Interview with Disney legends John Musker and Ron Clements
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
What is the reason you picked New Orleans as the setting for the story? Does 'Katrina' have anything to do with it?
Ron Clements; It was actually John Lasseter's idea to set this story in New Orleans. And he wanted to do this several years before Katrina. The reason was he loves that city and thought it would be a great location to set an animated movie. When John became head of Disney animation in February of 2006, he asked John Musker and myself to consider the idea of setting the fairy tale "The Frog Prince" in New Orleans. We pitched him the story that became the basis of the movie. This was about eight months after Katrina. John Musker and I visited New Orleans for the first time shortly after that and we saw the terrible aftermath of Katrina first hand. We definitely wanted to do whatever possible to help the city recover.
Was this movie a reaction to the new 3D cgi hype of making movies?
John Musker; Not really. We love hand drawn and we have enjoyed the cg films as well. We just thought this story with its organic setting was ideal for the warmth and expressiveness of hand drawn animation.
Why did you chose the story of "The Frog Prince" and twist it the way you did?
Ron Clements; John Lasseter asked us to take a look at the fairy tale "The Frog Prince" and set it in New Orleans. We liked the idea of doing an American fairy tale and the setting suggested using elements of Voodoo, having an African American heroine and the approach to the music. The big twist of having our heroine turn into a frog once she kissed the frog, came from a children's book called "The Frog Princess" by E.D. Baker, which Disney bought the rights to in 2003. Many of the characters in our version including Mama Odie, Tiana, and Ray the Cajun firefly were inspired by actual people we met in our research trips to New Orleans. Other twists came from the basic desire to use iconic fairy tale and Disney archetypes but do a spin on them to make the movie fresh.
How is it decided as to which (storyboard) scenes are cut?
John Musker; We screen for our internal staff during production. We are constantly evaluating and rewriting the story. Sometimes the rough version of the movie is running too long. Sometimes the plot changes to make the characters more interesting.
How is it possible for Tiana to be Charlotte's best friend as their characters are completely different?
John Musker; I think it's possible for best friends to be different. Although Tiana is repelled by kissing a frog, she is still intrigued by fairy tales. As you see in the opening, they are both interested in the story Eudora is telling. They both wear princess crowns. Tiana's harder life leads her to lose some of the fun she had in her life as a child. Tiana enjoys Charlotte's exuberance even though she is by nature more reserved. Sometimes people find in friends or partners people who are very different and who do things they are might like to do but are too inhibited to pursue.
What inspired you to create the characters? Did you have a certain source of inspiration for Dr. Facilier for example?
Ron Clements; Many of the characters were inspired by actual people we met in our research trips to New Orleans. Tiana was greatly inspired by Leigh Chase a legendary New Orleans restaurateur who started as a waitress and opened the famed Dookie Chase restaurant. Mama Odie was partly inspired by Ava Kay Jones, a Voodoo priestess who has a snake she dances with, and Colleen Salley, an irascible New Orleans storyteller. Dr. Facilier is based on the New Orleans "Bokur". These are loners who've broken away from the Voodoo religion, made pacts with dark Voodoo spirits and sell magic for money. As Ava Kay told us “these spells almost always backfire, as easy answers are really no answers at all."
How important was it for you to put great songs - that really stick in people's minds - in the movie?
John Musker; We love musicals and find that songs are a great way to show the characters' emotions as well as be fun for the audience to see performed in a bigger than life way. Music is an important part of New Orleans and the fabric of that city and felt natural. We attended the yearly jazz festival when we were doing research for the movie and thought we wanted to capture the different musical styles we heard there: Gospel, Dixieland, Swing, Zydeco, etc. Randy Newman spent boyhood summers in New Orleans and he seemed ideal to bring that to life.
Are there more movies coming up using these old techniques?
