Tagline: Alien problem? Monster solution.
Monsters vs. Aliens movie storyline. When California girl Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon) is unwittingly clobbered by a meteor full of outer space gunk on her wedding day, she mysteriously grows to 49-feet-11-inches tall. The military jumps into action and Susan is captured and put into a secret government compound.
There, she is renamed Ginormica and held along with a ragtag group of Monsters: the brilliant but insect-headed Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D. (Hugh Laurie); the macho half-ape, half-fish, The Missing Link (Will Arnett); the gelatinous and indestructible B.O.B. (Seth Rogen); and the 350-foot grub called Insectosaurus.
Their confinement is cut short, however, when a mysterious alien robot lands on Earth and begins storming the country. In a moment of desperation, The President (Stephen Colbert) is persuaded to enlist the motley crew of Monsters to combat the alien robot and save the world from imminent destruction.
Other stars in this out-of-this-world ensemble include Rainn Wilson as Gallaxhar, the megalomaniac responsible for the alien robots and looking to replicate a new world in his own image; Kiefer Sutherland as General W.R. Monger, an armed forces lifer who’s finally found a use for his collection of detained Monsters…battling the alien invader; and Paul Rudd as Derek Dietl, Susan’s selfish fiancé, who has outgrown his current weatherman position and aspires to network news greatness.
In A Galaxy Very Much Like Our Own…
For centuries, tales of monsters, creatures and otherworldly beings have delighted, entertained, terrified, and intrigued people of every culture throughout the world. The works of literary masters passed down through the ages eventually made their way to Hollywood and so was born the “creature feature” and, eventually, the science-fiction flick. In many a sci-fi movie or television series of the 1950s and `60s, the genesis of the tale often began with the interception of a strange signal beamed from a planet in another galaxy, usually underscored by the requisite spooky organ music. Aliens would then arrive, and either wallop or teach Earth’s inhabitants a thing or two about getting along in the universe.
The tale of “Monsters vs. Aliens,” however, originates from a few very earthbound sources-behind the walls of the Glendale, California campus of DreamWorks Animation with CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg and two veteran feature film directors named Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon.
The mere mention of the word `monster’-especially when paired with the word `alien’-customarily lights up the eyes of any filmmaker (like Letterman and Vernon) who ever spent a Saturday afternoon planted in front of the television, watching a black-and-white cautionary tale (Don’t mess with Mother Nature! Radioactive fallout renders creatures gigantic!) in the form of a 1950s `B’ movie.
Not only were Letterman and Vernon enormous fans of the films, they were also heavily influenced by the style of the poster art of the genre. The evolving style of “Monsters vs. Aliens” was influenced not only by `B’ movies from the `50s and their printed advertising, but also from the Mad magazines of the period, which boasted the likes of iconic and influential illustrators Jack Davis, Don Martin and Jack Rickard. (Savvy viewers will recognize the homage to these sources during the war room playback of archival footage of the pre-capture sprees of Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D., The Missing Link, B.O.B. and Insectosaurus.)
Letterman had just finished helming the Oscar®-nominated DreamWorks Animation hit “Shark Tale” when he scheduled a meeting with Jeffrey Katzenberg to discuss his next project. “He asked me to take a look at a project that was in development about monsters,” recalls Letterman. “I had always wanted to do a comedy, kind of like the film `The Dirty Dozen.’ Oddly enough, it turned out to be a way to do my `Dirty Dozen’ comedy, as the Monsters are a type of rogue team that goes up against aliens invading the Earth…and so I loved the idea.”
For Vernon, the tale of the fantastical group’s clash began some 6,000 miles away. The director offers, “I was in Cannes for `Shrek 2,’ and I was looking over an early draft of the project. I saw that it had an element of a 1950s `B’ movie, which I had never before seen in animation. I thought that was a really interesting concept to tackle and how great it would be if we could give this gang of misfit Monsters personalities, and satirize those kinds of films at the same time. I especially thought it would be fun, since we pay homage to different styles of filmmaking and different genres of film. I thought that would be pretty interesting to try and take on.”
For Letterman, teaming up with fellow monster movie lover Vernon had great promise: “Conrad’s really great, a talented storyboard artist and director and a voice talent as well…I mean, he’s the voice of the Gingerbread Man [from the `Shrek’ movies]. It was a great advantage, because he could do all of the actors’ voices-he impersonates every single person in the cast. So while we were developing the story, we could build the movie while we were waiting for our chance with the actors. I mean, that was just one wonderful side benefit. But he’s great, and we really bounce off each other well.”
Vernon was also more than comfortable with sharing the “Monsters vs. Aliens” director’s chair: “From the beginning, we didn’t try to delineate jobs, but rather to create a back-and-forth way of working. We were in constant contact, pitching ideas about scenes and characters to each other. Our goal all along was to create a cohesive and entertaining film, and we did that by keeping each other in the loop. That assured that we both stayed on the same page about every aspect of the film, and we weren’t off separately making two very different projects. Always being clear about what film we were making-that kept it on track.”
Meanwhile, a world away (well, in the alternate universe of the live-action world, anyway), a producer was being recruited to join the MvA-ers. Lisa Stewart-who has worked on such titles as “Almost Famous” and “Jerry Maguire”-took a meeting, and her life took an unexpected turn… “When Jeffrey Katzenberg calls, you take the meeting,” recalls Stewart. A talented and successful live-action film producer, Stewart had just wrapped production on a film and was looking forward to a break when she got the call to meet with Katzenberg and tour the studio’s Glendale animation campus.
