Chris Sanders ('The Wild Robot'), Dana Ledoux Miller ('Moana 2'), Josh Cooley ('Transformers One'), Kelsey Mann ('Inside Out 2'), Morgan Neville ('Piece by Piece') and Nick Park ('Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl') join The Hollywood Reporter for our Animation Roundtable.
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00:00you know, we may be cartoons and animation and sometimes goofy characters, but they can
00:05be expressing great truths at the same time.
00:11Hi, and welcome to the Hollywood Reporters Animation Roundtable. And joining me today are
00:17Josh Cooley, director of Paramount Pictures' Transformers 1, Kelsey Mann, director of the
00:22Pixar movie Inside Out 2, Dana Ledoux Miller, one of the directors of Disney's Moana 2,
00:28Morgan Neville, the director of the animated documentary Piece by Piece from Focus Features,
00:33Nick Park, co-director of the Netflix Claymation film Wallace and Gromit Vengeance Most Foul,
00:39and Chris Saunders, the director of Universal Pictures' The Wild Robot.
00:44Can I first say, before we start this, thank you so much for your movies.
00:47Watching these films has been an absolute joy. It is just sort of pure joy that comes out of
00:52all of your movies, even though they deal with some quite serious and difficult subjects.
00:57There's such a deep humanity, I think, in all of your films, and obviously a really great love of
01:03cinema. What was the film that made you want to become a filmmaker?
01:09There's animated, and then there's film film. I would say that film film, probably it's a mad,
01:14mad, mad, mad world. Yeah, what a movie. Just all everything in camera, people, you know,
01:21flying airplanes through billboards. And I think the greatest performance by,
01:26oh my gosh, the guy, it's going to slip in my, Thurston Howell.
01:29Jim Backus.
01:30Jim Backus. Oh my God. The old-fashioned scene in the airplane with Mickey Rooney. Holy mackerel.
01:36If I have a core memory, it's definitely from Star Wars because I saw it when I was five.
01:41I remember sitting in the front row and just being blown away. Like, I think that might be one of my
01:46earliest memories. I'll just jump in. I remember my earliest memory of seeing a movie was Willy
01:52Wonka and the Choco Factory. I remember walking the theater. It just blew my mind. And, you know,
01:59I wasn't thinking about making movies at the time, but it's funny because I brought that movie up.
02:04And I'm even, I even refer to that movie in the movie I just made. So it's something that somehow
02:09comes full circle. I'd say Princess Bride is probably one of the first films I saw that
02:15really just changed the way I thought about storytelling, even really young. It was just so
02:19fun and so exciting. And I think it really just got me excited about watching movies, but also
02:27The Little Mermaid. And I know I'm in the house of Disney right now. I swear they're not telling
02:31me I have to say this. The Little Mermaid, I grew up with The Little Mermaid and Aladdin and The Lion
02:37King. That was like the sweet spot for me as a kid. And so I just remember seeing those films
02:42in the theater and wanting to be in those stories. I was just getting into doing my own stop motion
02:49animation as a kid on 8mm. And I saw for the first time Jason and the Argonauts, you know,
02:56Ray Harryhausen and all those creatures coming to life and the skeleton fight and everything.
03:01For me, the film that made me want to be a filmmaker was Roger Rabbit. I love that movie.
03:06It's just the right moment for me. Before that, the very first memory I have of the theater
03:09actually was watching E.T. And I remember it so strongly because it was the first time I really
03:14felt something emotional from watching the big screen. And then I looked over to my dad. I remember
03:19seeing him cry. I think it was like the very first time, one of the only times I remember seeing him
03:23actually really cry. So it was really powerful. Chris, can I ask you with the wild robot? I mean,
03:29what was the sort of core idea at the center of that story that spoke to you that made you want
03:34to turn it into a feature? Peter Brown's book, it all centers around a lost robot, which of course
03:40I love robots. And the idea of a robot that doesn't even know it's lost is just really
03:45charming and first and foremost, compelling. Compelling for me is the word. Nothing needs to
03:50be relatable. There's a lot of stuff that ended up being incredibly relatable about the story.
03:54But for me, it's compelling. The cherry at the center of the whole thing of that chocolate
03:59was the mom story. I never get to work on things like that. Because as we know, moms are frequently
04:05absent from these situations. Just because they have to be... When I started on Aladdin,
04:10there was a mom in the story. And there were several reasons that we had to write her out
04:16of the story. Because first of all, she knows better. When Aladdin's getting ready to go,
04:21I'm going to go to the market and steal stuff. She'd be like, no, of course you're not. No,
04:24you're not. Moms know better. In the best way possible, moms keep adventures from happening.
04:30We also had to check in with her. And that just was sad. We check in and she's looking for her son
04:37and he's off having this amazing adventure. And so she had to exit the story. So the idea that
04:41the wild robot had at its very core, a mom, was for me a really intriguing and compelling challenge.
04:48Josh, can I ask, was it robots that drew you to Transformers 1? Or I mean,
04:51this is your first film outside of Pixar, because you were with Pixar for almost 20 years, I guess?
04:57I love the idea that this was totally different from all the other Transformers films,
05:00because it was only on Cybertron. There's no humans involved. So it allowed all the
05:04character to come right out of the characters that I grew up watching. But it was all about
05:08this relationship between the two main characters, just being there going from friends to enemies.
05:13And I just loved the kind of simplicity of that. But I also loved how that's a theme that runs
05:20through just some of the big classic films, Ben-Hur, Spartacus, Ten Commandments. I just
05:25love epics like that. And so I was thinking, if this is a chance to do a sci-fi film on another
05:31planet, but to have this big epic story with a really personal human relationship, the most human
05:38kind of story ever told with these characters. And that got me really excited. So I had to take
05:42the opportunity to do it. And can I just say, thank you, but no thank you, because my kids
05:48loved your movie. And I ended up having to make Transformer costumes for Halloween.
