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Frankenweenie

Changing heroes mid-stream

January 20, 2016 Corpse Bride, Frankenweenie, Writing Process

Germain Lussier looks at how and why the upcoming Zootopia switched out its lead character late in production:

In Zootopia, which hits theaters March 4, a young bunny named Judy Hopps leaves home for a job as a police officer in the big city of the title. There, she must team up with a con-man fox named Nick Wilde to solve a crime. Nick, voiced by Jason Bateman, is jaded, sarcastic, and believes everyone is exactly who they are. Judy, voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin, is exactly the opposite. She’s cheery, optimistic and believes anyone can be whatever they want.

For years, Nick was the focus on the film, with Hopps playing a crucial, but secondary role. But on that fateful November day, a little over a year before the film’s release, director Byron Howard realized they had to make the switch.

In live-action films, the stages of writing, production and editing are distinct and sequential, so you rarely see this kind of major 11th-hour refocussing. By the time you realize you’ve made a fundamental mistake about your central character, you’re largely stuck with what you’ve shot.

Animation, on the other hand, is iterative. As you move from screenplay to storyboards to scratch reels, you see the story coming to life — and the problems front-and-center. At each step, you’re screening and debating and rewriting. Talk to animation folks and you’ll hear countless stories of sidekicks promoted to heroes, and whole plotlines ditched.

In our Scriptnotes episode with Jennifer Lee about Frozen, she described some of the major changes to Anna and Elsa while in production.

I’ve mostly worked in stop-motion animation, which falls in the middle between live-action and CG animation. For Corpse Bride and Frankenweenie, we had a lot of flexibility up until the shutter clicked. From that point forward, it was very difficult to make significant story changes, much like a non-animated movie.

Frankenweenie and autism

December 5, 2013 Frankenweenie, Projects

Antonia Lidder recounts her experience with Frankenweenie, and its impact on her son diagnosed with autism:

In spring 2012, when he had a vocabulary of approximately 15 words, Gabriel clearly said ‘Sparky’. We were excited that he’d said a word and was undoubtedly trying to communicate with us, yet we had no idea what ‘sparky’ was. We searched our memories and came up blank. Then one day I recalled, ‘Last month we did see a trailer for a Tim Burton film – there was a dog in it called Sparky, but it’s only mentioned a couple of times, and it was so fast, and we’ve only seen it once…’

‘Nah,’ my husband said, ‘can’t be.’

How much we have learnt since.

For some kids with autism, seeing a movie in a theater eliminates many of the distractions of ordinary life — eye contact, social cues, needing to keep up a conversation. In the darkness, they can focus on the movie in front of them. The movie theater is one of the last places you can fully lose yourself in a story.

Frankenweenie is deliberately simple, both visually and narrativley. It’s black-and-white, with no fast cutting. It’s the story of a boy and his dog and the adults around them.

My hunch is that kids with autism identify with both Sparky and Victor. Sparky is mute but curious, steadfast but easily frightened. Victor is reclusive and odd, but his oddness isn’t threatening. He’s special and his parents love him for it.

For Lidder, the film opened the floodgates:

FRANKENWEENIE sparked a magical trajectory for us, showing us the actual potential in our beautiful boy, rather than the deficiency that others perceive in him because he can’t express himself in recognised, neurotypical ways. It also has given us so many moments of unbridled joy and discovery that I don’t have the words to convey their significance in our lives.

Ultimately, FRANKENWEENIE is the tale of a boy who is different, isolated and misunderstood. The boy loses himself in film, and the adults find themselves as he shows them what love really is. In this way, and every other way, FRANKENWEENIE is the film of our lives.

My thanks to Picturehouse for sponsoring these special autism-friendly screenings, and for sharing this story.

Frankenweenie on video today

January 8, 2013 Frankenweenie

With the news that home video is finally growing again, it’s the perfect time to point out that Frankenweenie is available today in the U.S., in both spinning plastic and digital versions.

The disc version comes in a bunch of different flavors — none of which I’ve tried firsthand. The basic DVD is just that. There’s a four-disc combo that includes Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray, DVD and a digital copy, and a two-disc version with non-3D Blu-ray and DVD. (All links to Amazon.)

Digitally, the movie is on iTunes in both HD and SD incarnations. On the Mac and PC, the digital version includes special features, such as a new Sparky short.

Amazon has the digital version for purchase and rental, with HD available on Xbox and other platforms.

Animated movies don’t pay residuals like live-action movies, so you won’t be directly contributing any green envelopes in my future. But the more people who see it, the more likely it is we’ll be able to keep making odd little movies.

Frankenweenie scripts now online

December 3, 2012 Frankenweenie

Now that it’s officially awards season, Disney has given me their blessing to post the screenplay for Frankenweenie. You can find it in the Library, along with many of my other scripts.

There are actually two Frankenweenie scripts available to read.

  1. The first is my December 2010 draft, which got the greenlight. It’s probably my second or third draft, but the story didn’t really change that much from the very beginning.

  2. The second script is conformed from animatic, and incorporates all the changes made during storyboarding, production and editing.

The first one probably reads better — because it was written to be read. The second one more accurately reflects the final movie. If you’re curious about the process of animation, you’ll probably want to look at both. I especially like the trimming and tightening that happened in the third act during storyboarding. It takes a village to make a movie, and I’m indebted to the all the pencil-wielding citizens of Three Mills Studios who worked to make those story beats happen.

This morning, as I was writing up this post, Frankenweenie got five Annie Award nominations, including Best Animated Feature and Writing in an Animated Feature. We were also named Best Animated Film by the New York Film Critics Circle. It’s great to see the film getting such a warm reception.

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