It was on that tour that Stewart’s fate was sealed. “I saw this really great iconic image of Susan,” explains Stewart. “She was sitting on the roof of a gas station. Her fiancé has just dumped her; she’s taking stock of her life. It was such an evocative image. I thought to myself, `This is a woman I want to know, I want to tell her story, I want to be a part of that world!’” The matter that she had never worked in animation did not intimidate Stewart in the least: “Great storytelling is great storytelling, and I had to see Susan’s story through.”
The fact that Susan’s story arc appealed to Stewart comes as no surprise. Throughout her career, the producer has a track record of bringing to the screen strong female characters, and the casting of Reese Witherspoon cinched the deal. “I’ve known Reese for a number of years as a friend and, when I found out she had been cast as Susan, I thought it would finally be a great opportunity to work with her.” Two co-producers also joined the gathering bunch, Jill Hopper Desmarchelier and Latifa Ouaou. Together, the pair can boast of more than 25 years of production experience at DreamWorks Animation, and that experience was put to good use by Stewart and the directors.
Calling All Monsters
The choice of the actors lending their voices to the cast of “Monsters vs. Aliens” (MvA) was anything but spontaneous. Filmmakers put together their wish lists of names and some initial calls were made. But sometimes, being the right filmmakers in the right place at the right time proved serendipitous, and a certain leading lady heeded her own inner call to join the MvA crusade.
Director Letterman relates, “The first time Reese Witherspoon came in and we actually met her, Jeffrey brought her by the studio and gave her a tour-he was basically showing her all the movies going on to see what she would respond to. Conrad and I were waiting and she came in, and we gave her a basic pitch of the idea of the movie and explained to her that we really wanted to make the female lead the hero character to balance out the dudes in the film. When she heard that her eyes just lit up.”
“Reese connected to the story and character of Susan,” adds Vernon. “She e-mailed Jeffrey later that day and said she wanted to come onboard!”
For producer Stewart, a big draw to the project was similar to Witherspoon’s: “I love the idea of this ordinary woman thrown into this extraordinary world. The monster characters are so funny and individual, and this idea of a small-town girl from Modesto, California suddenly becoming part of this outrageous crew-thrust into this situation in which she has to fight off an alien invasion-it was inventive and funny.”
The Oscar-winning actress explains, “I like that she is a regular girl who learns to value herself. She starts the movie where she thinks she has everything going for her in her life. She’s about to be married. She’s got this great guy. She’s really ready to start a life that she thinks is the right life for her. In one twist of fate, she has to really face the fact that she never really wanted much from herself, never really learned to value what was great about her as an individual. I think that is a journey that a lot of people can relate to. Susan is a great character, and it’s fun to see somebody become a superhero-to suddenly have that kind of super strength. Don’t we all sort of dream about those things?”
For the filmmakers, Witherspoon’s award-winning talent wasn’t the only draw-it was her stature, literally. Director Vernon says, “We thought it would be great and a nice contrast to have a petite girl play a giant woman-and we had fun with that. Susan is living vicariously through her fiancé. We liked taking that idea and turning it around…so when she becomes the most powerful woman in the world, she realizes that she doesn’t really need him to lead the amazing life that she’s always wanted.”
Stewart adds, “Five feet, one-and-one-half inch Reese Witherspoon playing the five-story monster was instantly appealing to us. Reese is a great actress, really smart and game for anything. I think she really enjoyed the idea of the transformation of this character-she sunk her teeth into it.”
For working mom Witherspoon, the other themes present in the material also resonated: “Through the journey of the film, Susan starts to really value and appreciate the monster crew for the support that they give her-the love, the companionship-the understanding that they have of the situation…they’re all different. She has to come to terms with the fact that she can’t really go home again in the same way. She’ll never be just Susan Murphy from Modesto. And, at first, that kind of depresses her, but then, through the help of the Monsters, she realizes it’s a little awesome to be different. They all value each other for their qualities, and they kind of form this offbeat family.”
“Offbeat” is one good word to describe the most intelligent of the incarcerated Monsters that Susan (later named “Ginormica”) meets in the secret military facility-Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D.
The most brilliant scientist in the world is actually a cockroach, the result of a self-experiment gone awry. His life’s work confiscated, Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D. now spends his time in lock-up working on something diabolical (as all mad scientists do).
Rob Letterman: “We wanted somebody to be very formal and erudite, because we thought that would be a great contrast with the whole `cockroach bad’ thing. And so, we immediately thought of Hugh. And a lot of people don’t realize, at least people in the States, that he’s a Brit. Hugh Laurie is obviously mostly known in the States for `House,’ but he is a famous actor for many years in England. He did `The Black Adder’ [television series] with Rowan Atkinson and he’s an incredible comedic actor. We were fans of his prior to `House.’ So it was very fortunate to have him on the movie.”
For Laurie-who is, indeed, erudite, and quite recently was awarded an OBE by the Queen herself-playing a brilliant bug was a dream job. Hugh explains, “First of all, I love doing animated projects. You wear your own clothes. I love the freedom of messing around and trying to create something in a voice. It’s exciting and a fun challenge. But also, now these animated films have sort of really become the summit of modern entertainment.”
Director Vernon follows, “When we met with him, he had this look on his face, like, `Why are you guys talking to me right now?’ We toured him around the DreamWorks Animation campus, and wound up in the editing room, showing him storyboard sequences of the film. We talked casually and really hit it off. He said, `Yes’ on the spot! Once he got in the booth, he did not disappoint.”
The wry Laurie remembers it differently: “After a lovely tour around the place, I was presented with this massive amount, almost like a museum, of artwork that they’d already composed…to start to get a sense I suppose, for their benefit and for prospective actors or designers and so on of the world they were trying to create. I was immediately entranced by that wonderful `50s feel, which is not only wonderfully relevant to the style of story they were trying to tell, but it also was a great period of American design. I was sold as soon as I walked in through the door. I didn’t tell them that, of course. I hemmed and hawed and stroked my chin and I tried to play hard to get, but I was in for a ride from the word `Go.’”
