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Surf’s Up Secrets:From the FilmmakersDirectors and Producer talk animation with us!by Lynn B
These fellows have impressive credits; Ash co-directed Toy Story 2 and was a directing animator on Toy Story as well as an artist on A Bug’s Life. Chris Buck directed Tarzan and oversaw animation on Pocahontas and even designed characters for The Little Mermaid. Chris Jenkins performed various tasks on Atlantis: The Lost Empire, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast etc. so these dudes are experts in the animation world. Today, at the Kahala resort, the trio are just three friendly, laid-back fellows in Hawaiian shirts and casual tees. AGW: Surf’s Up has some very impressive ocean animation in it. But, does that come first with you guys.. or does the story? 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.
AGW: You all worked on the story but whose idea was it to do the movie as if it was a documentary on surfing with a camera crew following surfer Cody Maverick to the big contest? Buck: it was Chris' idea to do the story. Jenkins: We wanted characters to do interviews with an improvisation style, hand-held camera. 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/reality-angle. Surfers seem to spend a lot of time doing documentaries on themselves so we should do it, embrace it and do a full-length narrative like Spinal Tap. AGW: What’s with the charm of penguins anyway? Lots of penguin movies lately. Jenkins: 4-1/2 years ago I didn't know about March of the Penguins, I certainly didn't know about Happy Feet. If we had, we may have done skateboarding squirrels [laughs]. In good animation, the characters become bigger than their species. You connect with a small fish in Finding Nemo, you connect with cars in Cars. Buck: They're characters when it comes down to it. AGW: Who surfs? Buck: We’re going surfing later today and tomorrow. No belly flopping I hope. Brannon: None of us surfed before. Jenkins: And none of us do now. We've tried. 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. Jenkins: I took all animators out surfing because we thought it was important that they know how it felt. Buck: To wipe out [laughs]. Jenkins: There's a picture of 40 of our animators taking the same wave and crashing together. AGW: Why did you cast Shia LeBeouf as your lead penguin?
Buck: He was a real teenager which is what we wanted, these real sounding voices. We didn't want the actors to put on a voice. Jenkins: We didn't want a kid actor. We wanted it kept real. He was a very real guy. He's got his feet on the ground. He's funny. AGW: Sony Animation is a new studio. Were they just receptive to your ideas… waves in computer.. surfing penguins…actors recording in the same room? Jenkins: It's a new studio where everybody was willing to embrace new ideas and participate in the directors' vision. At other studios, people would have been scratching their heads and saying thank you very much, but no. It's not always been easy, but by and large it was the embracing of a brand new concept. Brannon: The idea of recording actors together is a great way to go. Live action for some crazy reason, they manage to get actors on the set and they overlap. For us, [scheduling] was okay. Everyone's based in LA. They were enthusiastic about working on the movie, so that helped. Brannon: Chris Jenkins said ‘let’s not simulate the waves. Let's let the animator control it’. Jenkins: It's gotta be a character. Each wave has an internal characteristic. Brannon: These guys studied waves around the world. We've got the Pipeline in there, we have the Mavericks wave from California and a few others. These guys studied the waves and reefs around the world to see how they'd react different. We also had help from Kelly Slater and Rob Machado [surfing champions]. They came in and saw what we were doing and said ‘I think this wave would break a little farther out’ and draw on their screen and show us. Between that and the brilliant guys at Sony Imageworks, it went way beyond our expectations. Brannon: We had a team of animators devote themselves to the surfing shots. A lot of them are surfers themselves. AGW: Uh, how can penguins surf? They aren’t built for it are they? Brannon: We had a team of animators that devoted their time to surfing shots. Some of them were animators. Buck: The problem is that penguins have no knees. You can't see them. [We tried] to stretch their legs out and give them a little more height to see that their legs were splayed out and bending. Jenkins: I have the same problem when I surf. Buck: [They] hang six! AGW: Big Z has a signature move..surfing backwards, hands in prayer position? Brannon: I think Rob Machado is going to incorporate that into his repertoire. Jenkins: The story guys came up with that, actually.
