As often as possible I'd like to supplement the Podcast with extra's that relate to the animation being discussed. After talking about El Superbeasto I contacted Film Roman and asked if there was an outside chance that anyone associated with the production would be interested in being interviewed regarding the film, I didn't get just anyone.
Animation Producer Tom Klein has had an exceptional career which has seen him working with big names in alternative animation and on projects which have shaped later generations of animators. He's continued that trend with his work on El Superbeasto. Tom was nice enough to take some time out of his week to answer a few questions about his early career and about the nuts and bolts of the Superbeasto production.
UAR: Hello Tom,
Thanks again for taking the time to answer some questions about The Haunted World of El Superbeasto.
If it's okay with you I'd like to introduce you to the audience by asking a couple of questions which relate to you and your career.
UAR: Was working in animation something that has always interested you?
TK: Yes, ever since I first saw the Flintstones as a kid.
UAR: When did you get into the animation field? what was your first gig? How did you come about it?
TK: I was working in New York doing live action production and met Ralph Bakshi who was trying at the time to make a live action "Mean Streets" type of movie and he asked me to help him produce it. That project didn't go, but the next project he did was the Rolling Stones Harlem Shuffle music video, which I ended up producing with Ralph. It had a few minutes of animation done by John Kricfalusi, Lynne Naylor, Bob Jaques, etc. So that was my first project with animation, and that led directly to doing Bobby's Girl and then Mighty Mouse.
UAR: You are credited as a Producer on El Superbeasto, Producer is a very flexible title in showbiz, especially in animation. What was your level of involvement in the production, how hands on were you with the creative teams? Was there an element of your job during the production that you were especially fond of?
TK: Yes, the job description for Producers varies wildly. On El Superbeasto, I was brought in after the project had already started: the initial concept was to do a very low budget version of the project, but Rob Zombie felt the story had gotten off track, and Film Roman actually shut down the production at that point. IDT owned Film Roman back then, and an IDT executive (Jerry Davis) had the idea that the project could be resuscitated and potentially released as a theatrical feature. He brought me on to re-configure the production plan, and run the show: I was directly involved with all aspects of the production from that point on to completion, working closely with Rob, the animation crew, the cast, the Korean Studio (Big Star) the Post Production team, and the studio executives. I was directly responsible for all aspects of the production: financially responsible to the studio and creatively responsible to Rob. I am also credited as an Additional Director on the movie, and for additional story: I was very hands on with virtually every shot in the picture, working to achieve Rob's vision for the movie.
The aspect of the job I was most fond of was working with Rob in the Edit room: he's very smart and very funny. A lot of the material in the final cut was re-worked in editorial: for example Rob's idea to bring in Hard 'n Phirm to cover the Suzi chase scene and the Catfight scene: both those sequences were originally cut as straight ahead action sequences. The songs really put them over the top.
UAR: How does Superbeasto relate to some of your earlier work? How did you find the experiance? was it a nice break from the norm? do you look forward to working on something of a similar vein in the future?
TK: It seemed like a natural progression from my earlier years working with Ralph Bakshi to work on R-Rated, adult material. But I've done a lot of family and children's projects over the years too, so it was a real pleasure pushing the limits where Rob wanted to go on this. I'm hoping to do more projects in this vein soon.
UAR: Finally, I see that you've been working as animation producer on this season of the Simpsons, would you mind quickly commenting on that?
TK: It's an incredible honor and a real pleasure to work on such a hugely successful, iconic animation production: the level of talent, professionalism and dedication on the crew is astounding.
A few questions about El Superbeasto.
UAR: Directors can sometimes "Direct" a production without ever entering the studio, Others can be as overbearing as a mama grizzly bear. What was Rob Zombies level of involvement in the production? Did he hang around the studio much? Did he make any suggestions or revisions directly WITH the animators?
TK: Rob was extremely involved in every aspect of the production and regularly handed direction/suggestions/revisions directly to the animators during the stints where he was in house. However, the movie was in production for almost 5 years, and during that time Rob finished Devils Rejects, wrote, directed and produced Halloween, recorded and released his last CD, and went on tour multiple times. When he was not here in the studio we would do everything via email/FTP. He'd review stuff, get direction back to me and I would take it on the floor to the artists.
UAR: Paul Giamatti and Rosario Dawson gave great performances, Tom Kenny and the other voice actors also delivered some stellar and memorable lines. Can you talk about some of the differences if any, between working with celebrity voices and working with traditional voice actors.
