Chris Sanders
The Croods is the latest project from animation giants Dreamworks and is set to light up the big screen this weekend.
We caught up with director Chris Sanders to chat about this new film, the development of the story and the characters and how it has been going down with audiences.
- The Croods hits the big screen in the UK this week so can you tell me a little bit about the movie?
This is a story about a caveman family that loses their cave and they go on the world’s first family road trip to find another one. But on that journey they change.
- So where did this project start for you - I was reading that was a first draft of the script when you got on board?
There was indeed. This project had been around for quite a while and it was originally an Aardman project and John Cleese and my co-director Kirk De Micco were the writers.
I didn’t arrive until after… I don’t know how it happened by Aardman and Dreamworks decided not to make this film together and Dreamworks kept the project.
I arrived in 2007 and at that point it was a very different film but there were ideas and themes that stayed the same. There is a general theme of a father who fears new things and his job is to keep his family safe and his way of doing that is by keeping them inside a cave as much as possible so they never come in contact with anything new; for him new is dangerous.
That was an idea and a theme that John Cleese enviewed the project with as he fears technology and believes that it is ruining relationships and ruining the world. So that is very much in Grug’s character.
- Well you have slightly touched on my next question as I was wondering how did the script develop once you got on board?
By the time I came on board we were making a CG movie and so the most dramatic change… when I arrived it was a story about a village and Grug was the chief.
One year into the development I left to go and work on How To Train Your Dragon - I was gone for fourteen months to write and direct that - and during that time Kirk struggled with that film. This is a film that we had done a lot of development on but it had never really got off the ground.
One day Kirk called me and he said ‘I am going to pitch you a new idea; one caveman family loses their cave and they go on the world’s first family road trip to find another one’ and I just lit up and thought ‘oh my gosh you have done it.’
So that was really the most dramatic change that occurred to the story and everything else after that was to find that particular story.
The Croods- When was the decision to make it a 3D movie made? And how does the introduction of 3D impact on how you make the movie?
We offer everything in 3D as the machinery here at Dreamworks automatically does that; we are always using two lenses to film everything and we have a right eye and a left eye.
The most important consideration in 3D filmmaking is you never let 3D direct the story because if you do that you are going to end up with moments where people are just suddenly turning and pointing into the screen and you get these indulgent moments that really don’t do anything for the story.
Instead what you really want to do is your story and look for 3D opportunities that are there. In our film there is a moment where Eep, Grug’s teenage daughter, leaves the cave and she sees a light in the darkness which she follows.
When she catches up with it it’s a torch and she is seeing fire for the first time in her life. It is a transcendent and magical moment and that is a great opportunity for 3D that was already there.
We realised that this night time sequence in a darkened movie theatre really allowed the boundary between the screen and the theatre to dissolve and you are sitting there with her.
That is a moment where you can take those embers from the fire and you can bring them out into the theatre. You are not only bringing them into the theatre but you can bring them into the theatre as far as you possible can; so we brought those embers out into the audience and above the audience as far as technology would allow.
So that is us pushing the 3D as hard as we can but it’s never seen as gimmicky as it is appropriate for the story at that moment.
Eep voiced by Emma Stone- You have sent the film in a completely new era - you have made one up - and you have populated it with weird and wonderful animal creations. So why did you decide to go down this path rather than set it in an era we know existed?
Once the Croods are out of the cave they step into this new world and for Grug and most of the Croods it is a terrifying moment because they don’t know how to deal with anything in this new world.
Where they come from is very aired, you can see a long way and the opening scene lets you know that the life of the Croods is hard but at least it is a life they understand.
But when they step into this new world the environment is completely different and what we wanted to do was we wanted to take the audience on the very same journey that they are going on.
So as Grug and the rest of the Croods move from environment to environment nobody knows what is around the next corner - and that includes the audience.
We wanted to make the animals original creatures so that when the Croods ran into one you really don’t know what is going to happen: is it going to be nice? Is it going to be mean? Is it going to eat them? Is it going to run away?
So there is a moment of tension when ever they meet any creature that’s a very genuine moment of tension because the audience is as familiar with them as the Croods are - which is not familiar at all.
- I have to ask you about those crazy animal creations how did you come up with those?
Very early in the development of the film we have visual development artists who are conceiving ideas very quickly in sketch form.
One of our artists Shane Craigmore was showing us a series of animals, he was doing many different animals every week, and one of them was a combination creature. He had taken two existing animals that we would know today and he put them together to make this creature mash up.
We really sparked for that and thought ‘that is pretty neat’. You can imagine that if you rolled time backwards different animals may have been combined and as time passed they separated into the animals that we know today.
So we thought that was a great idea and we adopted that as a controlling idea for the creatures in our movie - we didn’t want it to just be random stuff we wanted there to be a governing principle.
Eep & Guy- There is a great voice cast with Nicholas Cage, Emma Stone and Ryan Reynolds all on board so can you tell me a little bit about the casting process and what you were looking for as you were casting these voices?
