Chris Renaud Interview

by Helen Earnshaw | 21 February 2011

Chris Renaud

Despicable Me was one of the hit animation movies of 2010 as Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand and Kristen Wiig joined foced to bring the characters alive.

Chris Renaud, along with Pierre Coffin, are the filmmakers behind the movie and I caught up with Chris to talk about the success of Despicable Me and what lies ahead.

- Despicable Me is about to be released on DVD here in the UK so for anyone who hasn't seen it yet can you tell me a bit about it?

Well it's basically a movie that centres on a villain, he really is a guy that loves to be bad, and he is a villain in a James Bond sense - he is one of those guys who dreams of taking over the world.

And he gets into a rivalry with a young upstart villain called Vector, our main villain's name is Gru, and as a result of that rivalry it comes to pass that he has to enlist the help of three little girls to break into Vector's fortress - because Vector has a sweet tooth.

So as a result he adopts these three little girls to carry out his plan. And it becomes a tale of this guy with a hard exterior who softens and becomes a dad. I always say imagine Darth Vader taking care of three little girls that's basically it (laughs).

- This is your first feature film so how did you find that - especially given the fact that it is in 3D?

You know it was a great experience but the real challenge of a feature is interweaving all of the storylines - we had the minions and Vektor and the banker, Hattie and all these great character to which wanted to do a great service - and yo kind of had to wrap it all together and hope that when you got to the end you could pay off some of the things that you had set up.

So the complexity of setting up the characters and the structure is one of the biggest challenges of doing a feature as well as making sure your characters have real appeal - that's something that we really tried to do with Gru.

The trick is he is a villain but how much of a villain? You don't want people to be turned off when they first see him.

The 3D aspect was something that when we started we weren't thinking about a lot but as the film evolved we started think about quite a bit - and of course we did that end credit sequence which was the last thing that we did.

- The voice cast is great, you have Steve Carell and Jason Segel to name just two, so how did you go about casting? And you must have been excited when you saw the final line up.

Oh yeah! What we always do with casting, or what we try to do beyond finding great voice is finding great comedic actors - Russell Brand and Kristen Wigg well Julie Andrews was great too - because what they do is give the character s real soul and a real comedic voice.

They start with the page and they inevitable make it their own so what you get is more than a voice actor but a great comedic performer so you get the benefit of their timing and their ideas - which are of course amazing.

For every role that we had we tried to get the best possible person that could really deliver a great character.

- Well that leads me into my next question really is the voice recording done first when putting a movie like this together? And how much does the actor impact on the final look of the character?

That's a good question (laughs). It is the first thing that we do yes - we do record several times particularly with Steve Carell's character Gru we would record many times - but we always have to do that first before we animate.

It's hard the impacting the look of the character it's funny because people say 'Gru reminds me of Steve Carell, but I think it's more because his soul and his voice is coming out of Gru and I think that is what reminds you of him.

We didn't really design the character with any particular actor in mind we just wanted great visual appeal and a great graphic sensibility to our characters.

But I guess what happens when the actor starts to voice that character they become kind of...you know how people say they look like their dogs (laughs) it's the fusion of the two that ends up being the character I suppose.

- Obviously there was a script but with the likes of Steve Carell was there a lot of ad-libbing and was that something that you encouraged?

Every scene starts with a script but we absolutely encourage ad-libbing. But what Steve did really was that accent but he also developed a way of speaking, we called them the Gruisms.

Russell was another good example as Dr. Nefario some of the little asides that the character has were purely from Russell.

It just builds out the character is a way that would be impossible to do on the page.

- And what was it about the script that drew you to the project? And how big a plus point was having the story told from the villain's point of view?

Well for me it was huge, and I think for Pierre Coffin it was a big selling point, from when I was a kid the characters that I always liked were Darth Vader and The Joker and I think kids are still drawn to the dark and dangerous characters.

So the chance to tell a story of a villain was irresistible really and for me that was the main drawing in point for sure.

And then you can take the story and turn it a little bit with the softer side of the character that also was appealing because I have two kids - and maybe sometimes they think I am a villain (laughs). So the ability to tell a story of a parent - at the end of the day it's very relatable career vs family do you go and steal the moon or go and see your kid's dance recital?

And also there is a metaphor for some bad parenting, which I'm sure we can all relate to at one point or another, but also the softer side of brining a family together. So those elements along with the big concept of telling the story from the villain's point of view had me interested.

- The minions are a very popular aspect of the movie so how did the idea for then develop?

Well they weren't in the script and when we first had them as development art they were called goons and technicians - so they were more like thugs and henchmen.

And then in my very earliest conversations with Pierre and my early story boards they were always short - actually the first versions were robots a bit like R2D2 but cuter, but we always had the idea of treating them like umpa lumpars of jawas from Star Wars.

So as we got talking about them Piere suggested that they shouldn't be robots so you could feel a bit more empathy for them so I said 'well what about mole people?

I did a little sketch of a little guy with goggles on - but it was far too ugly. Then Eric took the sketch and created the look that you see today and from there we did some animations tests and we instantly knew that we had something - we treated them as if they were Dopey.

The scene that I started story boarding with was where Gru is announcing his plan and there are hundreds of them and we really knew that we had something and so they featured throughout the film - and of course the marketing (laughs).

It's really something that developed over the film as they did not exist in any shape or form at the beginning and it just grew and grew and grew.

- And you must be delighted by the movie's success - it's the eighth biggest grossing movie of 2010.

We are all very excited - I think we thought that we had something that was unique and fun - but to be honest I don't think anyone thought that it was going to do as well as it has ended up doing. It's very gratifying.

For me personally one of the greatest experiences was at the premiere in LA as I had my father on one side and my children on the other and they were all laughing as we were watching the film.

We really set out to make something that was just fun and I think that people are responding to it in that and that's very gratifying.

- Animation is a very exciting genre at the moment with this movie and there are the Pixar and Dreamworks movies so is it as exciting for you as the creator of these films as it is for us who are getting to watch all these great animation movies?

Oh absolutely! It's funny because for many year people have been saying 'oh there's a glut of animation and it's going to fail' but the truth is it seems that the audience is really enjoying it and we haven't hit that point where everyone is getting tired of it.

So what's cool... I saw Tangled, which I though was great, and How To Train Your Dragon - you are getting all these different movies that are being told through animation and that's what exciting - seeing all these different ideas and the medium evolves.

- How did you get into animation in the first place?

Actually I was a graphic designer and comic book illustrator in New York and then I worked for Marvel and DC working on Batman and that sort of thing. I then transferred into children's TV where I worked on a Winnie the Pooh show before working for Jim Henson.

Then I worked for Blue Sky Studios, which is owned by Fox and did the Ice Age films, and I got the chance to direct a short featuring Scrat and that was it.

- Have you ever thought about moving into live action movies?

I have certainly thought about it but not really seriously - I just haven't taken it to that step. But I really like animation it's a very exciting place to be and I think it's because I was an illustrator and I have always draw pictures so I think it suits my sensibility.

Despicable Me is out on DVD and Blu-ray now.

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw