Oscar winning Director Chris Wedge talks about his passion project of over ten years
The creators of ICE AGE and RIO will reveal a hidden world unlike any other in an all new 3D CG action-adventure comedy. EPIC tells the story of a battle raging all around us between the forces of good, who protect nature, and the forces of evil, who wish to see it destroyed. When a teen age girl finds herself magically transported into this secret universe, she must band together with a rag-tag team of fun and unique characters to save their world…and ours.
The Fan Carpet had the opportunity to talk to Oscar winning director Chris Wedge ahead of the May 22 release of Epic. He tells us about the inspiration behind the story, and what the future has in store for the Leafmen…
Can you tell us about Epic and the roles of the Leafmen and Boggans?
It’s an action/ adventure movie, action/ adventure, comedy, romance and it’s set in the forest. It’s about the struggle of life in the forest, every forest has this going on; the struggle between life and decay, you can see evidence of it if you walk in the woods.
In the movie we see that there are characters behind this, the creatures fighting for good are called Leafmen and they’re like little samurai that ride on hummingbirds and the bad guys ride on bats, that’s the stage that the story is set on, but we tell a story that involves an ensemble of characters both from his world with the Leafmen and from our own world, that take us on a quote un quote epic journey.
Epic is visually stunning, do you think the 3D added another level to the magic?
Well 3D is something we can always do with a computer animation because it is a virtual 3D world, up until the last five years we shot with one camera but now we can shoot with two eyes.
This was a particularly lush environment to go into with 3D because there are scale changes in the movie where little two inch people look at the world that we all know, but because of their perspective, the world looks almost alien.
We’ve shank down there and scaled up, 3D is a great tool for exploring that size relationship.
Similar to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids?
Well I hope people don’t compare it t that because it really doesn’t share anything in terms of tone, there’s a little bit, one of the stories involves a human that goes to this world. Once you’re down in that world you feel like you’ve been transported to somewhere much more magical. It’s a tiny person’s perspective of our world.
What I wanted to do was take you out of your seat and put you in a place you hadn’t been before, that place just happens to be laid over the world we know, I wanted to make it a story that happens in that world; like in Avatar you get pulled into a different world, that was the idea.
Do you think recording the actors separately created more enthusiastic characters?
We had a couple of sessions where the actors came together, but it’s hard to schedule them, and to be honest, we have more control if we do the actors one at a time.
You could say there’s a little bit of lack of spontaneity but that’s all created in our cutting.
The actors do interact with each other, but it’s virtual, and we see their performance over the course of a year and a half, every month or so they come back and spend three hours recording.
So everytime they come back they see the movie closer to completion and when you see how your voice comes through the character and you see that character interact with other characters, you get what’s known as workshopping on the stage, you know you just work it out; ‘Oh I should do this, if he moves this way I should say it like this, if the character says this then I should do this’ so there’s room for improvisation, there’s room for spontaneity but it happens in this virtual world.
How long did the process take, from storyboard to finished product?
About three and a half years, that’s typical for animation.
Is it based on the book by William Joyce?
It’s not based on the book, Bill and I developed this idea many years ago, and Bill went off to do his own things. We borrowed the notion that the Leafmen are out there from Bill’s book but there’s nothing else about the book. It’s a very sweet and charming little story book for kids but there’s not enough there to make a movie.
So the story for Epic is a completely original story, we took that notion from his book but we made these guys action heroes.
Did he have much input into the film?
Bill and I developed the first draft of the script together along with Jim Hart, whose a veteran writer; he wrote Hook and Dracula.
Once the film went into production, Bill was on other projects, so he had a little bit of input but the film was made at Blue Sky.
And how did you get involved with the project?
Oh I cooked it up from the beginning, like I said Bill and I were thinking about it back in 1978 of movies to do, and this idea of a world in the woods is where I wanted to go, and we just put the story together in those early days, I mean the basic idea, the film was re written three times since then.
But Bill’s great; he’s got a fun imagination and we get a long very well. It’s just fun to invent things together, but this has been a passion project of mine for over ten years.
Were there any characters removed or added to the film as you went on?
Oh absolutely, as I said we rewrote it three times, I mean from the first page to the last, and overtime we wrote a draft, you’d learn a little bit but you’d be dissatisfied with other parts of it, and want to shift it around. And so characters came and went, so characters died but then were resurrected, some characters roles were switched up with other characters, it’s all part of the development process you just keep changing pieces to see what will work, like rearranging a room until it looks right.
Do you have a favourite character, looking back at the film?
Well I’d have to say, my favourite character is Bumba, who is this human that thinks the Leafmen are out there but everyone else thinks he’s crazy. So all at once he’s supposed to be human but animated much broader than the other human looking characters in the movie – the fantasy characters.
Jason Sudeikis did a fantastic job with the voice acting, and I just like the way he moves.
And a favourite scene?
I have a number of favourite scenes, but one of the scenes that achieves what I wanted it to achieve is where the Boggans ambush the party at a critical moment and it happens on a lily pond, on this tranquil lily pond deep in the forest, it just looks very beautiful when we arrive there it’s just sweet and glossy, but when these creatures attack it becomes a battle field. Very kinetic and it’s what I was hoping for at the beginning of the film; a big action set piece where you’d never expect to see one. And hopefully you get surprises as the sequence develops.
Where did the idea of Nim originally come from?
Nim was always part of the story, he always played a role. And the rings of knowledge were part of the original pitch. Different versions of the story had this tragic, in sighting incident happen and we always had to go to Nim Galuu’s [whose played by Steven Tyler] to figure out how we were going to solve it. He’s described as maybe a magic man but when we find him he’s anything but.
Nim was always intended to be a very broad, colourful bon vivant, he runs what is kind of the Moulin Rogue of the forest, it’s a place where all the forest creatures come to party.
You’ve assembled a terrific cast across the board, were they always your first choice?
Many of them, but what you find out is that your first choice isn’t always the best choice, all of these choices were very very satisfying, there is a process to arrive at them through discovery. But I think everyone is perfect in what they do.
Part of what is important to me, is to cast a voice that has a tremendous amount of skill and emotional commitment and believability but isn’t as recognisable as opposed to a movie star who you like, but sometimes when you take the voice away from the face it doesn’t sound like the face and the voice together.
Would you revisit the Leafmen at another point in time with a sequel?
I’ve never been a fan of going back, but this has been on my mind for so long that I would absolutely. I have ideas, there is plenty left to find and explore.
What’s next for you?
A little bit of rest, I poured everything I had into this movie until last Thursday when we finished it, so now I’m gonna do some press for it and work on other ideas.
Being from The Fan Carpet, we wondered what you are a fan of?
I certainly am a movie fan, I have directors that I like a lot; Danny Boyle, Terrance Mallick, Ridley Scott. I’m also a fan of Sailing, I’m a fan of beautiful machines, I’m a fan of technology that works really well, I’m a fan of invention.
EPIC IS OUT IN 3D ON WEDNESDAY MAY 22