![]() So, you end up doing a lot of voices yourself then, and sometimes they stay and sometimes they don’t. We cut the whole movie together with the storyboard panels, and we put our own voices in there and steal music from other movies, to make a pretend version or outline version of the movie. ![]() It’s funny because we make what we call story reels. Did you ever think about voicing a character for Epic? You voiced a character yourself for Ice Age, with Scrat. I just let the main characters emerge out of a cast that I wasn’t really giving emphasis to, at the beginning. So, I guess there are a lot of characters. Part of the satisfaction in watching them all would be in seeing how all their stories wove together and how it all wound up. In a Robert Altman way, I wanted to just be exploring this world through all these characters. I was having trouble deciding who the main character would be, to be honest. At the beginning of this, I wanted it to feel like we had an ensemble cast. I’m looking forward to the day it doesn’t feel that way. People still think it’s just for kids, even though, if it’s funny enough, they’ll enjoy it. Animation, as big as it’s gotten business wise, is still in a tiny box, in terms of what people think it is and what they think it’s for. I just have a hunch that, when the day comes where an animated film can win Best Picture, we will have been living with the idea for awhile, that there isn’t much of a difference between the two. The lines are certainly being blurred between what a live-action movie is and what an animated movie is. It started with Disney, and now we’re ever closer to versions of human beings. But, the popularity of it has come along with technical evolution because of the ability to create worlds we haven’t seen before and animated characters that perform with a fluidity. You can’t have animation without technology. Animation has always been about technology. The acceptance of animation in the business arena, in the marketplace and for audiences is evolving. WEDGE: You’re just going to have to have a film with a concept and characters that trump what anybody else is doing. What do you think it would take for an animated feature to win Best Picture and not just Best Animated Feature? Films like The Lord of the Rings and Avatar helped people understand that maybe, in the future, animated films are going to be something that are more like live-action movies, and maybe the techniques that distinguish live-action filmmaking from animation will intermingle a little bit more.ĭid you ever worry that this film might just never happen? In the meantime, there was an evolution in the industry where we started seeing animation that didn’t look like animation, necessarily. It just takes a long time to develop, but there came a point where I had their support. It took a few drafts to breathe life into the characters. I was more fascinated with the world and how the thing would look than the story and the characters, at that point, so it was corny. It was awful! It was just earnest and flat. WEDGE: Oh, to be fair, at the beginning, the first script I had was terrible. What do you think it was that kept people from giving you the green light, and what do you think it was that finally got them to say yes? So, it took awhile to turn it into something that people understood would be entertaining. When I pitched it, I guess there was an expectation that it would be something they were all used to, and it wasn’t. Not that there’s anything wrong with comedy, that’s for sure, but I just wanted to try something different. I grew up watching classic animation, and I have always felt that the roots of animation is in fantasy and taking it in places that you can’t go, any other way. WEDGE: Yes, I did think that, after the success I’ve had, that they would just say, “Okay, whatever you want to do.” So, I pitched it with some abandon, in the beginning, and I was a little surprised that they were perplexed by the fact that they weren’t just getting another colorful comedy out of me. When you decided to pitch a new idea to the studios, did you think it would be immediately embraced? How did people respond to the idea, when you brought it to them? I know that sounds long, but that was the easiest four years of it. ![]() Once I got the green light for the movie, it took about four years to make. It can take a long time, for different reasons. It took longer than I was hoping, but we got it done. Collider: When you decided to move away from comedy and tell this big action-adventure story, could you ever have imagined the journey would have taken as long as it did, to get it out there for people?ĬHRIS WEDGE: Well, I’ve got a pretty vivid imagination.
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