Another Monster-the macho half-ape, half-fish called The Missing Link-is also always ready for a ride…usually to the nearest beach to pursue and scare the female frolickers. Pre-historically, he was the first creature that decided to step out of the water and onto dry land, evolving as he went.
Sadly, he chose to leave the water at the height of the Ice Age, stepping onto land that was hovering below 32°F. Thousands of years later, thawed by paleontologists, The Missing Link tried to return to his watering hole (now a five-star resort), where he was captured and locked up.
Comic chameleon Will Arnett was selected to fill the flippers of The Missing Link: “What I love about The Missing Link is his willingness to jump into any situation without really reading the inherent dangers of that situation. He’ll do anything. He’s like, `Hey, what are we gonna do today?’ `We’re gonna try and take on some alien invaders!’ `Sounds great, let’s go!’ He doesn’t put a whole lot of thought into it. I identify with that impulsiveness, I think.”
The filmmakers also appreciated Arnett’s “let’s go” attitude, as director Rob Letterman comments, “We played back his voice recordings to the designers of the character. Will has this voice quality that you can’t duplicate. It’s amazing. Plus, he’s hysterically funny. And luckily for us, just like everyone else in the cast, they would go off script and add some great stuff, and bring the dialogue off the page.”
While for some the work of animation is a long, drawn-out affair, just the opposite is true for the versatile Arnett: “The great thing about animation is that, yes, it does take a long time, but you are able to go back and re-work bits. Once everyone sees some of the rough animation, they can see what works and what doesn’t. Rob and Conrad can look and say, `Oh, you know what? You ought to get them to say this.’ Or you can get a lot of different choices for months and months and months…as opposed to making a movie, where you shoot something and then you’re gone from that scene and you can’t go back.”
The scientists who created B.O.B. (short for “benzoate-ostylezene-bicarbonate”) were trying to re-write `50s snack food fad history by combining a chemically altered ranch-flavored dessert topping with a genetically altered tomato. When the concoction suddenly gained consciousness-as much consciousness as something without a brain can gain-the ravenous and somewhat sweet gelatinous mass joined the ranks of Dr. Cockroach and The Missing Link-in the Monster big house.
Letterman says, “He’s really lovable, and yet, not the brightest blob in the world. But as he puts it, he makes up for it with his good looks. We needed somebody who came across as a slacker, who was also very endearing, and Seth Rogen was perfect for that. On top of that, he brings so much to the role. He’s incredible. When we recorded him, he came up with amazing ad-libs-he is so fast and so funny and can improv pretty much anything.”
Producer Stewart continues, “I feel like we were really lucky to get Seth at this time in his career. B.O.B.’s not the brightest bulb, but Seth plays him with a real sweetness and sort of a wide-eyed wonder that really makes him one of our most charming characters. He’s a tremendous ad-libber and we incorporated many of his improvs into the film. It’s so wonderful to have this fan favorite, this character who is really unintentionally funny and has this tremendous heart as well.”
Rogen is no stranger to animation voice work, having just voiced the character of Mantis in the worldwide hit “Kung Fu Panda.” But as lightening quick as Mantis is, B.O.B. is as slow as molasses. Rogen observes, “It’s really great to be able to switch things up. Mantis was all about a quick temper and awesome kung fu abilities. For B.O.B., I just kind of show up and look at my lines and then just space, and go to some really nice, sweet, innocent place, I don’t know, like a fair or something. I’m, like, seven years old and I’ve got this humongous cotton candy and there’s the fun house and the roller coaster-just a ton of stuff that amazes a kid. Kinda everything amazes B.O.B. So he eats a little too much, so what? At the end of the day, he really is the nicest Monster…except for Susan, but she’s really not a Monster, she’s just overly tall.”
Of key importance to the filmmakers was that all the Monsters be tough and able to throw down-they do have to face an alien bent on world destruction, after all-but also be charming and endearing. This side of them shows up a little later after Susan joins their ranks.
Stewart relates, “When we come back to Susan, presumably a few weeks later, she’s developed this really nice rapport with all of these monsters. They’ve formed a bond at this point and she’s no longer threatened by them-she’s actually sort of endeared to them.”
Anyone of normal height would probably view the 350-foot grub called Insectosaurus as a threat. The overgrown bug is not so much a threat as it is…hungry. And young. After wreaking havoc in Tokyo (where else?), the critter is captured while teething on a skyscraper. Apparently, like a lot of fledgling fauna, Insectosaurus is entranced by shiny things and has absolutely no idea of its own size and power. Also, the grub doesn’t so much speak as make indecipherable noises and high-pitched squeals.
Federal Government, Armed Forces, Fiancés and Aliens!
Gallaxhar is the power-hungry alien commander bent on annihilating the Earth’s population and replacing the inhabitants with countless clones of himself. He can and will fire a beam that decimates anything in its path.
Letterman asserts, “He’s the ultimate megalomaniac, because he wants to take over the universe with copies of himself. We thought Rainn Wilson would be so perfect, as he could give a new take on that alien overlord villain thing. We really wanted Gallaxhar to be a unique villain.”
Wilson himself discloses, “This has been an incredible process, because I’ve never done an animated film before. Early on, we were just playing around with the character and trying to find it. At first, the alien was much more comedic and we did a lot of funny voice stuff. And then they realized that no-especially in the second half of the movie-he’s got to be a real threat; they wanted the voice to be much more menacing and evil. So we took the stuff that we had been playing with and focused it into a force of pure megalomaniacal evil. That’s kind of where it came from.”
The process of creating and recording Gallaxhar soon took on a yin and yang component, as the actor and the filmmakers began to trade ideas. According to Vernon: “Rainn actually came in and really helped with the character and the dialogue-it was a springboard back-and-forth. He would say something, it would put another line in our head, he would springboard off of that, and it was a lot of great give-and-take with him.”
Adds Wilson, “I love what they can do in animation, because usually, the stakes are very high. I mean here, the stakes are life and death… the survival of the planet Earth-and they took it very seriously, but yet, there is such silliness at the same time, and such absurdity. I love it when life and death just flips into something really silly.”
Life and death issues handled in a humorous fashion…fertile ground from which to develop the character of The President. To voice the Leader of the Free World, one actor the filmmakers did not immediately consider-Stephen Colbert. Rob Letterman explains how that bit of casting came about: “Before Stephen Colbert was the `Stephen Colbert’ he is today, we watched his White House press corps roast of George W. Bush. He was so amazing that we had to immediately fly out to meet him. We went into his office and said that we wanted to do this animated movie, and nobody was asking him to do movies at the time. He was the nicest guy-and had all this great stuff in his library, this collection of gadgets and toys. He really connected with the characters and got all the references that we had in the film. It was just the perfect meeting. He said, `Yes’ on the spot.”
Colbert doesn’t deny it, but he does admit, “I’m not qualified to play The President. I’m qualified to play a cartoon president. There’s a big difference. I hope. He’s loud. He’s very sure of his decisions…but not sure of his information. But he doesn’t keep the information from coloring his decisions. He easily panics, which is nice. And he’s quick to apologize.”
Colbert’s razor-sharp wit was also given free reign to ad-lib during the recording of his scenes, and often, gems would emerge, several of which wound up in the film. In one sequence, once the alien robot begins the attack, The President pulls out a pistol and, firing at the invader, screams, “Eat lead, alien robot!” When the bullets have no effect, he counters, “Huh, apparently, they eat lead.” Letterman says, “We were always animating around things that just came out during Stephen’s recording sessions.”
But how did Colbert find an appropriately presidential voice? “To find a voice for The President, I tried to be just as declarative and as authoritative as I could without actually thinking about anything I was saying. The result: `Hollow certainty.’”
Forceful certainty is apparent in the salty General W. R. Monger, so the colorful military lifer gave the filmmakers another iconic film character they could reference. Director Letterman remarks, “There’s the greatest movie ever, `Dr. Strangelove,’ with George C. Scott and Peter Sellers. That film was a big influence, and we wanted to pay homage to the chemistry and the relationship between those two characters with our general and president…especially in the war room scene, which is, basically, a `Strangelove’ moment. So Kiefer Sutherland and Stephen Colbert were the perfect pairing, with Kiefer as the grizzled, cigar-chomping, serious general.”
Director Vernon adds, “General W. R. Monger is a grizzled World War II vet and probably lives in a trailer out in the middle of nowhere, and he’s been in the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Marines for the last 80 years. Back in the `50s sometime, he decided that he was going to put a stop to all these monsters that were rampaging around terrorizing people. He assembled a small group of Black Ops people and they went out and started capturing these monsters. I think he’s very proud of what he does, but he’s also like that guy who’s a little geeky about his fish tank, you know? `Look at these Monsters I have!’ It’s like his insect zoo.”
Sutherland gladly joined the project and states, “Animated films, they’re fantastic. There’s something wonderful, because these people operate in such a different world than what I’m used to…to be able to work in a room where people are laughing all the time, and they’ve been working on this film for almost four years. To be able to come into a room four years later and still have the same kind of energy and enthusiasm and find it funny-that’s really inspiring. It makes you really want to impress them and make them laugh. They were unbelievably helpful, knowing that this is a really different kind of thing for me.”
Letterman comments, “On `24,’ he’s a little whispery. But during our recording sessions, he had this country accent and he just started screaming at the top of his lungs, and we thought, `That’s great, that’s fantastic!’ He just totally broke out into something brand new and that really nailed the character right there for us.”
The actor describes his sessions when he says, “When we did the larger passes in the script, there were many times that we would stumble on something and I would have to stop because I was laughing or they were laughing and you could hear them. As an actor, there’s a wonderful part of the job about putting something on its feet, and I don’t get to do a lot of comedy. So when I was trying stuff, sometimes, out of sheer embarrassment, I would laugh because I thought it was funny. The film is funny, but it’s sweet and there’s a charm to it. It’s about people that really just want to belong, and the fact that, not only are they able to belong, but they overcome great adversity to do that. There’s something very sweet about that as well.”
While our heroine Susan starts out in the film believing that her fiancé, Derek Dietl, is sweet, she later grows to realize that maybe, hmm, no, not so much. The self-absorbed weatherman has lined up an audition for an anchor position (in Fresno, no less), and is willing to trash Susan’s plans for a honeymoon in Paris for his chance at regional news greatness.
Once again, filmmakers turned to an actor with great comedic and improvisational chops-Paul Rudd. Letterman remembers, “Paul and I had talked about working together for awhile, and when this character came about, we put Paul into it, just to see what would happen. He’s truly amazing. He’s hysterical and tireless. You give him the script, and he’ll run through it a couple of times. He just runs with it and, unless you stop him, he’ll actually go on talking forever. Sometimes, I would just sit back and watch how long he could make stuff up. He ended up influencing the character quite a bit.”
Typically, part of the challenge of recording a voice for animation is that it is just one actor in a booth with a mic-no other performers with whom he can partner. But after Rudd would lay down a scene, Witherspoon’s session of recording Susan’s responses was so compelling that the filmmakers put the two `lovebirds’ together for a day of recording in the booth at the same time. True to form, a wealth of great material was the happy result.
