12Are we gonna die?
08:13The Scratte.
08:14I'm gonna have to die.
08:19I'm gonna die.
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