05:53Oh, wow. Oh my goodness. And they actually transform. So they were a big hit, but I've
05:59never worked so hard in my life. Oh, I want to see that. You got to see that. That's awesome.
06:02Dana, for you, this is your first, Moana 2 is your first feature as a director, right? I mean,
06:09that must have been a big challenge also taking on such a beloved story. What did you want to,
06:15I don't know, hold on to from Moana, the first film? And what did you want to sort of expand on
06:20or transform with your movie? The first film, I will say, really changed my life in a lot of ways.
06:29It was the first time, not only that we had a Disney princess like Moana, but that I'm Samoan,
06:35so we never had a Polynesian superstar like this that was a woman. And so really, I remember
06:42watching that film and thinking that Moana was going to change the way I got to walk into rooms
06:46and pitch stories. I didn't know eight years ago that I would be part of telling her story. And so
06:53to get to jump in, I actually co-wrote the live action as well. So that kind of, I was working
06:57on that as I jumped into the sequel. And so her story was very fresh in my head. But that first
07:04film is really about her connecting to her past and finding herself, which in a lot of ways,
07:10it helped me do. And so if that was about connecting to the past, I really thought about
07:15what it would mean for a young woman who had just become a leader of her community.
07:19Like, what's the next step of that? When you think you know who you are,
07:23you don't ever just settle in that moment. You keep evolving and you keep changing as your
07:27circumstances change. So really started thinking about this next story as the story of what she
07:33wants for the future of her people. She's connected them to who they were. She kind of knows who she
07:38is. And now she has to look towards the future and decide not only what kind of legacy she wants to
07:44leave behind, but what she wants to push them towards, what new boundaries that they can cross.
07:48And so in a story that feels so complete because it's a musical in the first film,
07:53without reinventing that entire journey that she went on and really focused on making sure that she
08:00was still growing and not changing the fundamental core of who she is, but expanding on that.
08:09It's no easy feat, especially when you do it in 13 months, but I'm ready.
08:17Nick, can I ask you, I mean, obviously Wallace and Gromit have been with you
08:21almost from the beginning of your career in animation, but you haven't revisited
08:28these characters in a feature in almost 20 years. I know you've spoken a little bit about making
08:34the first Wallace and Gromit feature and some of the challenges of fitting the very British story
08:39that you create inside, making it inside the studio system, as you did with the DreamWorks
08:43film that you made, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. What was the experience like making this film?
08:49And did you face some similar challenges making it under Netflix as you did with this movie?
08:54Strangely, it was incredibly quick to make. It was 15 months shooting. The guys at Netflix
09:00were very respectful of the Wallace and Gromit legacy and the, like you say, the kind of
09:05Britishness of it. You know, we were aware that the language, we couldn't be totally, the accents
09:11couldn't be totally, you know, sort of obscure, and so we had to be a bit more sensitive. We didn't
09:17want to have subtitles for the English-speaking audiences. The notes were really good, generally,
09:23and they were fairly hands-off and respectful. Yeah, so it went very well, but they did give,
09:30Aram Yakubian at Netflix gave very astute notes, and it did help us quite a bit, so yeah.
09:38And how did it play? I know you premiered it in America at the AFI. How did it play in front
09:43of an American audience? Did they laugh at the right places, or were there a lot of puzzled
09:46silence? Yeah, we were, I was scared that that would happen, but it went down really well,
09:53actually. What I'm totally surprised, constantly surprised by is, you know, we try it here in
09:59Bristol, in our little studio, in little England, you know, to make films that are true to ourselves
10:07and have our own voice, and in that, I'm surprised how universal that can be,
10:13you know. And so, yeah, I mean, the American audience was very responsive. The idea of telling
10:20the story, this, the story of Aurel Williams as an animation, as Lego animation, I mean,
10:29why do that? Why tell the story through animation, and what did that allow you to do, and maybe tell
10:36the story more truly than it would have been possible in a sort of traditional documentary
10:40form? Well, you know, I, in looking back over the films I've made, so many of them have been
10:46about creativity and the creative process. It's something that I find constantly interesting and
10:53baffling, and I think of people's creativity as their own kind of superpower, and Pharrell was
11:00somebody who is so creative in so many ways that I wanted to ask a lot of questions about,
11:08because he has grappled with his own kind of balancing his creative instincts with the world
11:14that's telling you otherwise, whether you're too weird or you're too mainstream or whatever,
11:19and I feel like the questions I was asking were the questions I was asking myself,
11:24you know. I mean, these films tend to be therapeutic in different ways. This absolutely
11:30was of me trying to work out my own issues and talking about, you know, how to balance
11:37creativity with the industry, but really doing it in Lego became a chance for it not to just
11:43be about creativity, but to be a creative act itself. You know, like, how do we invent a new
11:49type of hybrid film in a way? You know, I think we constantly felt like we were trying to figure out
11:55the grammar of what we could do in a film like this, and it was incredibly exciting. I felt like
12:02we kept opening doors and being like, oh, yeah, we can do this, and so part of it has one foot in
12:08the kind of documentary world, and it's kind of rooted in that, but then we completely jumped
12:13away from that as much as we could, and I think that was both not, you know, incredibly fun for me
12:20to do and interesting, but also I think reflective of Pharrell, too, because he's kind of a magical
12:26thinker, and the fact that the idea literally came from him in the first conversation I had with him,
12:31so it felt, you know, organic to him, and in a way, at this point, I don't think this film could exist
12:38not in Lego. I don't think there's another version of this film. I think it can only exist in this
12:43world, so it was an amazing journey to go on. I have a question about that, because I saw the
12:49film. It's amazing. You visualize sound so incredibly well, and because he speaks about
12:55how he has synesthesia, and he can see color, or he sees the music, and so it's a very visual thing.