As for Rudd, he shares one quality with his computer-generated alter-ego-a dislike for anything monstrous. Rudd admits, “I was really nervous about anything as a kid, and everything kind of scared me. `The Creature from the Black Lagoon’ really traumatized me. It looked like a fish, but it was also a monster. And then I went through a phase where I didn’t want anything in my bedroom because, at night, it would turn into a monster. So, those monster movies of the `50s, I never really took to. And besides, I was just too busy playing with Legos.”
Director Vernon is duly proud of the ensemble gathered to voice the lead (or “hero”) characters of the piece: “Every single one of our cast was able to take the film to the next level and add things-they’d say, `Can I try something?’ Then, they’d go completely off, and sometimes that sent us in a direction with a character that would influence the rest of the movie…which made extra work for us, but it also made the movie much better than we could have envisioned.”
A Strange New World
Ask anyone who’s ever participated in a team sport, and they’ll tell you that a group is only as strong as its weakest member. When it came time to fill the ranks of the “Monsters vs. Aliens” filmmaking squad, directors Letterman and Vernon, producer Stewart and co-producers Hopper Desmarchelier and Ouaou gathered an all-star film crew, including such star players as: head of layout Damon O’Beirne (“Madagascar”); production designer David James (“Flushed Away”); film editors Joyce Arrastia (“Shrek the Third”) and Eric Dapkewicz (“Flushed Away”); head of character animation David Burgess (“Bee Movie”); visual effects supervisor Ken Bielenberg (“Shrek the Third”); digital supervisor Mahesh Ramasubramanian (“Bee Movie”); and stereoscopic supervisor Phil Captain 3D McNally.
Production designer David James-whose job it is to help conceptualize, develop, shepherd and maintain the distinct look of the film, along with visual effects supervisor Ken Bielenberg-states perhaps what many in the crew felt about signing on to the project: “When I heard the title, I said, `Yes, absolutely.’ It’s every kid’s dream job. I was in a conversation with a guy a couple months ago who is an investment banker, and I was trying to explain to him what I did, and he stopped me halfway through and said, `That’s not a job, mate.’ This one, in particular, is about as much fun as you can have and still get paid.”
While live-action film editors customarily begin work after some of the film has been shot, Joyce Arrastia and Eric Dapkewicz were at the ready just as soon as activity on the title began, working in the storyboard phase to help shape the project, and both remained with it throughout production.
As with any animated film, story and designs evolve and change as the feature is honed and focused. What may begin as one thing, morphs into another. The high-concept comedy of “Monsters vs. Aliens” began design life a bit more, well, comic, but along the way the settings underwent an overall change and became more reality-based. Designer James explains, “Silly things are not quite as silly when they take place in silly environments. It’s always very nice to have juxtaposition, so that the audience can actually feel the grandeur and scale of this place. We’ll let the action and characters be the funniest thing. And let the sets and the environments blend into and from a real place.”
Co-producer Latifa Ouaou also states, “Adding in the actors is one of the most enjoyable parts of the process. The way in which we make an animated film is pretty calculated, clearly, with a lot of planning. And so, when we finally get to the actors, they get to bring something else to the process-which gives us the opportunity to go back and play with it, improve it. So things that change represent a creative challenge for us, which is great.”
Visual effects supervisor Bielenberg explains further: “I thought that this was going to be a big challenge, and it was. We had to have a very stylized shape language for certain aspects, like the characters, that are fairly stylized and pushed. Certain aspects of the environments are also pushed, so they’re a little bit off-kilter. But the texturing and the lighting are very realistic, and so we had an interesting blend of characterization and stylization together with realism.”
But a scientist with a cockroach head? A five-story woman? Again, James: “Now, that said, our characters are caricatures. And that informs the design of everything, from cars to plates, oven parts, curtains-everything is going to have a slightly different proportion so that the characters, whose proportions are different from natural proportions, don’t feel out of place in their world.”
Perhaps a telling example of this is the design of The President, with his combination of pushed, caricatured design and realistic surfacing and texturing. His skin reacts to light the way that any `human’ skin would (within the confines of the CG world). This blending of the fantastical with the real was used to great success previously in the world of Far, Far Away for the “Shrek” films.
Perhaps the most challenging character to develop and consistently maintain was that of B.O.B. The gelatinous mass needed to keep his `blobby’ look, while being both transparent and able to refract light-he himself occupied CG space, but the surrounding environment would need to be visible through him. Add to that internal bubbles that react to his movements and `lifelike’ facial expressions (which require a set of traditional controls for facial animation)…not to mention arms that can appear and disappear. Well, B.O.B.’s life remained in vitro (in the design phase) for more than a year before filmmakers had a handle on his overall look.
Per digital supervisor Mahesh Ramasubramanian: “B.O.B. is a combination of an animated character and a visual effect. And we see him in different forms throughout the course of the movie.”
Maybe the best example of the juxtaposition of the pushed and the real is one of the most inventive and fast-paced sequences-the battle between the alien robot and our ragtag gang, which begins in downtown San Francisco and culminates on the Golden Gate Bridge. Many filmmakers ventured up to the fantastic city for reference filming and location scouting, renting a helicopter to film from a higher perspective (say, from Ginormica’s P.O.V., or that of Insectosaurus).
It stands to reason that if someone wishes to disassemble something, that person should have at least a working knowledge of how the thing is assembled…so when James was charged with wrecking the iconic bridge, he set about studying its structure. He filmed the architectural marvel of the 1930s from every angle, including from underneath.
Head of character animation David Burgess found some of his customary working style altered for “Monsters vs. Aliens,” in order to ratchet up the excitement of the sequences where the two opposing `forces’ meet: “One of the things about this film, in particular, is the filmmaking style-it’s a very non-animation style. We were going for a real live-action feel with a lot of these sequences, especially with the action sequences. We wanted them to be as big and as exciting as any summer movie that you’d see. So that was a little bit of an adjustment, because we tend to work with animation cameras in a certain way. Things tend to play on a flat plane. You sort of line things up and the characters come out and they talk, and then they go off…that kind of thing. We decided we weren’t going to do that at all in this film. With the addition of the stereoscopic component, the onscreen environment has to be real. We can actually push these characters through space, and that becomes a really fun part of watching it.”
Once the Monsters strike the deal with General W.R. Monger to battle the invading robot in exchange for their freedom, they are plopped down in San Francisco-and begin both fleeing from and chasing the gigantic force of destruction. Filmmakers were influenced by such memorable San Francisco chase sequences seen in the Steve McQueen classic film “Bullitt” and the ones involving Karl Malden and Michael Douglas in the fast-paced detective series “The Streets of San Francisco.”
Director Rob Letterman: “We really wanted to take these action sequences seriously, with conviction, with fun and comedy, but with the excitement of those live-action references. We had a very specific approach in these sequences-we did not want them to feel like an animated movie. We were going to try and embrace what would happen in a live-action film. Even though you can do anything you want in animation -you can put the camera anywhere you want-we set up specific rules with the layout team (the artists who work the camera): if there is a shot you can’t do in a live-action movie, let’s not do it. Now, the audience probably won’t know what we are doing, but that’s what we were aiming for-it’s something that’s rarely done in animation, and the goal here was to do things that were different. We put in these hand-held shots, and quick cuts, and racing along the bridge and then we shot coverage, which is uncommon in animation.”
Being an action hero is the last thing on Susan’s mind when she is deposited in San Francisco. While the other Monsters may have had a background in terrorizing (well, at least in the `50s), Susan is merely a bride-to-be trapped in a nearly-50-foot body-she has no experience in warfare. So naturally, she begins to flee from the pursuing alien robot. Untrained though inventive, she straps two cars to her feet to use as roller skates, to speed up her flight. When she reaches the bridge, it is littered with the last cars retreating from the now evacuated city, and the driver of a semi-truck spots this gigantic skating woman in his rear-view mirror and panics, flipping his truck and causing a pile-up on the bridge. Susan instinctually stops to help, and spots the robot quickly closing in.
Conrad Vernon explains, “It is such a pivotal moment for Susan, when this girl from Modesto starts to become something else…a super hero, and she doesn’t even know she’s doing it. She turns the truck back upright and starts freeing the driver, and urging the others off the bridge immediately. And then, the robot has her, and she’s fighting for her life.”
Stephen Colbert observes, “Besides being funny, and a thrilling sequence, the scene is beautiful. The movie’s an incredible mesh of photorealism and comedic cartooning. For years, people have tried to put animated characters in the real world-I think these guys have done that. That’s the Golden Gate Bridge, and that’s the San Francisco Harbor, right there. And there are animated characters on top of it, integrated into an incredibly beautiful photorealistic world. It is something I have never seen before.”
Such a feat does not just simply happen-it has taken the DreamWorks Animation computer animators years to develop such artistry, along with computer companies years to continually hone the hardware that supports such creations. Digital effects supervisor Mahesh Ramasubramanian comments, “Starting with `Shrek,’ we created our first bridge, and just kept refining our tools and hardware for `Kung Fu Panda’ and now for `Monsters vs. Aliens.’ For MvA, our technology crew has created a new rigging package called RIG, which allowed us to `rig’-which means give controls to animate, like a puppeteer controls a marionette. In this case, our `puppet’ turned out to be a big, complicated bridge.
With this latest development in technology, the character animators were able to go in there and animate the bridge. Normally, the bridge would have been considered an effect, and the character animators would have had to mime all the characters, approximating the reactions of the characters to the movement of the bridge. A visual effects artist would then be tasked with animating the movement of the bridge. Our technology has advanced to a point where the animators themselves can animate the bridge when they are animating the characters. The characters now react very accurately and realistically to the movement of the bridge. Our visual effects artists then add things like debris, dust and other particles resulting from the collapse of the bridge.”
Clearly, such large onscreen visual effects dictate equally large sounds to accompany. Director Vernon: “Ethan Van der Ryn is our supervising sound editor, and sound effects are incredibly important to a film like this. The one thing you have to really convert constantly is the scale. You have to remind people that these are 350-foot characters walking around skyscrapers and knocking them over with their tails. And this is a 49-foot-11½-inch woman standing in two cars and skating down a hill in San Francisco. And if you don’t have the right sound effects and design, it’s going to look and feel like a normal human being in a plastic car. You need to hear the creak of that metal when she steps into it; you need to hear the explosion of the tire when it pops as it goes around a corner; you need to hear 80 tons of steel crashing into the Golden Gate Bridge. You need to hear all of that so that you know that this huge thing is happening right in front of you.”
But the effects aren’t only for the huge, kerblooey moments, as Hugh Laurie observes: “There’s a wonderful detail when Susan finds herself in a deserted San Francisco, about to do battle with the enemy. It’s silent-in an old Western, they might have had the wind or tumbleweed going through or a distant church bell. But in this film, they have pigeons. You can just hear a very distant pigeon cooing… details like that that make the whole project so pleasing and so rich.”
Producer Lisa Stewart acknowledges the challenging nature of the San Francisco sequence when she admits, “I want to say the Golden Gate Bridge scene turned out to be a really monumental task. We have a 50-foot girl, 350-foot alien robot and a 350-foot Monster, Insectosaurus. We have crowds and cars and destruction and snot rays and water-it was something that took a long time for us to choreograph. We went up to San Francisco and walked the bridge and took a helicopter and tried to really come at it from a holistic place to figure out the best way to shoot it and get the most dynamic action out of the scene.”