Jenkins: They are father and son in a metaphorical sense but they are also the same person. The guy at the beginning of his career and the guy at the end. [They’re at] the beginning of their journey together. He’s going to tell that kid ‘don’t do what I did’. That was a kind of a captivating element. Buck: We give them moments like the ‘making the board’ sequence that rings true; father/son or mother/daughter. It’s the teacher that can’t let go and let [the kid] do their own thing. Cody wants to do his own thing. Those are great characters. AGW: Were you guys always after the ‘winning isn’t everything’ theme with this film? Jenkins: From the beginning, yeah. The soul surfing aspect of this movie was the only outcome to have. Z had made a lot of mistakes in his life because it was all about the winning and he didn’t want Cody to go down the same path. Surfing is a great sport but when a man or woman challenges the wave, it’s really themselves against the ocean and you have to connect and become part of the ocean. Brannon: It’s more of a recreation or a spiritual quest and when you see a surfing competition, that’s something that’s been imposed on the art of surfing. ‘Let’s figure out how to give people points for great moves’. We like the dichotomy of surfing for its own sake versus competing to win. If you are so hellbent on grabbing the trophy, what are you going to lose in the process? AGW: What about Tank’s attachment to his trophies? He names them all and cuddles them. Brannon: During the breaks in the superbowl game, there were these photos of the players holding and kissing the trophies and loving the trophies. Buck: Loving the trophies a little too much and we just took it and ran really far with it. [laughter].
Brannon: It’s Chris’s son and my daughter. Buck: What happened was Zooey [Deschanel] was doing a scene where she’s talking to Arnold and has saved him from the water, she says, ‘it’s really bad for your brain’. It was gold and we took it. She called the character Arnold and we said, let’s try it. Brannon: The character would go out in the water and try to drown to get her attention. So, we brought in the other kids in a documentary style. They could have been cast professionally but it all happened by accident as the best things in movies do. We didn’t want to have an adult actor do a kid voice so Chris took a tape recorder out and just asked his son some questions. It was really natural and funny. AGW: What are you guys planning for the DVD extras? Jenkins: We've got sequences that were storyboarded and edited that were great but couldn't fit them in.
Time to wrap up our interviews. For the final send-off, the studio treated us to a luau on the beach behind the Surfrider hotel. We munched on yummy Hawaiian dishes, eaten at tables on the sand. The music and dance entertainment was amazing. First, a Hawaiian trio then a dance group backed by some talented drummers and singers. Everything from a troupe of very young girl dancers to very gorgeous hula gals and buff guys spinning fire sticks. Dances from Hawaii, Samoa, Tahiti, Tonga, etc. were performed. What a great wrap-up to a fun sand and sun-themed movie. Remember, hit the beach… or the theater come June 8th cuz cowabunga, dude.. Surf’s Up! Photo credits: hula dancer - copyright Lynn B, 2007 other pictures - copyright Dreamworks Pictures, 2007 |
 
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What
is it like to create an ocean in a computer? We wanted to know this and
other secrets behind the impressive big wave animation and “mockumentary”
style story for the film Surf’s Up so we met in Hawaii
with Producer Chris Jenkins and directors Chris Buck and Ash Brannon who
gave us the details. 
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 [visual development]
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.
Brannon:
Shia wasn't as well known [five years ago]. He had a TV show and Holes,
but what he had was an incredible talent. We recognized it right away
just hearing some of the scenes that our casting director put together.
He was a different guy. He came in with his taco, his fast food. He drove
himself to the studio. We pitched him for about 10 minutes.
AGW:
What elements make Cody and Big Z such great characters? 
AGW:
There are an adorable trio of kid penguins in the film. Don’t some
of your own kids voice these little guys? 
Brannon:
There's stuff about the handheld camera and how it was done, that's very
interesting. And the waves are covered in depth.