Jeff Rowe and Yashar Kassai “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” interview
“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” Director Jeff Rowe and Production Designer Yasher Kassai talk about the different Ninja Turtle characters and how they wanted the Teenage Ninja Turtles to act like teenagers in the movie during this interview. Check it out.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 Hi, I'm Yashar Kassai.
00:01 I'm the production designer on Teenage Mutant Ninja
00:03 Turtles Mutant Mayhem.
00:06 I am Jeff Rowe, and I'm the director on Teenage Mutant
00:10 Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem.
00:13 A production designer's job is to take the vision and
00:19 inspiration material of a director and then turn that
00:22 into the look of a film, the final look of the frame.
00:25 So a production designer will lead a team of artists to
00:30 design everything from environments, sets, props,
00:34 characters even sometimes, and tie all that together.
00:38 Basically, your director, in this case, Jeff, gives me a
00:40 directive for the visual style that he's imagining based off
00:47 mood boards and inspirational photography or imagery.
00:50 And then it's my job to try and turn that into the look
00:55 of a film, its environments, its characters,
00:58 and everything else.
00:59 And the difference between that and live action is that
01:02 you have to build it all from the ground up, like nothing--
01:06 you don't get anything for free.
01:07 You can't just put a camera on something and have it be
01:09 there, so you build everything from scratch.
01:13 I think this version of New York is actually pretty well
01:16 grounded, and I think that was absolutely the right call
01:20 considering how unhinged and absurd the other side of this
01:23 film is.
01:26 I think the hardest part about capturing it was really just
01:28 studying it and looking at real photography.
01:31 And Jeff had plenty of photography to look at, and we
01:33 would just try and find what made that feel so authentic in
01:38 its lighting.
01:39 And I think it even came down to the certain kind of bulb
01:42 used on certain street corners and rooftops and things, and
01:45 we would study that stuff and then talk about why does this
01:49 orange feel so authentically like the East Village or
01:52 something, like a lamp you'd find in that neighborhood.
01:56 Really, we just wanted it to look like teenage drawings,
02:01 the kind of drawings you did when you were in high school
02:04 that have weird shapes and bad perspective but are really
02:09 lovingly rendered in places.
02:12 But we really wanted to make it feel lived in.
02:16 So they've modified the space.
02:17 They've put stickers on things.
02:19 They all kind of have their areas carved out for
02:24 themselves.
02:26 And tried to just make every prop tell a story about who
02:30 owned it and who selected it and how it
02:32 got there in the sewer.
02:34 It's like their room.
02:35 They just have to share it, and they are constantly--
02:38 the choice to put Donnie in a tent was his hack to give
02:44 himself privacy away from his brothers, and he wants to
02:48 insulate and separate from them.
02:50 So we designed with headphones.
02:51 He kind of has given himself the means to live within his
02:56 own world and tune them out when he wants to.
03:00 Leo keeps his area very neat and orderly, and he has an
03:05 aspirational poster.
03:06 I think you designed it, his dreams poster above his bed.
03:12 We knew a couple things.
03:13 They had to feel like real teenagers.
03:15 They were going to be voiced by teenagers, so there was
03:17 like a cap on the amount of muscle mass that
03:20 they could have.
03:21 And it also informed a lot about their posture and the
03:26 way they carry themselves and the way they acted and touched
03:31 things and interacted with the world.
03:35 And then also, when you're a teenager, you're awkward.
03:39 You haven't grown into yourself yet.
03:41 And we're like, well, we can't really put acne on a
03:47 turtle, but how can we make them feel imperfect?
03:51 I think we realized early on that they should have their
03:54 own designs.
03:54 They shouldn't just be like four different colored
03:56 versions of the same character.
03:59 Their size and their body shape should say something
04:06 about their personality.
04:07 You can't put braces on a turtle.
04:09 Twitter will love that.
04:12 One thing that Jeff would point out about photography
04:15 early on was a lot of the action took place in the
04:17 mid-tones and stuff.
04:19 And it wasn't perfectly lit all the time.
04:21 And I think the chop shop is a pretty good example of
04:23 something that is not lit in an ideal way, where characters'
04:27 faces are fully illuminated.
04:29 But it is quite dark.
04:30 But there is this subtle variation of temperature that
04:33 Jeff was talking about.
04:34 And that's how you see one side of a character.
04:37 And then the other side of the character is a completely
04:38 different temperature.
04:39 It's not light and dark.
04:42 It's something else.
04:43 And to see that move was cool.
04:47 The movie is both very serious and deeply emotional.
04:50 But it is also really absurd in some of its design.
04:53 It rides this awesome good/bad design line, where, like Jeff
05:00 was saying, the doodles that you do in the sides of your
05:03 notebook were taken, extrapolated, and made into the
05:06 look of a whole movie.
05:08 Because everyone, I think, is drawn like that at some point.
05:11 And it's really familiar.
05:12 And that's very charming.