TK: They're all great actors and really got into the roles--and everybody really enjoyed the idea of doing this crazy material. The only real difference is that with the "celebrity' voices we tend to use them for just one part, and for the voice actors we would often have one actor do multiple roles. Except for Tom Papa, we recorded virtually every actor in just one session: there was a lot of ad-libbing and the actors had a lot of freedom to build their character. Another standout was Rob Paulsen who did quite a few roles on the picture: everything from the Nazi Leader to El Gato.
UAR: Anyone who's been following the production knows that the film has been a long time coming. Production began in 2006, and was stalled on multiple occasions because Rob Zombie was involved with other productions. Kudos to Mr. Zombie for wanting to focus on each project individually, but I can imagine that situations like that can put a crimp in the animation process. Were there any difficulties with the production because of these pauses? If not, how did you keep things moving along?
TK: No, there were more delays caused by the changing of the guard (several times) in the executive ranks at the studio than by Rob working on other projects. Rob always seems to have 9 things going on at once and he was very good about getting us the direction we needed when we needed it. The only real production difficulties arose when the story veered off track from what Rob was after: first when the initial story reels were done, and again when new executives came in and felt the story should go in a different direction.
UAR: Were you partnered with an overseas studio during this production? Who were they? Has Film Roman worked with them before? How did they handle such a bawdy production, was it outside of the usual material they are used to seeing from the west?
TK: We weren't really 'partnered' with them, but Big Star Animation studios in Seoul Korea did all the animation production, as a sub-contractor. We did the production the way typical TV episodic animation is done: we did all the pre-production elements at Film Roman, and delivered Storyboards (and layouts for most scenes), designs, color keys and detailed x-sheets to Big Star where they would animate the scenes, paint the BG's, ink & paint, composite and render scenes that they shipped back to us. I had worked with Big Star in the past--and so had Bob Jaques, our timing director--on the Baby Huey show for Harvey/Universal. Both Bob and I had been over to Big Star in the past and we knew they could do a great job with the style of animation we wanted.
UAR: The animation direction was spot on and snappy, there wasn't a wasted frame on the screen. Could you talk briefly about the process of animating a scene on El Superbeasto?
TK: Thanks, we wanted a fast paced, snappy style: our first step was cutting really tight reels, there was no fat in the cut from the get-go--we were often cutting the animatic drawings on 1's and 2's, virtually animating some of the scenes in storyboards. We put a lot of poses in the reels and cut tight. Some scenes were done as storyboards, some as full layout. Some done on paper, some digitally, using a few different softwares. In the early days of Production Mr. Lawrecne was directing and he would go over every scene with the artist in detail, along with Carey Yost who was co-directing at the time. Then the drawings would go down to editorial where we'd cut the reels, and add poses as necessary. After Mr. Lawrence left, I took over the handouts, going over every scene. Then, on a sequence by sequence basis, we would send the track reading and animatic Quicktime to Bob Jaques and his team at Carbunkle who wrote out the detailed timing on the x-sheets following the timing from the reels: as a rule we wouldn't open up a scene unless absolutely necessary. Only a few scenes were fully animated here at Film Roman, to set a style, but many were heavily posed out in layout or storyboards.
UAR: More and more productions are going full digital. Most notably Disney's "How to Hook Up Your Home Theater" Goofy short, and "The Princess and the frog." which were both animated in a "paperless" process. How much of El Superbeasto was handled digitally.
TK: We became more and more digital over the 4 1/2 years we were in production. Initially the far majority of the storyboards and layouts were done on paper. We would scan paper drawings to get them in to editorial, but ship paper to Big Star as they animated on paper. We used After Effects right from the start to do all of our effects, and some animation: we would create the EFX based on our storyboard animatic, and Big Star would integrate the EFX into the final animation. And we did all of our character color digitally from the start in Photoshop. BG paining started on paper for color keys but we switched mid-stream to doing all BG color digitally. About midway through we started doing storyboards and layouts digitally, using a few different softwares (Photoshop, Digicell & Mirage, depending on what each artist was familiar with). At the end of the day I'd estimate 40-50% of the movie was done digitally.
UAR: Animation often doesn't survive close scrutiny, we hide a lot of tricks and cheats in 24 frames a second. Could you discuss any challenges that were encountered having to develop an animated feature for high definition? Did you have to re-think any age old processes which may no long hold true in a 1080p world?