Now, time for a secret, and something that proved invaluable to the animators in creating Susan’s flight from the robot. The name of the secret is supervising animator Line Andersen and-although her skills at animation were gladly utilized by the filmmakers-it was her body they were after…in a fashion.
Turns out Line has a body type similar to that of Susan-tall, thin, athletic. Talented DreamWorks Animation model maker Facundo Rabaudi next constructed a scale model set of San Francisco out of foam core, and art department blow-ups of buildings (likewise scaled to Susan’s height) were pasted onto the mini city. Andersen was then outfitted in sweats similar in shape to Susan’s action jumpsuit and set loose in the foam San Fran.
Per Vernon: “We filmed her. We had her actually sneak around these tiny little lampposts and tiny little trees and tiny little cars, and we had her walking around looking from building to building and whatever she bumped into and accidentally stepped on, some of it we ended up using. Like, a couple of times, she looked down and said, `Oh I’m sorry, I crushed the light here,’ which was exactly what we wanted. Her reaction to crushing a lamppost, stepping on a car or something like that, was exactly what we were looking for. We also wanted to see what it was like if you were in the fifth story apartment and you looked out and saw a giant woman’s face walk by your bedroom window-sort of that King Kong feel. So we stuck the camera in all sorts of different locations and just filmed-what does it look like, from a normal person’s point-of-view, when a giant woman walks down the street?”
Co-producer Jill Hopper Desmarchelier compliments, “Line was fantastic. We asked her to bring in her roller blades, so that she could go really fast, and she threw herself onto the floor, which we managed to capture with the camera low on the floor. And it was really good fun and I think inspirational for her, as well. I think you can see that in the animation of the sequence…there’s a great deal of Line in there.”
To pull off such amazing, intricate and exciting sequences, it truly took a team effort from the entire cast and crew. David James perhaps best echoes the feelings of everyone involved when he says, “In my capacity as a production designer, it was such a group effort that, for me, it’s not at all about the individual ownership or even the individual painting. I mean, from the art department to the modeling department, to the surfacing department through animation, then lighting-which brings it all to life-every single person brought a level of artistry to the process. I was just happy to be involved with it…most of the time, I simply tried to not get in the way of it.”
Coming At You… InTru ™ 3D
As the television industry continues to catch up to movies with technological innovation (larger flat screens, HD, Blu-Ray), it’s now time for movies to take a larger step forward. And according to Jeffrey Katzenberg, 3D is the way to do just that.
“Monsters vs. Aliens” represents a first for the studio…the first film totally authored in the 3D format-and not just any 3D format. InTru™ 3D combines DreamWorks Animation’s state-of-the-art, proprietary authoring tools with the latest Intel technology, allowing artists to tell a more compelling story and give filmgoers a more exciting, immersive 3D movie experience. The ongoing use of InTru™ 3D (from “Monsters vs. Aliens” forward) is not just something employed by DreamWorks, but rather a mature, enhanced medium that enables filmmakers a better way to tell their stories-in an entirely new and innovative manner.
Katzenberg reflects, “I think that the innovation of the new generation of 3D has the opportunity to change the movie experience in a way that literally has not happened since we went from black-and-white to color. When you say, `3D,’ I know that people think of those cheesy old glasses and rinky-dink special effects of reaching out into the audience. That kind of moviemaking is a theme park attraction more than it is movies or storytelling. But, I think that what has happened now-and it’s only in these last 18 months or two years-is a convergence of the tools that enable us to make and exhibit 3D films in such an innovative way that the resulting breathtaking experience will change the way people think of movies.”
The CEO of DreamWorks Animation reasons that the current, next-gen InTru™ 3D offers such clarity, beauty and precision that the old imperfections of the format-ghosting, motion blur, eye strain-all vanish. Through the use of digital equipment, these separate left- and right-eye images (which the brain marries into a three-dimensional image) can be made to sync perfectly. And the result, as Katzenberg puts it, is “that the storyteller can actually bring the audience into the movie, making it a completely immersive experience. We have made audiences believe that what they were looking at-a classic, 2D experience-is, in fact, three-dimensional. It’s not. Now, we can actually deliver that third dimension. And it just creates a spectacular opportunity to make the emotions of storytelling even better. So now, `Monsters vs. Aliens’ will stand as the premiere feature conceived and authored in 3D, using these new state-of-the-art digital tools.”
Now, moviegoers’ eyes are free to look anywhere within the scene-focusing behind the main character into a background, say, on a piece of wallpaper that fascinates. As a result, filmmakers have to be ever cognizant of drawing the eye where they want it directed within the scene, using such things as lighting, sound or composition to focus attention where they wish.
Conversely, there are 2D techniques to which viewers have become accustomed-such as quick, MTV-style cuts-that can’t be utilized within the 3D format. The brain is unable to process that much information that quickly. So, to convey pacing (such as during Susan’s San Francisco battle with the robot) the makers of “Monsters vs. Aliens” had to find other tools to get the same emotional responses that these 2D techniques would elicit.
To make sure that these and other tools were used to their greatest advantage, the production brought aboard Phil Captain 3D McNally (that is his legal name-ask him, and he’ll show you his driver’s license), to serve as stereoscopic supervisor.
McNally began by educating filmmakers through visual example-he would display an early onscreen image of a tree in 2D, which was not the most compelling, visually speaking. Then, the same image was projected in digital 3D; suddenly, the tree had depth, visual interest. The eye was unfettered to roam up a leaf, along a branch, and trace a path at will.