13:00How would you have done that without Lego? I'd say I don't know how you could. I mean,
13:05so again, if you're doing, you guys know as animators, everything you can do, but when,
13:11all the possibilities, but normally when your main character has synesthesia, where they see color
13:17when they hear sound, you couldn't do that in a documentary, and you could maybe do it in a
13:22scripted way, but in animation, it feels totally organic, and it became one of these great keys
13:29into why we're doing it this way, and I went to Pharrell, and every, you know, we not only see
13:34the synesthesia, but every beat he makes becomes a physical object, and those objects, you know,
13:40I could ask Pharrell, and I'd say, what does this beat look like? What's the color of this beat?
13:44And he would tell me, so all the beats and colors in the film are accurate to the colors he sees in
13:50his head, like there's no checking it otherwise, but they are how he sees the sounds, so in that
13:57way, you know, it was like a gift to think about doing it in this style. Kelsey, can I ask with
14:05Inside Out 2, now this is your first, also your first feature, feature as a director,
14:11how terrifying was it to have this as your first feature? Probably more weight, I mean,
14:19the weight put on this film, I think Pete Docter even said, if it doesn't work, we're gonna have
14:24to change everything about how we work in Pixar, because who knows what's happening in the industry,
14:28how was it to have that, the entire weight of this animation industry on your shoulders for opening
14:33opening weekend? All of us here, you know, when we make these movies, there's so much pressure to put
14:38on every single one of us that's on here, especially trying to make something, you know,
14:44great, and definitely with this film, like, I mean, initially Pete Docter, you know, he directed
14:52the original film, he's our chief creative officer at the studio, he's the one that first came to me
14:56and asked me about this, and I felt a lot of excitement and joy, to be honest, at the beginning,
15:01because I honestly never thought I'd ever get this chance to direct a movie really anywhere,
15:07but let alone at Pixar, you know, it took me a long time even to get in the doors of Pixar
15:14as a story artist, it took me a long time, even after I graduated college, it took me like 10
15:20years of trying to work in the industry and try to get in, so once I finally got in, I was like,
15:26oh my gosh, I'm gonna retire a Pixar story artist, and I'd be incredibly happy with that, and
15:32I never thought I'd get the opportunity, let alone to be a story supervisor,
15:36and certainly not a director, so when he asked me, I was very excited about it, but then soon,
15:43Scott, you're totally right, the weight of it all kind of hit me too, you know, it's funny,
15:49looking back on it, you never know when you're making these movies, you kind of put yourself
15:52in them, and sometimes when you have enough distance, you look back, you're like, oh wow,
15:58I put that in there, but I didn't really realize that that was something I was dealing with,
16:03now that the movie is done and out there, I think about what I was feeling at the beginning,
16:07and I was definitely feeling joy and a lot of overwhelming anxiety during this project,
16:16and I'm like, wow, I put that on the screen, like it's really a battle between my joy and anxiety,
16:21which is kind of the entire run of this movie, was making this, I honestly remember, Scott,
16:27I remember very early on making a conscious decision to make sure that I had joy in the
16:33driver's seat as much as possible making this movie, one of the first decisions I had to make
16:40is outside my story room, there's a little plaque where you can put a little picture that says like,
16:44you know, Kelsey, man, story room, I'm like, what am I going to put out there, and I remember
16:49thinking about what I want to feel when I walk through the door every day into my story room,
16:54because it's kind of a scary room, because it's blank and empty, I'm like, I want to walk in with
16:58a sense of excitement and joy, and I thought, if I told my younger self, you know, eight-year-old,
17:0410-year-old Kelsey, that I would get this opportunity, that kid would feel nothing but
17:08excitement and joy, so I put a little picture of me, a smiling eight-year-old Kelsey, and I knew
17:14that he'd have a chance of making a movie that was good, because I wanted to make something that's
17:19obviously very emotional and moving, I want to make a fun movie, and if I'm not having fun,
17:26the crew won't have fun, and I really believe in what the crew feels ends up on the screen,
17:32and so I wanted to make sure of making a fun movie that people would want to watch over and over
17:37again, so I had to remind myself to invite joy to my own console, so that I can make the best movie
17:47I can. Actually, I want to jump in, because we had, Kelsey and I had an impromptu conversation
17:53at SCAD, and we just, like, we talked about just, like, being present, and, like,
18:01for me, it was, like, resetting myself before every, really every meeting, just make sure, like, be
18:06there, like, every one of these things is really important. Now I'm going to get maybe in
18:10trouble here, but I'm going to share that. Oh, my God. Okay, you guys, this is awesome.
18:21So there's Chris and I. Okay, remember, I applied to Pixar in 2000, and I got rejected, and I'm,
18:28like, damn it, I got to work on my stuff, and I got to get better, so I moved to L.A., I worked
18:32at tiny little studios, and I took night classes and weekend classes, and that photo that Chris just
18:39shared was a class that I took at the Animation Academy, and I think it might have been for
18:46storyboarding, and Chris and Dean came as, like, to do a talk one night, and I was so excited to
18:54meet them, and you could see I was a big of a nerd that I was, like, would you take a picture with me?
