What is Surf’s Up?

It’s a CGI animated penguin movie that Sony is putting out this summer. Now I’m sure a lot of you are thinking another penguin movie…didn’t we just see Happy Feet? The answer is while it is another penguin movie it’s nothing like Happy Feet, or for that matter, anything that’s been done before in animation.

When filmmakers make an animated movie they follow certain rules. The biggest one is to never have two actors recording their lines in the same room. They always record each voice actor separately, and sometimes two people who are acting in the same scene never meet until the day they’re doing press for the final product. It ends up that the editor of the film has to find a way to get an emotional performance out of the voice tracks, which can be quite a challenge.

What the filmmakers of Surf’s Up did was highly unconventional. Instead of having each actor record their lines separately, they would get everyone in a scene together and have them record their lines at the same time. What would happen is people would go over each other’s voices and the end result was a much more organic scene, one that sounded real.

Now with certain animated films this might not work. But Surf’s Up could allow this process due to what the film is about. The film is done like you are watching a documentary. You have characters talking to the camera, getting interviewed, it’s unlike anything I’ve seen from a big budget CGI film and I’ll say it looked great.

For the first time when watching an animated movie I thought the characters sounded real. The way they recorded the voices absolutely added to the actor’s ability to craft a performance.

Also when I interviewed the directors they said that tons of the movie was improvised and they would only tell the actors the outline of the scene, allowing them to bring their own ideas to the characters they were portraying.

One of the great stories they told was when Shia LaBeouf was supposed to be at the recording session with the people who played his parents and family. It ended up he was a bit late but the rest were already in the booth recording. When he arrived they sent him in and told the actors to act like his character was late for an interview that they were all supposed to do in their family home and what would they say to him. That scene was one they showed us when we saw some footage and it’s one that absolutely used the way they recorded the movie as an asset. You had voices over one another, yelling, it felt like a real scene rather than an animated one.

While we only got to see about fifteen minutes of the film I was really impressed with not only the animation but the way they are going to tell the story. Having the frame act as a camera is a great stylistic choice and it’s also quite original. Also some of the shots went in and out of focus as the person who was supposed to be filming was running to try and catch up with a character. Another great shot was when Shia LaBeouf’s character was on a surf board and the camera was mounted on the board with him so it couldn’t move but sometimes water would splash on the frame. It was a little touch but it worked quite well.

Sony has posted a trailer for Surf’s Up and it shows what I’m talking about with the camera and how they’re going to tell the story.

Now about those interviews….

If you’d like to listen to the Jon Heder and Zooey Deschanel interview click here.

I also have two interviews that I won’t be transcribing but you can listen to them as MP3’s. The first is with the Chris Buck & Ash Brennan (the Directors), Chris Jenkins (Producer) and the second is with Mario Cantone & Diedrich Bader. Each of them plays a character in the movie.

And without and more words from me, here is Jon and Zooey.

Is this the first time you’ve seen footage of the film?

Zooey:  I’ve seen the whole movie.  Once was good for me.

How does one go about playing a chicken and a penguin?

Jon:  That’s the hardest question.

Zooey:  I spent three months alone in a penguin cave, alone, unreachable.

Jon:  I went to Antarctica and then realized I was a chicken so I had to go back to Michigan and check it out there.

How do you find the characters then?

Jon:  Well, he’s a surfer dude and I don’t surf and I’m not a chicken so I had a lot of work ahead of me.

How long ago did you finish the voices?

Zooey:  We’re still continuing.

Jon: I still have next week to do some more.  It’s always broken up like every three months and you’ll forget like ‘okay, what’s goin’ on again?’

Zooey:  And they’ll send you the pages.

You had a unique opportunity to work with other actors in the room recording voices.  Have you both done animation before?

Zooey:  I haven’t.

Jon:  The other animation I did was motion capture so all the experience I’ve had was working with the other actors so I haven’t experience normal animation.

Did you just do a lot of ad-libbing?

Zooey:  Yeah.  There was a lot of improvisation.

Jon:  It was supposed to be in that style of a documentary..

Zooey:  Spinal Tap.

Jon:  So, you had ideas and little lines but it was more like ‘okay, say this line and then just kind of riff’.  Sometimes there was complete silence.  I don’t know what to say.

Zooey:  How was working with Jeff Bridges?

Jon:  I didn’t get to work with him.

Zooey:  Oh, yeah you had to work with all the little guys.

Jon:  I got to work with all the little Penguins.

Zooey:  working with Jeff was amazing.  I’m such a huge fan of his.  It was like a dream come true.  It was even better because he’s so rad.

Did you have a backstory that you thought up for your characters?

Jon: They had a backstory.  You’re a chicken from Michigan who surfs on a lake.  I remember when I first came in to start practicing with the character, it was just more making stuff up so we kind of wrote it as we went.  But, it’s so weird that it’s a chicken.

Growing up, what were the favorite animation movies for you two?

Zooey:  Little Mermaid.

Jon:  I loved Robin Hood and all those Disney ones.

Zooey: Sleeping Beauty, Snow White

Jon:  The Secret of Nimh was pretty cool.

Did they sell you guys on the different documentary style here or how did you pick this one over any other animation choices?

Jon:  I honestly loved the character design of my guy.  Alright, penguins, that’s cool but I liked the chicken.  I just liked the design.  He looked reminiscent of a lot of old school animation.  I just thought he looked so cool.  ‘I’ve just got to do him’. 

Did you guys go back and add any additional dialogue?

Jon:  We added a whole musical number.

Zooey:  [playing along] We had to take it out.  Thanks a lot, Happy Feet.  It used to be about dancing penguins.

Jon:  And they made it about surfing.  We’ll just switch it around, spend billions of dollars and make a change.

Did they put that line about ‘I don’t sing or dance’ in after Happy Feet?

Jon:  I don’t’ know.  That was Shia’s character. 

Zooey:  It could have been that they put that in but they didn’t talk to us about it.

Jon, what about your own animation projects with your brothers?

Jon:  I’m not involved in any right now but we hope to get involved with some.

CGI or old-fashioned animation?

Jon:  We’re not sure.  I love CGI.  I, technically am much better at CG myself, doing it on my own but we love.

Zooey:  Are you an animator?  No way.

Jon:  Yeah, that’s what I originally did.

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