The most critical thing in the voice casting was to find voices that could accomplish what we needed the characters to do - that is not just great acting but it is also appeal. Grug (Nicholas Cage) and Eep (Emma Stone) are father and daughter and Guy (Ryan Reynolds) is human being 2.0 and he is a guy that the Croods meet once they leave the cave.
Guy represent big trouble for Grug as he is all about new things and he is all about his imagination and hope and he is always talking about the future - these are all things that Grug does not want his family to hear.
But Grug desperately needs this guy to hang around because he can make fire and Grug needs that to survive the night. So Grug is forced to drag this guy along with them - the Croods essentially kidnap him and pull him along for the ride until they can find a cave.
This is where the voices become critical the communication between Grug and his daughter Eep has broken down as she wants to leave the cave, she hates the dark and she is questioning everything about their existence where as Grug’s job is to keep his family safe.
So there is this triangle of characters - Grug, Eep and Guy - that are occasionally in opposition to each other, they disagree with each other, they fear each other and so you need to believe these characters; you need to believe that Eep is having trouble with her dad but you don’t want her to be unlikeable.
What was critical with these voices it that they had likeability and a warmth as well as a sympathetic quality that everyone can relate to and at the same time be genuinely frustrated with each other. So it was the likeability factor that was paramount in the voices that we cast.
The wonderful thing was we got everyone that we wanted as all of these actors were our first choices. First of all they are all really nice people and incredibly talented but the bonus was they are very very inventive.
In our recording sessions we had the latitude to linger in a sequence for hours and just invent things and to customise the scene for those different characters.
And so development didn’t end when we started producing the film development, in some ways, just began as we kept learning about these characters with the animators and with the actors as we went long.
- Well that leads into my next question as I was wondering how much you built the look of the characters around the actors that you eventually cast?
Not entirely. There is a period of time when the actors are being cast, the script is being written and we are also beginning to build the characters.
There is a period of pliability where you can change the characters a little big before you have to lock them down - in CG you build the sets but you are also building the characters and so there is a cut off date when you can no longer change the characters. So there was some pliability where we tried to give the characters a little bit of the actor’s physical traits.
But much more of it came from the actor’s performance as during the recording sessions we are not only recording their voice but we have a couple of video cameras running and we are video taping. We are recording their physical movements and their facial expressions on the off chance that there might something that they do that we really want to put into the animation.
So we would come back from these recording sessions - in particular the ones with Emma Stone as she is the most animated person I have ever seen; her face is a cartoon - and we would be giving the animators a great deal of reference.
One of things that we have noticed with our test audiences is that a lot of people, especially in the case of Eep, recognise Emma Stone inside her and that is because so much of her acting was integrated into the character.
The Croods- How have you found the response to the movie so far?
We have been so delighted with the response. One of the neat things about this film is it features a whole family and wherever we go somebody in the audience is going to relate in some way to this family; and that is the really neat thing about this story.
To our great surprise we weren’t making a caveman film we were making a very human film and that is because there is nothing in the caveman’s world to distract you from the biggest things of all - and that is family and, not to put too fine a point on it, but the reason for existence itself.
There are no aeroplanes, trains, jobs, neighbours or schedules to distract you from what these guys are doing - and this is a family that is just trying to survive.
So we knew within the first few weeks of writing the script where we were going with this film; and that is to a very emotionally resonant and deep place. I don’t think anybody expects that when they start seeing this film.
When people sit down to see this film they see first what they expect and that is these dopey cavemen doing dopey cavemen things but the surprise it where this film goes. And that is the amazing thing as people have been coming out of these screenings and they have been very emotional about it and we have been able to talk to them afterwards and they see themselves up there and they see their children up there.
After one of our screenings this girl came up to me, she was a teenager, and she whispered to me ‘thank you for helping me to understand my dad’ - I almost burst into tears. She ran over to her dad and hugged him tight and they walked out of the theatre together.
That makes everything worthwhile as that really is what the movie is about; it is about a dad who is perceived by his daughter to be a big drag because he is always talking about the rules and their communication has broken down but by the end of the film they have broken through that.
Grug has had his mind opened to some very important lessons about life and his daughter has come to understand that her dad has the hardest job in the world and they understand each other.
The Croods- You have worked within animation your entire career as an actor/director/writer so what is it about this form of film that you seem to love so much?
I love animation in general because you can approach very serious things in a manner that is very disarming. Ever since I saw Bambi I have understood that animation is one of the most powerful forms of filmmaking that there is as it is very honest , it is easy to digest and it speaks a lot of truth - and that is what I like about it.
- Finally what is next for you and how is How To Train Your Dragon 2 coming along?
How To Train Your Dragon 2 is in very good shape (laughs). Every time we make one of these movies we benefit from a technological advance or two and it looks better than ever and I am very excited about it.
As for me, that is a very good question and it is something that I am sorting out right now. We are just finishing this one up and I think the most important thing right now is to spend some time with my daughter and take a little time off as I have not seen her for a while. That is something that we need to correct right away.
The Croods is released 22nd March.