John Musker; The studio is currently doing another hand drawn animated feature. It is further adventures of Winnie the Pooh. We are not involved with that. We are however hoping to do another hand drawn feature. We are in the very early planning stages and hope to get it moving forward.
I know you've made several more films together but how difficult is it to direct a movie with someone else? Did you have a lot of discussions?
John Musker; It helps that Ron and I co-write the script together. There we have a chance to literally ‘get on the same page’ and make sure we are trying to tell the same story. We have different strengths that we try and bring to bear. Ron is more structure oriented and is good with emotion. I lean towards the comic and action set pieces.
Why was ''The Princess And The Frog'' another hand drawn animated movie and not a computer animated movie?
The Princess and the Frog was a mixture of veterans of hand-drawn animation and newcomers. How did that affect team chemistry?
John Musker; It was a good mix. The veterans were able to mentor the younger animators and those younger ones and their great skills bode well for the future. We ourselves were trained by the "Nine Old Men" the Disney veteran animators. Ron worked with Frank Thomas who had animated the dwarves and Bambi and Captain Hook among others. I had worked with Eric Larson who animated the cat Figaro in Pinocchio and Peg in Lady and the Tramp. One of the best ways to learn animation is in this type of arrangement of master and apprentice passing on the craft. The youthful enthusiasm of the newcomers was a reminder of the joys of bringing drawings to life, a special skill that few have mastered but one of the most rewarding combinations of sleight of hand, draftsmanship, acting and entertaining.
What is the most difficult aspect of creating a character?
Ron Clements; Good characters are the heart and soul of these movies. It's important that the characters become real to the audience, that the audience relates to them identifies with them, that the characters feel like real people that they know. This is true whether the characters are humans or alligators and fireflies. We want the characters to have depth and dimension and we work very hard to achieve that. A lot of this happens in the scripting and storyboarding process. But casting the right voice actors is extremely important. And finally, casting the right animators, who are really good actors in their own right, is essential in pulling this off.
When did Randy Newman became part of the project?
John Musker; Very early in the process. We suggested using Randy because of his feel for Americana and New Orleans. John Lasseter liked the idea. The script hadn't been written yet but we showed randy a visual outline and pitched him the story and explained how we thought music would work in the film.
What defines a great animation movie in your opinion?
Ron Clements; Great characters, a great story with a satisfying ending, and an interesting world where you can really enjoy spending an hour and a half. And finally, you want all of this presented in as fun and entertaining way as possible.
What is the Clements and Musker collaboration process like? Do you delegate roles in writing and directing? And what happens when you don't agree on something?
John Musker; When we began the film we read a number of treatments that had been written over the years when the studio was considering doing an animated version of ‘the Frog prince.’ One of them by Dean Welins and Chris Ure, two story artists, who had the idea of a firefly who fell in love with the Evening Star. We love that idea and thought it fit the theme of love conquering even the most impossible obstacles. We thought he should be a Cajun. While we were down in New Orleans researching the movie, we went on a tour of the bayou and had a gap toothed Cajun tour guide who fed alligators over the side of the boat. His name was Reggie and when we later wrote the script we had him in mind. We also thought he could sing a wistful Cajun waltz to his star. The name Evangeline came from a Nathanial Hawthorne poem about a Cajun woman named Evangeline who wandered in search of her lost love.
I love the character of Mama Odie. She seems to be the opposite of Facilier, a kind of a “light” fairy opposed to the “dark” lord. Did you ever think of a more direct confrontation between the two of them?
John Musker; We did consider a battle between the two in the climax of the film, where light overcomes darkness. We couldn't find a way to make it work. We were even considering "musiacallizing" it. It would have been fun.
How much time does it take to complete a movie like this? From the initial sketches and ideas to the final version?
Ron Clements; We pitched the story of this movie to John Lasseter in March of 2006. We started working on our first draft of the script that summer. Visual development started soon after that and songs, voice casting and storyboarding began in the fall. Experimental animation began early in 2007 with layout and production animation beginning in the spring. Color soon after that. All in all, about three and a half years from beginning to completion, which is actually pretty fast for this kind of film.