19:00And so there's, that's Chris and I circa, I don't know, 2002 or something. What we get to do is so
19:08cool, and life can be so, like, giving and surprising, you know, that we end up, like,
19:15on a call like this, you know, making movies together. It's just a wonderful kind of
19:23life that we get to live. As said at the very beginning, I think the joy in all your films
19:27really, really is on the screen and really comes out, but what I also find really compelling about
19:32all the movies is that there's also, it isn't just light and happiness and sunshine,
19:37there's a lot of complicated issues and darkness as well in your films. How difficult is it to get
19:45that balance and also to introduce some of these themes into what are often seen as kids movies?
19:51I mean, maybe Josh, for you, it's, for me, it's almost most surprising in Transformers 1,
19:56some of the issues you managed to get into that film, issues of class consciousness or, you know,
20:02of fake news or these civil rights, I mean, there's a lot of issues in there. How challenging
20:07was it to get that balance and even to bring these things into a film that most people would
20:12consider, oh, this is a kid's movie? I never think of I'm making a movie for kids. I always go, I want
20:18to make a movie for my, selfishly, for myself that I would enjoy that I think other people would enjoy.
20:25And I want to make a movie that's something that's approachable for everybody. So taking
20:30Transformers and putting it on their planet, I needed to relate their world to ours as much
20:34as possible because it is so foreign. And because they are underdogs and they don't have the ability
20:40to transform at first, that immediately puts them in a lower class. And so classism kind of came out
20:45of just building, working on the story and then having, you know, a leader who's in a position to
20:52form that class structure. So I wouldn't say that I set out going, I'm going to talk about this theme
20:57and this theme and this theme. It was, it kind of just gradually grew out of the idea of being
21:04on this other planet and seeing the society. But also, you know, we started this movie in 2020
21:08and literally my first day in the movie was when the world shut down. So it was like, there's a
21:13lot going on and there's a lot to bring from our own, you know, our own story here into the film.
21:20And so I just wanted to make a film that was approachable for everyone and that, but also
21:26not just something that's, you know, it's just a babysitter, a virtual babysitter. I wanted to
21:32actually talk about stuff. Are there certain issues that studios will just reject out of hand
21:37when it comes to animation or if sort of family-friendly films that say we're not going to
21:42touch that? I mean, I don't know about you, Kelsey, but that, that wasn't my experience at all. I think
21:49what I, this is also my first animated project ever. So this was a totally new system to me. And I,
21:56I wasn't sure what to expect when I walked in, you know, walking into Disney Animation. I think I had
22:02this sense of like the bigness of it, but what I found was actually a very, very small process in
22:09the best possible way in that I walked in that first day and we were talking about character
22:15and story and really at every point in the process, no matter where we were, I was pretty
22:21struck by how that always dominated. And it was, it was really just about building a story that
22:27felt natural coming out of Moana. And it ended up being deeply personal as well. Like Kelsey was
22:33saying, it's like, I didn't set out to tell a story about myself growing up and what it means
22:38as the world changes all around you, but it became that. And I think, you know, in that way, everyone
22:46here was really supportive of it. Everything just kind of grew naturally. And I, I, there was at no
22:51point someone saying, you can't tell that this is, this is a children's story. But I think also we
22:55have incredible artists here. You know, we're working with Eric Goldberg and Amy Smead Lawson
23:00and this incredible story team who they understand the assignment when you're coming in and telling
23:06a Disney story, but at no point were we ever like, we're going to speak down to our audience.
23:11We're going to tell the story that feels truest to who this young woman is and how she's growing.
23:16And everything that comes out of that just sort of fell naturally. I think we're really fortunate
23:21in that way. But there weren't a lot of parameters. Like I don't ever feel like there was
23:28some big, bad telling me what story I had to tell. It was like, find the best story from Moana and
23:34we'll find a way to make it work. Yeah, I totally agree. I feel like, I feel like everyone here,
23:39you know, no one here has made a movie that talked down to kids. Every single one of us here,
23:44it's all really made for everybody. And I had the same experience. I don't really have anybody
23:52giving me any notes saying I can't do that. It's all, everything's just focused on the story and
24:01what story that you're telling and your notes. I find all my notes that I get come from that,
24:06from that angle. Everybody has the same goal. It's one of the things I love about working at Pixar.
24:11Everybody has the same goal, make a great film. And the only time I got nervous is when we started,
24:18you know, I knew I was going to tell a movie about anxiety. And panic attacks were always
24:22kind of a part of that. It wasn't in the beginning. In our first few versions of the film,
24:27we didn't really have that kind of element at the end of the film. But when we started to lean into
24:33that of like, what if Riley, we have Riley experienced a panic attack at the end of the
24:38film. You want to take the characters to a place where there's a lot of stakes. And we're like,
24:43that would be pretty high stakes for Riley, certainly emotionally and physically too. There's
24:48no amount of that too. I was a little nervous. I'm like, am I going to get into trouble? Are
24:52people going to tell me you can't do that? That's too far. Not in a kid's film. And I'll be honest,
25:01I didn't get it once. Not one person. It was more about making sure we got it right.
25:07That was my notes that I got versus you shouldn't do that at all. So I found that no resistance in
25:15the same way that they was talking about was all about telling a great story.
25:18Let me just say because I was dealing with so much real world stuff that you know, we have a scene of
25:23a Black Lives Matter scene in Lego that we had a lot of debate about and like how much do we show
25:29and not show? There's another scene, you know, this is real world stuff. So it gets edgy. You
25:36know, I think there's the first Lego drug deal that's ever been done in a film. And of course,
25:42you know, drug use and you know, we had lots of debates over what a thong would be on a Lego
25:48minifig, you know, and had to redo those for the MPA. We knew we weren't going to animate things
25:55like Snoop Dogg with a Lego joint. But we had to come up with ways in all these instances,
26:01that adults would understand it in a certain context, but kids could see it. And it would
26:07work for them, but they wouldn't necessarily have to understand everything that was told within
26:13that. So a lot of it was really just trying to find a balance that worked on two different levels.