McNally explains, “Think of a traditional 2D movie, and the largest dimension is probably the width or the diagonal width across the screen. But once we go into 3D, the largest dimension we can work with is actually in the depth of the shot. And so, it really opens up the possibility, not just across the screen, but now in the depth of the space as well. And so that’s something that’s new to the filmmakers-to be able to use that space as part of the new composition language that we’re trying to develop.”
Director Vernon remembers the 3D 101 classes this way: “He put us in a theater and showed us 3D images until our brains hurt, and he’d sit there and dial the levels. It was like one of those torture sessions. `Is this painful?’ `Yes.’ `Well, how about this?’ `Yes, it’s painful.’ `How about this?’ `It was painful literally three times ago. You don’t have to keep cranking it up.’ But along the way, we started understanding how to compose in 3D. We are composing X and Y all the time. But now, we could compose in Z, in this way, behind the screen and in front of the screen. It’s been an amazing experience, and Phil knows this stuff better than anybody on the planet. He should really be a general.”
DreamWorks Animation developed proprietary in-house tools for 3D filmmaking, allowing the artists to be able to see the shots they were working on in 3D as they worked, not having to wait for projection onto a screen. These tools not only allow seeing the 3D scene while it’s being created, but also measuring what the artists are doing and informing them how the scene will translate once it gets to the big screen. At the computer, the artist can manipulate the 3D elements of the scene and be assured that the work that they do on their computer monitor will translate correctly to what is shown on a full sized motion picture screen.
Authoring a picture in 3D-from beginning to end of the pipeline-allows filmmakers to: design the shots in both left and right dimension, as well as depth, including blocking, staging and camera placement; edit; and view rough animation and visual effects, as well as work on any aspect of the film at any juncture in the pipeline… all in 3D.
For such exacting artistry, a joined-at-the-hip sort of relationship was forged between “Captain 3D” and head of layout, Damon O’Beirne. McNally says, “Damon literally sat next door. We saw each other every day and we were always in dailies together looking at the scenes. Because there was always a decision to be made: Shall we move the camera? Shall we change the stereo? Change the edit? The lens? All of these things are not isolated from each other. It’s not like 3D is separate from camera. They’re really part of the same list of files that we could work our way down. And sometimes we’d change one thing. Sometimes, it would be the other. It could be the lens, it could be the stereo, it could be the edit. So we were always there together, working out all of the possibilities.”
And those possibilities fascinated and enabled director Rob Letterman: “That was one of the things that attracted me to the project, was just pushing it as far as we possibly could. And the funny thing is, we were already pushing the visual effects before we started down the road of 3D, so the 3D made it even bigger. The interesting thing was that 3D proved beneficial to our film’s scale. Ginormica is 49 feet 11 inches tall; Insectosaurus is 350 feet tall. And we have other characters that are six or eight feet tall. So we were dealing with a lot of scale-it would have been very difficult to put that kind of scale on a regular movie screen. But the 3D actually helped us enhance that and get the feeling of standing below a skyscraper, which is the size of some of these monsters. So it’s not a gimmick as much as it’s something that actually helped us, which is what attracted me to the whole process-it enabled us to tell our story.”
In fact, the process for “Monsters vs. Aliens” actually flipped the standard practice of `2D first, 3D after’ on its head. As not every theater is equipped with digital 3D capability yet, 2D prints were also created…but after the 3D version. Rob Letterman: “We made sure we were telling our story first in 3D. And then, when we did the 2D cut, what we changed were such things as pacing-for example, 3D shots need to go longer because the human brain cannot absorb all of that information as quickly as in 2D. So what works in 3D may not have the same energy and pace in 2D.”
As Our Heroes Walk Into A Three-Dimensional Sunset…
“Monsters vs. Aliens” proved to be a project of firsts for every member of the cast and crew…whether they knew it or not. But whatever the technical developments the film can boast, it is the content-the story and the characters-that most kept with them after the film had wrapped.
Reese Witherspoon offers, “I think this is a great movie for people to see. I know my kids are gonna love it. I can’t wait `til they get to see it. It’s got great stuff boys like, action and adventure, but it’s also got this great message for girls, about really finding your true self, what you really value about yourself. But it’s also fun and funny-it’s something for everyone, I think.”
For director Conrad Vernon, the fun is in the pudding, so to speak: “Honestly, the fun is watching the film come together. That’s it. I love watching what the crew is doing. That is thoroughly entertaining to me-the one moment of peace I have where I go into a room and I pull up these shots: `Let’s see the animation on this.’ `Let’s see the lighting on this.’ `Oh, look at the effect, they added the effect…’ Just being able to see this stuff start to come together is so exciting…that’s my one outlet and that’s the one thing that gives the greatest fulfillment of this job, is just seeing what these amazing artists can do and how they pull it all together to make this movie.”
Director Rob Letterman closes, “The great fun is all these crazy people getting in a room coming up with insane ideas that you could only do in an animated film. We have a great team of people-animation is very collaborative. We have a lot of people on the film who create amazing pieces of art or great story ideas. And all of us, together, we constantly shape it, and finally we have a movie, and this one is fun and exciting.”
Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)
Directed by: Rob Letterman, Conrad Vernon
Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Hugh Laurie, Will Arnett, Seth Rogen, Rainn Wilson, Stephen Colbert, Kiefer Sutherland, Paul Rudd, Jeffrey Tambor, Julie White, Amy Poehler, Renée Zellweger
Screenplay by: Maya Forbes, Wallace Wolodarsky
Production Design by: David James
Film Editing by: Joyce Arrastia, Erika Dapkewicz
Art Direction by; Michael Isaak, Scott Wills
Music by: Henry Jackman
MPAA Rating: PG for sci-fi action, some crude humor, mild language.
Distributed by: DreamWorks Pictures
Release Date: March 27, 2009
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