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Drawn Together |
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.: Interview with THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG's John Lasseter :. |
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JOHN LASSETER—co-founder of Pixar, the history-making computer animation studio; chief creative officer of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios; and also the principal creative advisor to Walt Disney Imagineering—is, as you can probably guess, one busy guy.
Always at the forefront of what can be accomplished with computer animation, Lasseter is also a lifetime lover of hand drawn animation… which is why he is so excited for Walt Disney Animation Studio’s upcoming release THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG on Blu-ray and DVD on June 16, which marks the return of not only hand drawn animation, but also the musical fairytale with a Princess at the center.
John, how did The Princess and the Frog come about?
JOHN LASSETER: Ed Catmull [Disney Animation Studios Head] and I, the day I returned to the Walt Disney Animation Studios, said that we wanted to bring back hand drawn animation. And as soon as I got done with that sentence, the next sentence was that I wanted to bring back [directors] John Musker and Ron Clements.
So, once we brought them back, I empowered them to come up with their own project – I didn’t tell them that I wanted them to do hand drawn animation. But Ed and I had already said, both at Pixar and Disney Animation, that we wanted to bring back hand drawn animation and we had already solicited ideas.
I mentioned to them one idea that I had, just a nugget of an idea at Pixar. I love the story of “The Frog Prince,” and I love New Orleans. And I thought that it would be a great place to set a story like that… and that’s all I mentioned to them.
We always ask for the directors to come back to us with not just one idea, but three ideas…and they came back with nine ideas. These guys were so prolific, they’re fantastic.
And one of them was The Princess and the Frog – they had this wonderful twist on the story, where the main character, Tiana, kisses the frog, but she’s not a real princess, she gets turned into a frog as well. That was their clever twist on it. They wanted it to be a musical, set in New Orleans, and they wanted Randy Newman to write the music which, of course, I loved, because I’ve worked with Randy Newman on all of the movies that I’ve directed.
Randy grew up in both New Orleans and Los Angeles. He would go every summer to New Orleans, so he knows the city and its music. It’s like he was born with it. It’s in his DNA, and so I think he was a phenomenal choice for it.
Why the return to hand drawn animation now?
JOHN LASSETER: I’ve always loved animation, and especially hand drawn animation. It’s the reason why I do what I do for a living, the films of Walt Disney. And this art form is so spectacular and beautiful. And I never quite understood the feeling amongst animation studios that audiences today only wanted to see computer animation.
It’s never about the medium that a film is made in, it’s about the story. It’s about how good the movie is. And so one of the first things that I did when I came back to the Walt Disney Animation Studios was to say, “Hey, let’s do another hand drawn animated film.” Because I feel that if there’s a studio in the world that should be doing the highest quality hand drawn animation, it should be the studio that started it all, the Walt Disney Animation Studios.
And that’s why we were so excited to ask John Musker and Ron Clements to come back to the studio and just empowered them to say, “Come up with a movie that you really want to tell.” And The Princess and the Frog was born. In glorious hand drawn Disney animation. It’s just spectacular.
How is The Princess and the Frog a continuation of this incredibly rich legacy that is Disney Animation?
JOHN LASSETER: You know, what’s exciting about The Princess and the Frog is that it’s the return to not only hand drawn animation at The Walt Disney Animation Studios, it’s the return to the sincere fairytale. It’s a return to the musical, which hasn’t been done in quite a while.
You know, it’s so classically Disney in every way, yet it’s brand new, it’s something you’ve never seen before. And that’s what’s so exciting about this.
Is it a risk to bring back a classic animated movie, because all of the other studios are doing computer animation?
JOHN LASSETER: Yeah. 2D hand drawn animation, for me, it’s a wonderful art form. I never understood why the studios wanted to stop making hand drawn animation, you know? Maybe they felt that the audiences around the world only wanted to watch computer animation. I didn’t understand that, because I don’t think ever in the history of cinema did the medium of a film make that film entertaining or not.
What I’ve always felt is, what audiences like to watch are really good movies. And my partner at Pixar, Andrew Stanton, said this – and I thought it was true – that it seemed like 2D animation became the scapegoat for bad storytelling. What I don’t want to watch are bad movies.
And so, when we came back, what we decided to do is bring back hand drawn animation. Now, there are subject matters that lend themselves to hand drawn animation, and subject matters that lend themselves to computer animation. And at Pixar, we’ve always prided ourselves on choosing the right subject matter for computer animation at that place and time, because computer animation is constantly growing in what we can do.
And that’s why back in 1991, when we started Toy Story, everything that was produced by computer animation looked like plastic, so why not make the main characters plastic, you know, toys? It’s perfect, right? And so it’s that kind of knowledge. Knowledge of what the computer can and can’t do. And the same goes for hand drawn animation.
To be honest, look at Snow White, newly out on Blu-Ray and DVD. Honestly, look at the dwarfs, like Dopey, at how brilliant those dwarfs are, with the squash and stretch. Even today, that would be really, really hard to do in computer animation. There is some things you can and can’t do.
Plus, I think the painted backgrounds are absolutely stunningly beautiful. There’s something really special about this medium, and I don’t believe it’s old. I don’t believe audiences have grown past it. I think what audiences love is to be entertained – thoroughly, deeply entertained, and that’s what I’ve always set out to do.
How committed is Disney to doing another 2D traditional movie? How many are in the pipeline?
JOHN LASSETER: Well, we’ve announced Winnie the Pooh, which we’re very excited about. It’s hand drawn animation done very much like the original Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, and Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day.
The trend now seems to be stereoscopic, 3D films. What do you think of 3D?
JOHN LASSETER: Oh, I love 3D, are you kidding? We’re doing all of our computer animated films at the Disney Studio in 3D. Bolt was in 3D. You know, Disney has done two before I got here. They did two movies, Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons. At Pixar we’re doing all of our films in 3D now, which I love. I’ve always loved 3D.
Why was having an African-American lead so important to you?
JOHN LASSETER: It’s what John Musker and Ron Clements wanted, and I supported them in that. With the type of story that they wanted to tell, they were very interested in doing that... and I was, too. We wanted to do it right, so we did our homework. We tried to tell a story with a character that would make everybody proud and happy, so it was very important for us to make this character real and believable for today’s audiences.
Discover The Princess and The Frog at JB Hi-Fi » |
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