26:18Yeah, I think he worked to not exclude. I was fortunate enough to start this whole thing with,
26:25I was on the story crew with Brenda Chapman and Joe Rampt, in particular, on Beauty and the Beast.
26:32And that was like the first intensive time that I had where I was on a story crew from start to
26:37finish. And I think that one thing that never ever would come up in the room is, in the best way
26:43possible, the audience. Exactly what I think Kelsey was touching on, is that you're just,
26:49I think there's a collective understanding of a tone that you're operating within. But as long
26:58as you're thoughtful about what you're saying, and how you're delivering it, I should say,
27:02not even what you're saying, but how you're delivering it, you can tell, I'm absolutely
27:05convinced, you can tell any story about any subject. It can be hard stuff, as long as you're
27:11conscious of how you're delivering it. And you're not excluding any part of your audience.
27:16And just watching how Joe would hit a wall, and he would flow around it. He was so,
27:27like there was an ease with which he, and joy, really, with which he approached doing story.
27:34I would sometimes go home just feeling like, we're done. We're done for. We'll never get around this.
27:39We'll never get around this obstacle. We're stuck. And Joe would come in the next day,
27:44and just so happy, and just flow around it, and find another avenue. And I never forgot that,
27:52especially when you're in the midst of a great crew. And I think we all have had that experience
27:58working with just people who are just so, so ingenious, but work well in a room. And if you
28:07don't have the answer, somebody's going to help you out with it, right? It's like a playground.
28:11It's like a playground has a fence around it. And you've got some edges to it, and you go all the
28:17way to the fence. And once in a while, especially when it comes to humor, you might find a little
28:21weak place in the fence. You can go a little bit beyond, and just push things just a little bit.
28:26You might break the rules just a little bit to get a gag. But yeah, I think just getting all the way
28:32to the edge, and to find the depth of each of these different stories emotionally, and never
28:38shying away from that. I think that's one thing that animation in particular does really, really
28:42well. Perhaps it is just because it's a collective that really adopts these things. And you live,
28:49and you breathe them every day. Some of my, I think, most successful, I think, bits of writing
28:54didn't come while I was at the office. It came while I was sitting on an airplane, or riding a
28:58bike, or a lot of times just watching another movie. One of the things I will always go to
29:03movies while I'm working on a movie, because even though it can have nothing to do with what I'm
29:08working on, I can go to see a horror film, or a drama, or a documentary. But it just reminds you
29:14of what a film is. A film is audacious. It's fearless. And yeah, so I think that the audience
29:24it is primarily, I think, us, in a way. Obviously, things are changing incredibly
29:29rapidly, particularly in animation when it comes to AI. How do you, in general, view it? I mean,
29:34are you sort of terrified? Are you excited by what's happening? How do you view the sort of
29:38very near future? I don't know much about it. I do know that you do need to feed it something in
29:43order to get something out of it. And that can be called stealing sometimes, I think. And so I don't
29:50agree with that part. But what I do know is that you're only going to get what you put into it.
29:58And if that means that we're getting the same kind of regurgitated stuff back at us,
30:02that's going to force us to make even better movies that are more exciting. And so that's
30:06what gets me excited. I think about everything, everywhere, all at once. No computer could have
30:10made that. That's insane. And same thing with long legs, even. There's just stuff that I love
30:15that's just so new and original that I know that can only come from people. So that's what I get
30:21excited about. I completely agree. But on top of that, there's so much of every great film that we
30:27love comes out of a happy accident. It's two people working in a room. It's in our case,
30:33we have Minnie Maui, who's hand-drawn on CG. It's a complicated process that works because we're in
30:40a room trying to figure out whether it's one frame higher or one frame down. And suddenly we
30:46have a joke that we didn't have before. And I think that, you know, I'm a person as a writer,
30:51I write by hand because my brain thinks at the speed of my pencil, not at the computer.
30:56And so there's just, it's like an invaluable process that I think even when you get into
31:01animation, it's, you think you have a joke, but it's not funny until you put it on its feet. And
31:07AI can't predict that for you. While we were working on Lilo and Stitch, I visited
31:13Becker boards and I actually saw Mr. Becker shaping a board. I was in the room while he was
31:19foam was flying around like snow. And I asked the question, can't a machine do this now?
31:28And they're like, yeah, absolutely. Machines can carve one of these out in a split second,
31:32but they're not the ones that people want. They don't have, and there's no question. He said,
31:37there's absolutely no question that they are soulless things that are mass produced and they
31:43just don't work as well. And I have to a hundred percent agree with what you just said. Like,
31:49if anything, I feel like it's going to find a spot somewhere. It's going to find a place,
31:54like maybe it roughs something out for you. But, and maybe when it comes to like a surfboard,
32:00a rough shape, sure. Let it knock something out here and there. Like some it'll find its
32:04place in the process, but the idea that it would be able to do the kind of stuff you're just
32:08talking about. And like, one of the wonderful things about doing this tour that I've been doing,
32:12I'm talking about making this movie is I've been able to talk a lot about editorial and what
32:16happens in editorial. And people are very confused by that, especially when it comes to animation.