TK: We knew we were going Hi def from the start so we set up the edit room to support 24 fps 1080p early on. As a result we were looking at full rez images all the way through the process. We used standard 24 fps x-sheets, and a field guide that was full 16x9, but we protected for a 1:85 frame in case we went out to film (to date we haven't): 16x9 was the aspect ratio we designed to. The biggest challenge came in dirt-checking the frames at the end of the process. Big Star did a great job fixing the majority of the specks and noise that creeps in, and then we finished the process through our DI room at Fotokem.
UAR: I have to admit that the gang here were a little disappointed with the special features offered on the disc, chalk it up to the sense of entitlement we consumers have, bundled with the fact that traditionally Rob Zombies movies have had hours of commentary and behind the scene's features. I know most people never watch that stuff, but we're animation geeks and it always gets us down when we can't peek behind the curtain of something we like. Is there any chance we might see a special edition of El Superbeasto with commentary and some featurettes?
TK: We were disappointed too: we wanted to put more in but the distributor didn't have the budget to do more, plus they insisted they release by a certain date, which conflicted with Rob's schedule, so we didn’t get an opportunity to do a behind the scenes. The BluRay has a full length version of the work-in-progress animatic that shows the scenes in various stages of "Rough storyboard", cleaned up storyboards, layout, pencil test etc, but I wish we could have done more. We'll see how sales go--if they're strong enough we may be able to get a deluxe edition in the future.
UAR: Starz Media and Film Roman have release some GREAT direct to DVD animation in the last few years. "The Hellboy Animated" features, "Dead Space Downfall" and coming soon, the "Dante's Inferno" animated feature. Have these projects proven successful for the company? Can we look forward to animated releases aimed at a mature audience for years to come? I know you weren't involved in the production but... Any word on a third Hellboy animated movie? we're dying for more!
TK: Thanks! Yes, they've been successful enough that we want to continue doing them, and though I can't announce anything specific here, I think it's likely you'll see more in this vein. The next one up will likely be another EA related project--no specific plans on a third Hellboy at the moment. There are a lot of people here at the company that want to continue to push into this arena.
UAR: Is there any other part of the production or release of El Superbeasto that you'd like to comment on?
TK: I think the songs by Hard 'n Phirm are amazing, and brought so much to the movie: we ended up with 7 original songs in the picture, all done by them. Really funny stuff!
Thank you again for your Time Tom.
I truly appreciate you giving us a little info on the production process behind El Superbeasto.
Thanks again for taking the time to answer some questions about The Haunted World of El Superbeasto.
If it's okay with you I'd like to introduce you to the audience by asking a couple of questions which relate to you and your career.
UAR: Was working in animation something that has always interested you?
TK: Yes, ever since I first saw the Flintstones as a kid.
UAR: When did you get into the animation field? what was your first gig? How did you come about it?
TK: I was working in New York doing live action production and met Ralph Bakshi who was trying at the time to make a live action "Mean Streets" type of movie and he asked me to help him produce it. That project didn't go, but the next project he did was the Rolling Stones Harlem Shuffle music video, which I ended up producing with Ralph. It had a few minutes of animation done by John Kricfalusi, Lynne Naylor, Bob Jaques, etc. So that was my first project with animation, and that led directly to doing Bobby's Girl and then Mighty Mouse.
UAR: You are credited as a Producer on El Superbeasto, Producer is a very flexible title in showbiz, especially in animation. What was your level of involvement in the production, how hands on were you with the creative teams? Was there an element of your job during the production that you were especially fond of?
TK: Yes, the job description for Producers varies wildly. On El Superbeasto, I was brought in after the project had already started: the initial concept was to do a very low budget version of the project, but Rob Zombie felt the story had gotten off track, and Film Roman actually shut down the production at that point. IDT owned Film Roman back then, and an IDT executive (Jerry Davis) had the idea that the project could be resuscitated and potentially released as a theatrical feature. He brought me on to re-configure the production plan, and run the show: I was directly involved with all aspects of the production from that point on to completion, working closely with Rob, the animation crew, the cast, the Korean Studio (Big Star) the Post Production team, and the studio executives. I was directly responsible for all aspects of the production: financially responsible to the studio and creatively responsible to Rob. I am also credited as an Additional Director on the movie, and for additional story: I was very hands on with virtually every shot in the picture, working to achieve Rob's vision for the movie.