How did you come to the idea of giving life to Facilier's shadow?
Ron Clements; We referred to Dr. Facilier as "The Shadow Man" from the very beginning. But it was an early visual development drawing by Sue Nichols that inspired us to give his shadow a life of its own.
How important is John Lasseter for the world of animated pictures, and for yourself? Is he already up there with Walt Disney?
How did you come to the idea of giving life to Facilier's shadow?
Ron Clements; We referred to Dr. Facilier as "The Shadow Man" from the very beginning. But it was an early visual development drawing by Sue Nichols that inspired us to give his shadow a life of its own.
How important is John Lasseter for the world of animated pictures, and for yourself? Is he already up there with Walt Disney?
Ron Clements; Everybody's different, but John Lasseter is inspiring, gives great story notes, and has a huge passion and enthusiasm for animation. It's hard for me to imagine anyone better to work for.
How did you come to the idea of giving life to Facilier's shadow?
John Musker; Early on in our script Ron called Facilier the Shadow Man, based on some of the bokkurs of New Orleans, fortune tellers and voodoo practitioners who would sell you charms to help your love life or curse your enemies. Sue Nichols Maciorowski, a wonderful visual development artist, came up with the idea of the shadow having a life of its own. She did drawings that showed the shadow reacting independently of the villain. She also did a drawing of Facilier dancing a duet with his shadow. Both of these ideas seemed very visual and fun to do in animation.
It is the first time that one of your films is being released in Blu-ray? What are for you the benefits of this support compared to a standard DVD?
Ron Clements; The picture quality is impeccable. Better than most people will see in a theater. And the extras are a lot of fun. John and I were particularly excited that the Blu Ray contains the entire movie in rough pencil test form as well as color. For animation buffs, this is a great opportunity to see the process in a way few get a chance to.
What changed in terms of techniques or way of working on a 2D movie since The Little Mermaid or Aladdin?
John Musker; The essential techniques are quite similar. Mermaid was the last feature to use cells and have the characters painted with real, rather than digital, paint. On this film we did the character animation on paper as we did on Mermaid and Aladdin. But for the first time we did our effects animation, namely the ripples of water the magic, the shadows, paperlessly. They were drawn with a stylus on a pressure sensitive tablet.
Ron Clements; There are several new innovations. In terms of layout, (the staging, lighting and cinematography of the movie), we did something new on this film where we did "layout animatics" of each sequence with all the camera moves, lighting, and basic blocking of characters, before any animation was done. This was something John Lasseter brought over from Pixar and was a great tool in helping us pre-visualize the film more specifically than ever before. We also had new color processes which allowed us to view scenes in final color while still being able to make significant changes much more easily. We experimented with paperless animation on this movie, (with animators drawing on a digital tablet, but found glitches in the process we couldn't overcome. But we did actually do our effects animation, (water, smoke, magic, etc.), with paperless animation.
Do you already have an opinion on Disney's next movie "Tangled"? Have you seen anything about it yet?
John Musker; It will be spectacular. It features songs by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater. Glen Keane (as executive producer) is striving to push the boundaries of CG to more looseness and expressiveness in the characters. You will enjoy it.
What would Charlotte do if she had become a frog?
John Musker; She would be fairly frantic because most frogs don't come in pink.
How did you make the villain Dr. Facilier different from other Disney villains?
John Musker; He didn't want to rule the world like some villains. He was a bit more down on his luck. His interaction with his own shadow was different than others. He is very charismatic and a showman and that made him fun to animate.
John Musker; It had been a fun thirty three years. I got excited about animation 37 years ago when I heard the great Warner Brothers director Chuck Jones talk about animation as a field in which you were always learning no matter your age. That made it sound appealing to me and he was right. You always feel like there's so much to learn still.
