They’re back! Almost five years to the day after first appearing in a film that won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, Mumble the tap-dancing penguin returns to the big screen with friends old and new. And this time, they’re all in 3D.
Talking with George Miller
Writer, director and producer George Miller (best known for the Mad Max films, Babe) was in Toronto to promote the film’s release and discuss the tremendous amount of work and talent that went into the visually stunning sequel. For him, the idea of Happy Feet Two was already in the works before the first was even completed.
“The first film took so long to make (four years) that as we were coming into the last year we started to formulate a story; because you live with these characters for so long,” he remembers. “We even had ideas for scenes, like the elephant seals singing Rawhide, which came out of the first movie. As shots were being finished, there’d be a big cheer and someone would push a button and Rawhide would come on. One time it came up against the scene of the elephant seals and I thought immediately ‘Ah, we’ve got to have that scene in the movie!’ So those things accumulate, and if they earn their place in the movie, they usually end up there. That’s never happened to me before; I’ve never been working on a film and already been thinking of the next one.”
The Cast
As it turns out, a lot of people were thinking of the next one; the star-studded cast is even more impressive than the first. Elijah Wood returns as Mumble, and Robin Williams reprises his dual roles as Ramon and Lovelace. Alecia Moore (Pink) steps in for the late Brittany Murphy as Gloria and Brad Pitt and Matt Damon voice new characters Will and Bill the Krill. Additional roles are voiced by Hank Azaria, Hugo Weaving, Sofia Vergara and Anthony LaPaglia. Miller particularly enjoyed putting the talent in a room together and watching their improvisational skills take over.
“Coming from live action, I’m very aware that acting is a contact sport,” he says. “Really fine actors love nothing more than to work off each other. As Robin Williams described it, it’s a kind of jazz; you’re really riffing off each other. So you get much more rewarding material; they improvise much better lines than we can write, the cadences are better…and that happened in every case. Even the casting of Will and Bill; we wanted two actors who knew each other and who were friends. It just happened that Matt and Brad were available at the same time in the same city and for enough time to do it. And we just put them across the room with each other on mikes and it was much more alive. It’s kind of sad to see an actor with a piece of paper! And they love it much more.”
Finally Realizing 3D
For Miller, something of a dream was achieved with the decision to opt for 3D.
“I’ve always loved 3D. We rendered three of the scenes on the first Happy Feet in 3D, but didn’t have the time or the money to do it. And when I saw them, I realized the whole landscape was sensational. And the characters were much more palpable. So I’m just absolutely thrilled.”
An Immense Project & the Need for Effective Communication
At the helm of a team of 600 cast and crew and a project five years in the making, Miller definitely faced a challenging role as leader.
“It’s something I deal with every day,” he says. “The main thing is communication, in every direction. The biggest problem is that we can break down into silos; people become concerned with their own area while never really thinking of the whole. So I try to do as much as I can to open up conversation. Usually that’s best done recreationally, and where there’s a lot of circulation; where we work, there’s a big open plan space; people are walking to go to the restrooms, to go to the kitchens, to just come into the main foyer and so on. It’s where people bump into each other.”
“For me the biggest trick I learned, and it happened accidentally on this film, was that I started to videotape everything,” he continues. “That way, if you’ve got a screen or you’re drawing something, it’s much easier to videotape it, rather than someone taking notes. And once that was videotaped, people could watch it; so even if 600 people couldn’t be in the room, they could at least see the conversation between, say, myself and Rob Coleman, the animation director. And so for any animator, it was as if they were there. All they’d miss is the interaction.”
Happy Feet Three?
So is there a third film in the works? Not anytime soon. Miller says that he can’t think of any story to tell from here, and has another project that he’s going to be working on. “I’ve got another Mad Max to do, which I’ve been wanting to do for a decade. We can get that going now.”
Happy Feet Two taps into theatres November 18, 2011.
Ramona Zacharias - Ramona has been a freelance writer for ten years, focusing on arts, entertainment and pop culture, with a more recent dabbling in travel. ...