The aspect of the job I was most fond of was working with Rob in the Edit room: he's very smart and very funny. A lot of the material in the final cut was re-worked in editorial: for example Rob's idea to bring in Hard 'n Phirm to cover the Suzi chase scene and the Catfight scene: both those sequences were originally cut as straight ahead action sequences. The songs really put them over the top.
UAR: How does Superbeasto relate to some of your earlier work? How did you find the experiance? was it a nice break from the norm? do you look forward to working on something of a similar vein in the future?
TK: It seemed like a natural progression from my earlier years working with Ralph Bakshi to work on R-Rated, adult material. But I've done a lot of family and children's projects over the years too, so it was a real pleasure pushing the limits where Rob wanted to go on this. I'm hoping to do more projects in this vein soon.
UAR: Finally, I see that you've been working as animation producer on this season of the Simpsons, would you mind quickly commenting on that?
TK: It's an incredible honor and a real pleasure to work on such a hugely successful, iconic animation production: the level of talent, professionalism and dedication on the crew is astounding.
A few questions about El Superbeasto.
UAR: Directors can sometimes "Direct" a production without ever entering the studio, Others can be as overbearing as a mama grizzly bear. What was Rob Zombies level of involvement in the production? Did he hang around the studio much? Did he make any suggestions or revisions directly WITH the animators?
TK: Rob was extremely involved in every aspect of the production and regularly handed direction/suggestions/revisions directly to the animators during the stints where he was in house. However, the movie was in production for almost 5 years, and during that time Rob finished Devils Rejects, wrote, directed and produced Halloween, recorded and released his last CD, and went on tour multiple times. When he was not here in the studio we would do everything via email/FTP. He'd review stuff, get direction back to me and I would take it on the floor to the artists.
UAR: Paul Giamatti and Rosario Dawson gave great performances, Tom Kenny and the other voice actors also delivered some stellar and memorable lines. Can you talk about some of the differences if any, between working with celebrity voices and working with traditional voice actors.
TK: They're all great actors and really got into the roles--and everybody really enjoyed the idea of doing this crazy material. The only real difference is that with the "celebrity' voices we tend to use them for just one part, and for the voice actors we would often have one actor do multiple roles. Except for Tom Papa, we recorded virtually every actor in just one session: there was a lot of ad-libbing and the actors had a lot of freedom to build their character. Another standout was Rob Paulsen who did quite a few roles on the picture: everything from the Nazi Leader to El Gato.
UAR: Anyone who's been following the production knows that the film has been a long time coming. Production began in 2006, and was stalled on multiple occasions because Rob Zombie was involved with other productions. Kudos to Mr. Zombie for wanting to focus on each project individually, but I can imagine that situations like that can put a crimp in the animation process. Were there any difficulties with the production because of these pauses? If not, how did you keep things moving along?
TK: No, there were more delays caused by the changing of the guard (several times) in the executive ranks at the studio than by Rob working on other projects. Rob always seems to have 9 things going on at once and he was very good about getting us the direction we needed when we needed it. The only real production difficulties arose when the story veered off track from what Rob was after: first when the initial story reels were done, and again when new executives came in and felt the story should go in a different direction.
UAR: Were you partnered with an overseas studio during this production? Who were they? Has Film Roman worked with them before? How did they handle such a bawdy production, was it outside of the usual material they are used to seeing from the west?
TK: We weren't really 'partnered' with them, but Big Star Animation studios in Seoul Korea did all the animation production, as a sub-contractor. We did the production the way typical TV episodic animation is done: we did all the pre-production elements at Film Roman, and delivered Storyboards (and layouts for most scenes), designs, color keys and detailed x-sheets to Big Star where they would animate the scenes, paint the BG's, ink & paint, composite and render scenes that they shipped back to us. I had worked with Big Star in the past--and so had Bob Jaques, our timing director--on the Baby Huey show for Harvey/Universal. Both Bob and I had been over to Big Star in the past and we knew they could do a great job with the style of animation we wanted.
UAR: The animation direction was spot on and snappy, there wasn't a wasted frame on the screen. Could you talk briefly about the process of animating a scene on El Superbeasto?
