MoviesOnline caught up with directors Ash Brannon and Chris Buck and producer Christopher Jenkins at the Honolulu press day to promote their new film, the animated action-comedy "Surf’s Up.” An ensemble of talented actors form the voice cast of "Surf’s Up.” Leading the way is Shia LaBeouf, who takes on the role of Cody Maverick.
He is joined by four-time Academy Award nominee Jeff Bridges, playing Big Z; Zooey Deschanel as Lani; Jon Heder as Chicken Joe; James Woods as Reggie; Mario Cantone as Mikey; and Diedrich Bader as Tank. "Surf’s Up” immerses audiences in the competitive world of surfing penguins. For producer Christopher Jenkins, that hilarious starting point led to a breakthrough in how to present the story of up-and-coming surfer Cody Maverick.
"The notion of surfing penguins really got me thinking. What if, instead of being a straightforward fantasy narrative, "Surf’s Up” went into the world of animation with a hypothetically authentic camera, as if it were taping live interviews and ostensibly no script?” says Jenkins.
"What would these surfing penguins tell us it they were given a chance? From there it was a short step to realizing the potential of this coupling – the imagination of animation paired with the realism and immediacy of today’s real-life video.” Directors Ash Brannon (co-director of "Toy Story 2”) and Chris Buck (director of "Tarzan”) quickly realized the cleverness in the idea: relying on the conventions and style of reality television and documentary filmmaking, "Surf’s Up” would have an immediacy and relevance that set it apart from the pack.
Using that technique, the directors brought into focus the characters, story, and art direction – the heart of the film. That intimate cinematic style perfectly supported the story that developed from the inspiring concept of surfing penguins. At the center of the story, the filmmakers placed the relationship between Cody, a young, up-and-coming surfer who thinks that becoming a champion will bring him the respect he feels he deserves, and Big Z, the onetime legendary surfer who everybody thinks has passed on, but in fact has been living alone as a hermit for the past decade.
"Having lost his father, Cody is clearly looking for a father figure, and the legend of Big Z had filled that void; because Z was a champion, that’s what Cody thought he wanted to be, too. But when Cody enters Z’s life, Z is forced to come to terms with his past and face life as a champion whose glory days are over,” says director Ash Brannon. "When Cody finds out that Z is still alive, they naturally fall into those father-son roles – the good and the challenging – and both realize that nothing could matter less than a trophy.
It’s their passion for being out on the waves that counts most.” To absorb audiences into Cody’s world, every detail had to be appropriate to the experience. "One of our main goals was to take the viewer to a tropical location,” said director Chris Buck.
"We wanted to recreate that feeling you get when you step off the plane in a place like Tahiti or Hawaii, and you’re hit by that amazing scent and air and even by how different the light is. Because of the behind-the-scenes nature of the film, it was necessary that the characters speak in a natural way – including improvised and overlapping dialogue. In a typical animation voiceover session, actors are alone in the booth as they record their characters’ lines.
This allows the animators, editors and sound designers more flexibility in splicing together different performances. For "Surf’s Up,” the filmmakers made the highly unconventional choice to record many scenes with several actors in the booth at once. "A performance is completely different when you have the other actors there in the room with you – you get a sense of what they’re doing and react to each other in a natural way,” says LaBeouf.
"For a movie like ‘Surf’s Up’ – which is supposed to go behind the scenes, showing what happens in the natural environment – it was essential, and I’m glad we had the creative freedom to find the magic.” Jess Bridges notes that when he was acting in the recording booth alongside LaBeouf, the two could not help but mirror the relationship that their characters have on-screen. This technique paid off in several scenes, especially when Big Z and Cody Maverick cooperate on shaping a surfboard.
"The actors were more comfortable recording dialogue with other actors in the film, and it comes through in the performance,” Buck said. "Jeff, Shia, and Zooey were brilliant in playing off of and working with each other. They really took ownership of their characters.
” Here’s more of what directors Ash Brannon and Chris Buck and producer Christopher Jenkins had to tell us about their new film: Q: Which comes first: story or style? Buck: The story always comes first, then the next step is to make sure we could create waves that were believable enough to carry the story. Jenkins: We knew we were going to have to do skateboarding penguins if we couldn't get the waves.
We did an early test with our vis-dev department and we really didn't know if it could be done. We weren't asking our animators to put something on a wave but inside a wave. We knew that would be a central element to the story.
Q: What about the Mocumentary style? Buck: It was Chris' idea to do the story. Jenkins: We wanted characters to do interviews with an improvisation style, hand-held camera style, to have a real penguin.
Sony early on had a surfing penguin movie that wasn't working. It went on the shelf. I thought there was something kind of cool about it and came back with the documentary angle.
Surfers seem to spend a lot of time doing documentaries on themselves. We should do it, embrace it and do a full-length narrative like "Spinal Tap." Q: Why do a film about the Zeitgeist of penguins?
Jenkins: 4-1/2 years ago I didn't know March of the Penguins, I certainly didn't know about Happy Feet. If we had, we may have done skateboarding squirrels. In good animation, the characters become bigger than their species.
You connect with a small fish in "Finding Nemo," you connect with cars, for God's sake, in "Cars." Buck: They're characters when it comes down to it. Q: Will this be the last one?
Buck: Who says it's the last? Brannon: If we're lucky, there's eight or ten more films. Q: Have any of you surfed before?
Brannon: None of us surfed before. Jenkins: And none of us do now. Buck: I took lessons last year in Maui.
There's a difference between learning in California and Hawaii. Brannon: We're getting out tomorrow morning on these waves where you can ride for 100 yards. Buck: The shore breaks in California, so you can't get balanced and feel it when you're learning.
Here the waves are way out so you've got time to enjoy the ride. Jenkins: We took all the animators out surfing because we thought it was important that they know how it felt.
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