32:20And so it's like the hub of the story wheel. So much of that comes from just sitting there and
32:26having your head of story and your editor and a few other people just working a problem. And
32:31I agree with the happy accident thing, like these things. In fact, at the end of the process,
32:36sometimes I wonder if you guys ever feel like this. I look back at just happenstance and think
32:42like a guy said something in a meeting once that just was the key to the ending of our film in some
32:46ways. And if he, I think, oh my God, if he had been busy that day and hadn't been in the room
32:51and said that one thing, what would have become of our, you know, it's, you know, holy Toledo.
32:56Documentary is, you know, living in the real world, which is a world of, you know,
33:02unpredictability, you know, and I, I love Orson Welles description of a director's
33:08someone who presides over accidents, you know, and I kind of love that, you know,
33:14and embracing the accident, you know, and in documentary, we absolutely embrace it.
33:19And I think a big part of me on this journey with this film was working with animators who
33:24aren't used to accidents in the same way, yes, in the story department, but not necessarily
33:28in the visualization of it and really trying to keep the chaos there in the, in the visual
33:34storytelling, the accidents, keeping the accidents in the film, literally putting shots out of focus
33:39on purpose, because that's what happens in documentary sometimes. So, but, but to the bigger
33:45point, you know, I think that, you know, I was talking to a composer friend of mine, who was
33:51showing me these new AI apps, and he said, this is probably going to erase 50% of composer work.
34:01And I think what we're all talking about, which is like making real handcrafted art is absolutely
34:08a value. I worry more about the taste of people, and that are people going to care about the
34:16difference? I think they absolutely will for films like the ones we're working on. But I think if you
34:20just want to go home at the end of the day and have AI generate a new episode of Golden Girls
34:25for you or something, you know, that might be fine, even if it's just mediocre, you know, it's
34:31I do worry about just the kind of the problem that AI will generate going forward.
34:39There probably will be a reaction like, against it to the people will like, I mean, I think about
34:45resurgence of like vinyl, you know, that like, there'll be a whole thing where people will be
34:49into it, just because it's like made by somebody, you know, I feel like there'll be a desire and a
34:55want, I'm sure there'll still be people who want, you know, stuff that's created by AI, but there'll
34:59be a whole bunch of people that will want the opposite kind of, you know, like, I, you know,
35:05one of my favorite things about Nick, you know, your film is seeing the fingerprints in the clip,
35:13you know, I love that. And I think people want more of that. You know, for, for my film, like
35:20it's, you know, doing an inside out movie. It's a movie that's all about emotions, I really believe
35:25that you need to be able to feel them in order to make a movie about them. So I can't see
35:32an AI inside out movie will be terrible. And would AI ever understand in writing,
35:37it would ever understand irony and absurdity. Yeah, maybe wrong, maybe well, I don't know.
35:45We had an interesting experience with the wild robot where it's not AI exactly the whole thing
35:51of AI kind of arose while we were in the midst of finishing the film. And it certainly wasn't
35:55around when the book was written. But technology allowed us to get people back into the process.
36:02In our case, we had backgrounds that were 100% painted by people, just like Lion King,
36:07just like Lilo and Stitch. And we haven't had that for a long, long time, decades, people have
36:12reacted so positively to the vibe of the movie. And I think largely because there's such an immense
36:19amount of humanity, just like poured into every background, you absolutely feel it. As I was
36:26working on the film, I became very habituated to the look of it, because I saw it every day.
36:31And I was wondering, like, will other people see this? And am I attuned to it? Because I'm so
36:35deeply entrenched in animation. And I'm so attuned to all these little nuances and things. And I look
36:41at it all the time. And look at different animation and big fan of Bambi, Miyazaki, all those things.
36:46Will other people see it? Will a general audience? And absolutely, they did. They absolutely felt it,
36:52and it came through. And that gave me a lot of hope for, again, the human element being present
36:58in these things. It absolutely made the whole thing way more resonant and way more effective
37:04than it would have been had we made this even a few years ago.
37:06Josh, maybe you can chip up this, because I found it really interesting what you did. Because you
37:10obviously were working from a little bit of a template that is decades and decades old,
37:15your first Transformers movie. But it seems what you've done visually is so interesting and so
37:23grand as well. I'd be interested to know what your sort of inspiration was, sort of your visual
37:28inspiration for the style of the movie. Because it seems like, as well, CGI film, but you seem to be
37:33doing something that's quite handmade in some ways. Yeah. Metal looks amazing in CG, right?
37:44The lighting can do wonders, and it just looks so realistic. And they've been doing that with the
37:49last nine Transformers films, everything looks so great on our planet and alongside real people.
37:56I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to do a super realistic movie. The word I kept using
38:02was believable. I wanted it to be a film that you watch and you believe that these things exist,
38:07but you can reach out and touch it, but it's not super realistic. And that did allow it to have a
38:12little bit more warmth to it. We had Jason Shire, our production designer, we worked on developing
38:17a look along with ILM that had a little bit of a, we always say the word, hand quality, the artist's
38:24hand in it a little bit. We looked at a lot of JC Leyendecker's paintings, and just to get...
38:30I love how his paintings just look so strong and almost like statuesque, but they're still very,
38:35very warm and very human. And so we took some advantage of that along with Art Deco and tried
38:43to put as much humanity into the characters as much so they didn't feel like cold robots. I
38:48wanted them to actually have some human qualities in there. But Matt, just to talk about it as an
38:57industry as a whole, I feel like post-Spider-Verse, I think everybody realized like, oh, we can do
39:02something different now. And the audience is actually looking for something different. And
39:05it's not just the same CG look that we're doing over and over again. I love that the technology
39:12has actually advanced so we can push it and do new stuff like Wild Robot and even Lego movies now,
39:20just to make things feel different and just to push the storytelling even further.