Ron Clements; I’ve been at Disney thirty six years now and the time has gone by amazingly fast. But before that, I was a huge Disney fan and dreamed of working at the studio from the time I saw "Pinocchio" at the age of nine. Early on at the studio, I got to work as an apprentice animator under Frank Thomas one of Disney's legendary nine old men. Since then, I've seen many many changes at the studio and in my own career as well. But I was originally inspired by the obvious passion, creativity and artistic integrity Walt put into his movies. He cared very deeply and wanted his films to be of the absolute highest quality possible. I've carried that with me and always wanted to do the same. I've always felt very lucky to work at Disney. For me it's always been a dream comes true.
How did you come up with the musician crocodile/alligator? What inspired you to create him?
Have you ever thought of a nomination by the Academy Awards for this movie?
Speaking from personal experience, how does it feel to have shaped so many people’s childhoods with your movies?
You show a great passion for the comic book world. What do you think of the recent big screen adaptations, like 300 or heroes of the marvel and DC universe or the Batman saga remake? **
The film really takes off once the animals become the stars, were you aiming for that?
John Musker; That wasn't the intention, but the "entertainment value" does seem to expand once Tiana becomes a frog. There is a greater possibility for visual humor, caricature and fun when we have the comedy inherent in people transformed into the unfamiliar. Our challenge with the opening was to attempt to get you involved enough in Tiana's plight, and in Naveen as a character that you root for them in the remainder of the story.
A good part of the movie are Jazz songs, sort of logical considering that the story takes place in the birthplace of Jazz itself. What do you think of other animated movies from other studios, like the recent; How to train your Dragon, where the characters don't sing a single song and yet happen to have such a great audience at the cinemas?
Ron Clements; I enjoyed "How To Train Your Dragon" very much and certainly don't think an animated film needs to have songs in order to be good. But musicals are a lot of fun to do and I think songs and animation work together very nicely.
Given its inherent 2D starting point, do you think hand drawn animation is at a disadvantage in the looming 3D world?
John Musker; Interesting question. They have actually taken “Beauty and the Beast” and converted it to 3D and we'll see how that is received. I don't believe all of live action is going to go the 3D route. It remains to be seen also if audiences will feel that 3D is a passing fancy or a change to stay.
How did you feel being the directors of a movie that would bring hand drawn animation back in the spotlight?
Ron Clements; We love hand drawn animation and were very excited to see it return to Disney. And it was great working with an all star team of artists and animators and creating a venue where they could showcase their amazing talents. The skills involved with this particular art form are rare and take a long time to learn how to do well. They've tended to be passed on through mentor/student relationships where veterans pass on their knowledge to younger apprentices. That was true on this film as well and it was exciting to see a new generation fresh out of art school develop and contribute strong work for the movie.
Given the in-depth story development process Disney animated features go through how different is the film from what was first pitched?
John Musker; This film is fairly similar to the first outline we pitched to John Lasseter four years ago. In terms of differences, the character of Tiana's father assumed a bigger role as we made the film and we tied her passion for her restaurant more into her father's dream. Our earlier version had Louis as a gator who was actually a human, an accountant who dreamed of becoming a great jazz player. Facilier gave him the ability but double crossed him and turned him into a gator. A few of the names changed. Dr. Facilier was originally Dr. Duvalier but we didn't want to confuse him with the ruler of Haiti with that same name. A few of the song ideas evolved as well. Louis's song originally was about how much he loved jazz. We eventually thought it would be fun to have all three characters sing and highlight the differences in their characters and their aspirations.
How much of the material we are seeing now is going to be on the DVD extras?
Ron Clements; The deleted scenes and audio commentary are on the DVD. But the Blu Ray does contain quite a bit of extra material that is not available on the DVD.
Just like in Miyazaki's films, food seems to have special importance in your movies -crab soup, Silver's stew, Tiana's father and her gumbo. Is it a way of inviting all our senses to the feast when enjoying a good animated film, with great visuals, great music, etc? Do you taste specialties when you go on research trips to prepare your movies?!