TK: Thanks, we wanted a fast paced, snappy style: our first step was cutting really tight reels, there was no fat in the cut from the get-go--we were often cutting the animatic drawings on 1's and 2's, virtually animating some of the scenes in storyboards. We put a lot of poses in the reels and cut tight. Some scenes were done as storyboards, some as full layout. Some done on paper, some digitally, using a few different softwares. In the early days of Production Mr. Lawrecne was directing and he would go over every scene with the artist in detail, along with Carey Yost who was co-directing at the time. Then the drawings would go down to editorial where we'd cut the reels, and add poses as necessary. After Mr. Lawrence left, I took over the handouts, going over every scene. Then, on a sequence by sequence basis, we would send the track reading and animatic Quicktime to Bob Jaques and his team at Carbunkle who wrote out the detailed timing on the x-sheets following the timing from the reels: as a rule we wouldn't open up a scene unless absolutely necessary. Only a few scenes were fully animated here at Film Roman, to set a style, but many were heavily posed out in layout or storyboards.
UAR: More and more productions are going full digital. Most notably Disney's "How to Hook Up Your Home Theater" Goofy short, and "The Princess and the frog." which were both animated in a "paperless" process. How much of El Superbeasto was handled digitally.
TK: We became more and more digital over the 4 1/2 years we were in production. Initially the far majority of the storyboards and layouts were done on paper. We would scan paper drawings to get them in to editorial, but ship paper to Big Star as they animated on paper. We used After Effects right from the start to do all of our effects, and some animation: we would create the EFX based on our storyboard animatic, and Big Star would integrate the EFX into the final animation. And we did all of our character color digitally from the start in Photoshop. BG paining started on paper for color keys but we switched mid-stream to doing all BG color digitally. About midway through we started doing storyboards and layouts digitally, using a few different softwares (Photoshop, Digicell & Mirage, depending on what each artist was familiar with). At the end of the day I'd estimate 40-50% of the movie was done digitally.
UAR: Animation often doesn't survive close scrutiny, we hide a lot of tricks and cheats in 24 frames a second. Could you discuss any challenges that were encountered having to develop an animated feature for high definition? Did you have to re-think any age old processes which may no long hold true in a 1080p world?
TK: We knew we were going Hi def from the start so we set up the edit room to support 24 fps 1080p early on. As a result we were looking at full rez images all the way through the process. We used standard 24 fps x-sheets, and a field guide that was full 16x9, but we protected for a 1:85 frame in case we went out to film (to date we haven't): 16x9 was the aspect ratio we designed to. The biggest challenge came in dirt-checking the frames at the end of the process. Big Star did a great job fixing the majority of the specks and noise that creeps in, and then we finished the process through our DI room at Fotokem.
UAR: I have to admit that the gang here were a little disappointed with the special features offered on the disc, chalk it up to the sense of entitlement we consumers have, bundled with the fact that traditionally Rob Zombies movies have had hours of commentary and behind the scene's features. I know most people never watch that stuff, but we're animation geeks and it always gets us down when we can't peek behind the curtain of something we like. Is there any chance we might see a special edition of El Superbeasto with commentary and some featurettes?
TK: We were disappointed too: we wanted to put more in but the distributor didn't have the budget to do more, plus they insisted they release by a certain date, which conflicted with Rob's schedule, so we didn’t get an opportunity to do a behind the scenes. The BluRay has a full length version of the work-in-progress animatic that shows the scenes in various stages of "Rough storyboard", cleaned up storyboards, layout, pencil test etc, but I wish we could have done more. We'll see how sales go--if they're strong enough we may be able to get a deluxe edition in the future.
UAR: Starz Media and Film Roman have release some GREAT direct to DVD animation in the last few years. "The Hellboy Animated" features, "Dead Space Downfall" and coming soon, the "Dante's Inferno" animated feature. Have these projects proven successful for the company? Can we look forward to animated releases aimed at a mature audience for years to come? I know you weren't involved in the production but... Any word on a third Hellboy animated movie? we're dying for more!
TK: Thanks! Yes, they've been successful enough that we want to continue doing them, and though I can't announce anything specific here, I think it's likely you'll see more in this vein. The next one up will likely be another EA related project--no specific plans on a third Hellboy at the moment. There are a lot of people here at the company that want to continue to push into this arena.
UAR: Is there any other part of the production or release of El Superbeasto that you'd like to comment on?
TK: I think the songs by Hard 'n Phirm are amazing, and brought so much to the movie: we ended up with 7 original songs in the picture, all done by them. Really funny stuff!
Thank you again for your Time Tom.
I truly appreciate you giving us a little info on the production process behind El Superbeasto.
No comments:
Post a Comment