39:26Dana, can I ask, every time I talk to CGI artists, they always mention water as the absolute horror
39:32for CGI. You've decided to make a movie that's 90% water, at least three quarters water,
39:37like The Planet. I mean, what was the biggest challenge for that? Was it the water or was
39:43there something else that really sort of pushed you to the edge in terms of what you could express
39:47visually on screen? Thankfully, the same people that kind of pushed the boundaries of what water
39:53could be in an animated film in the first one were the same people making this film. So it's come a
40:00long way in eight years. And water was, I mean, our FX artists might get away from saying this,
40:05but that was like the least of our problems on this film. Really, when we started thinking about
40:12what we wanted Moana to go up against, she'd already fought a lava monster in the first film.
40:17And all of our villains within the Moana universe are based on nature. And so I was like, well, why
40:25doesn't she go up against a hurricane? So not only is she on water, now she's on a monster storm that
40:30has eight tornadoes coming out of the sky and three giant ones and an eye of a storm that is,
40:36you know, cursed by the gods. So lightning, water spouts, a storm. We have something like
40:4550, 60 foot waves that they have to go up against in the midst of this storm.
40:49A little water and a canoe on the water, that was like nothing to us. There was definitely a point
40:56not very long ago when I did not think we would figure out how to make the tornadoes work on the
41:02water in a way that felt like they were sentient beings that were attacking this canoe on the
41:09ocean. I really don't think that we've seen anything like the storm that we ended up creating.
41:15We just got to see it at the Dolby Theater the other day. And it was like, it feels like it lives
41:20up to the promise of what Moana should go up against. And that's a testament to our effects
41:25artists who created new tech, new sims, new everything just to make this possible. I like
41:31a challenge. And so I was like, let's push the boundaries. Moana can't go against something
41:36smaller. She has to go bigger. And a hurricane felt right.
41:41And Nick, your water is actually the big, seems like a big challenge in this film,
41:45in your film as well, because there's that huge last third of the film,
41:48which is all sort of this massive water escape. Was that a major challenge to do that in actual
41:54claymation form? Because I had never seen anything like that in a stop motion movie.
42:00It was very challenging. And we had a great VFX team, as Dana was saying. And for me being not
42:07too into how, I don't really understand how stuff is generated. So it's still very much witchcraft.
42:12But it's like having a genie in a stop motion film and asking for so many wishes.
42:20I was always like wondering how many wishes we had left. I understand the stop motion bit.
42:25But yeah, even putting water, because there's a canal chase. And what we've got to be very
42:32careful of is that it matches the stop motion, that it sits well. So they would do things like
42:40maybe double frame it or make it slightly less fluid. So it doesn't seem like live action water
42:46is grafted on. So yeah, so they still had to animate in a stop motion kind of way.
42:52And Kelsey, I mean, what was the biggest technical challenge for you guys in making Inside Out 2?
42:58I'll tell you the biggest surprise to me, you know, the first Inside Out,
43:03nine years ago, and the technology had changed so much. Because I thought like,
43:08hey, get Joy out of storage, get the digital model, bring it on up. Let's go. Things have
43:16changed. It's so quick. They had to start completely over with Joy,
43:23Sat, all five of the original emotions. They had to start from scratch. Because a lot had changed,
43:28particularly I think in shading had really changed. And they're pretty complex characters.
43:33If you look up really closely, they're made of particles that are kind of floating,
43:38and Joy in particular has these particles that are kind of floating off of her.
43:43And she has all these complicated glowing that she's doing. They're really complex characters.
43:48And so he's like, we have to start from scratch. And it's going to take us a year to create to
43:54bring back Joy. And I'm like, oh, my goodness, I had no idea that it would take that much work
44:00with so many people. But it offered us the opportunity to do an upgrade. And so we would
44:08always, when we got to a certain point, we would go, they would show me like, here's Inside Out
44:13Joy. Here's Inside Out 2 Joy. And we would kind of flash back and forth and try to update some
44:20things. So that took a long time by a group of talented people to get them back up. But the new
44:28emotions were just, you know, I mean, that helped getting the technology because you can transfer
44:32that over all the particles for all the other characters. And then you get into a design
44:37problem then too, of like, well, who are the new emotions? What are they like? I remember
44:43Anhui's hair being incredibly difficult because I wanted the long hair. And long hair is really
44:49hard to do in CG. So you have to be very calculated. Like, if you can have one person
44:55who has long hair, and I think Disgust on the first film had really long hair. And it just,
45:03you know, you have so much time and money, you have to choose where you're going to want to spend
45:08it. And so they didn't want to spend it on Disgust. They made it shorter. But anyway, I decided to
45:14spend it on Anhui. And they said, that's great. She can have long hair, just as long as she doesn't
45:19move around very much. And I'm like, well, it's Anhui. She doesn't want to do anything. She doesn't
45:24want to lift a finger. So I promised not to move her very much. And that's great for her too,
45:30because she doesn't want to lift a finger. Morgan, can I ask, because you mentioned before
45:34that you took some sort of documentary style, camera movements, and you have the amorphic lens
45:41and so forth into the animation. Can I ask, and just even the specific shot, there's a shot,
45:47there's some footage in the film, I say footage, which is home movies and stuff, VHS, copied movies
45:54of Pharrell Williams and so on. How is that done in animation? How did you manage to get that look?
46:00Because it looks like an animated version of old, used VHS footage. How was that done in LEGO?
46:08I mean, those are some of the tropes of documentaries. You have archive footage,
46:12and you're jumping between aspect ratios and everything else. And I wanted to keep all that.