Ron Clements; Not always. In fact, we tended to avoid seafood while we were working on "The Little Mermaid". But one of the great perks of working on "Princess and the Frog" was getting to spend quite a bit of time in New Orleans and enjoying some of the most delicious food I have ever tasted. People are obsessed with both music and food in that city and we knew we wanted both of those things to play a big part in our movie.
How many endings did you have planned out for The Princess and the Frog and can you share some ideas that you had for other possible endings if possible?
John Musker; The ending of the film is the one we originally planned. The idea that they got married as frogs, and then kissed and transformed back was in an earlier script for the movie that Greg Erb and Jason Oremland wrote. We liked that twist and always intended to use that. Musically we thought there would be a final reprise in her restaurant, but we discussed a number of different ideas. It was John Lasseter's thought to reprise "Down in New Orleans" and have Tiana sing a very powerful version of it. We liked his idea. It put her back at the center and showed how she had been changed by the Prince to publicly sing such an emotive number. We did consider having a wizard's duel in the climax between Mama Odie and Facilier that we didn't do because the main characters were too far outside of it. We also had an ending where Facilier's magic backfired on him and he was turned into a fly which was gobbled up by a frog. Also we had a plan for a "plague of frogs" to descend on Mardi Gras, an outgrowth of a story idea in which Facilier proposed to Big Daddy a contest for the best frog dish, in an attempt to get his wayward frogs rounded up from the bayou.
Films like Shrek appealed to many different cultural references. Princess and the Frog appealed to so many references taken from Disney history, but in its own way. How did you use references?
Ron Clements; I love "Shrek", but in this movie we were deliberately trying to stay true to the period and avoided many modern cultural references. As you say, we did have a number of "callbacks" to earlier Disney films, not so much for comedy, but as a way of acknowledging the Disney legacy and comment on this movie places in it from a slightly new perspective.
You have created some terrific and beloved characters, do either of you have a favourite?
The sequence in the restaurant has a distinctly different animated style, what was your thinking behind that?
What can you tell us about your next project?
The Princess & The Frog sees the creation of the first African American Disney princess, did you think it was about time?
"It wasn't until later that we fully realized the importance of this in the African American community." What impacts have you seen?
Do you find a difference in the way people identify with this style of animation, as opposed to the newer, digital process?
Do you think, with the advent of 3D technology hand-drawn animation will still have a place?
Breaking with the oft-criticized tradition of the damsel in distress being rescued by the shining hero, did you set out to turn Tiana into an empowerment figure for young females of today?
There are a number of 'in house' jokes in the film - streetcar A113, Firefly Five Plus Lou - do you each throw these in, or is one of you the chief pun artist? And which is your favourite joke?
How much impact do the people you cast as voice actors have on the characters and the story?
It's been reported that there were some changes to the title and character names as a result of Tiana being the first African-American Disney Princess. How much truth is there to that? And did that lead to new pressures?
There's the influence of Louis Armstrong in Jungle Book (which he was once intended to be part of), in Aristocats (Scat Cat), and then you created Louis, the alligator. How do you explain that success of the famous trumpet genius in animation?
I was told by Mark Henn that the design and personality of the different characters were set during a week end at a hotel resort. How and why did you choose that way of processing to create the characters? Do you think that's more stimulating or emulating that way? Or else?
Were there any complaints from the subjects about how their caricatures looked?
You mentioned the tradition of kids rewatching Disney flicks time and again. Do you ever reach a point where you can't watch one of your films again?
You two are responsible for making some of the most celebrated Disney films, what is the `secret’ to making a Disney 2D animated classic?
Anything else you'd like to mention about the home entertainment release?
After a lifetime of animation, are you able to walk into a room WITHOUT identifying which object would be the best to suddenly spring to life and start singing?
Who is your best test audience?
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