46:17And so we did a lot of tests about how to get that archive look. And there are all kinds of
46:22plugins you can do and things you can do in post. And we played with all that and played with all
46:26that. And honestly, what we ended up doing at the end of the day is we would take the shots,
46:32the finished 4K shots, export them to VHS and re-import them. So those shots actually lived on
46:41a VHS tape and then were re-imported into film. Because it looked better than every fake plugin
46:49to try and make it look like archive. We said, I really want a kind of an analog quality to it.
46:55And we got it by doing that, which was crazy. And just in terms of what everybody's talking about,
47:02LEGO style animation comes with kind of a rule book. We got a 130 page binder of kind of these
47:09are what you're supposed to do in LEGO. And what the kind of the prevailing limitation is that
47:15everything in the film has to be buildable with something you can go buy right now,
47:19pieces you can buy right now. And limitations are opportunities. And there were a lot of things,
47:25workarounds we had to constantly come up with, which were interesting and creative and
47:30playing with that. And the one area we really pushed LEGO on was skin tone and hair because
47:38they just didn't have it. They're doing things like dreadlocks, braids. They had one skin tone
47:45for black skin and we ended up developing seven. We did a braid design and they said the problem
47:52with that is it could break off and a child could choke. And we're like, well, it's a movie. And
47:57they said, but it has to be manufacturable. We have to be able to make this. And so we ended up
48:03working with their team to actually do these hairstyles, some of which they're actually
48:09manufacturing now, which is awesome. And new skin tones, LEGO are actually manufacturing.
48:13So kids will actually be able to design a Snoop Dogg without the joint, I assume.
48:18Yeah, exactly.
48:21There seems to be a lot of actually sort of hope and joy in all your films. And I wonder
48:25if that is how you sort of see the future. Where do you hope this field is going?
48:30We've had an incredible year. Like there's so many great movies that are in theaters right now
48:36and they're animated. And they've done really well in the box office. I feel like it's bringing
48:42people back into the theater. So if you want to feel the inspiration, I mean, just look at
48:47everybody here and look at every single one of the people representing the films that are here.
48:52It's an incredible time for animation and you can just feel it.
48:56I'd agree with that. I think some of my core memories, like I said, were watching
49:01Disney movies in the theater. That's what we did. It was always a matinee. And now I have
49:05a seven-year-old and a four-year-old. And this year we've been able to go to the movies together
49:10as a family to see all of your films. And it's been really incredible to have that shared
49:17family experience. And it does feel like right now we're at a point where filmmakers like all
49:23of us aren't afraid to tell stories that matter. And that means something to us personally. And
49:28our film, yes, it's about self-evolution, but at the end of the day, it's about
49:34community. Moana goes out to find other people across the ocean because she knows that
49:40building a bigger community is going to build a better future. And I think now more than ever,
49:45that sense of coming together and finding people that live a different life than you,
49:51that you can find shared connection with, feels like something that is of this moment. And I think
49:58all of us bring how we're feeling about the world and about our lives and ourselves into the work
50:04that we're doing. And I can only imagine that as, you know, life is tricky in the next couple of
50:10years, that the art is going to reflect that. And I think in a hopeful way, people want to be
50:16entertained. They want to laugh. They want to feel something. And I think that the future is
50:21bright for animation in that sense. These are incredible films everybody's made here, all
50:26speaking to something about, you know, the human spirit and with a positive way of looking at that
50:33in many ways. So I feel like animation is actually the most kind of timeless of storytelling. And I
50:41think that is so valuable in this day and age to be able to make films that speak not just to
50:47ourselves, but speak to others that share messages of human value, a way of shared vision of a
50:55community in a world we're going to live in. I think these films all do that. So, you know, I love
51:00the work that is happening right now. This year more than ever, I think animation has really
51:05been out there taking the lead, I think, in entertaining people really. And I think it's
51:11a calorie free way of just really comforting yourself. And I agree, there's something about
51:16animation that is so, it's like pulling a blanket up and it hugs you, you know, and life just seems
51:21to get more and more complex and hectic. So I think that animation in particular, I think is
51:26just going to be playing an immensely important role. There's such a labor of love and you sink
51:31so much time into them. But you know what? It's totally worth it because animated films endure
51:37and they shake off age like nothing else. I don't think we can have too many of them. I just
51:42honestly think it's going to thrive. And part of the reason it's going to thrive, I think,
51:46is because the technology that the new generation has now is insane. The fact that you can make
51:53films on your phone, in your pocket, like if I told myself I could have done that when I was a
51:57kid, I wouldn't believe it. So my kids are, you know, shooting videos inside their video games
52:03and then cutting them together and showing me like what they've done over the afternoon. It's crazy.
52:07So that gets me excited too, just seeing where it can go. I remember being inspired by Robert McKee,
52:13who said that we may not know it, but we're going to the cinema to find meaning and truth. And
52:21that's what we're all trying to do. I love that, just on the comedy side, I love that
52:29a quote from Homer, not the old Greek one, not the Simpsons one, who said,
52:37if it's funny, therefore it's true. And we're all, you know, we may be cartoons and animation and
52:44sometimes goofy characters, but they can be expressing great truths at the same time.
52:50The clever thing is, I think the Simpsons actually had Homer actually saying that line
52:54in one of them.
52:55Did they?
52:58Well, fantastic. That's a great way, always good to end with a punchline.
53:02That's a great place to stop. Thank you all so much for taking the time to do this. And thank
53:06you all so much for making your films, as I say, brought incredible amount of joy to me,
53:10and I'm sure to millions and millions of others around the world. So I only say keep doing it,
53:14because I think we're going to need a lot more joy in the years to come.
53:19So thank you. Thank you so much.
53:22Thanks, Scott.