The Fantastic Mr. Fox?

[Pozer]

trailer #2 is heaps better in that it doesn't seem to be aimed at kids/idiots/ppl who LOVE whistling and clicking.

wheww/wheww click/click

[MacGuffin]

Fur flies on 'Mr. Fox'
By Chris Lee; Los Angeles Times

To be clear, Wes Anderson did not set out to direct his new movie via e-mail. ¶ Even if that's precisely how the writer-director's stop-motion animation version of Roald Dahl's beloved children's book "Fantastic Mr. Fox" -- a jaunty visual joy ride that features voice characterizations by George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Jason Schwartzman -- ultimately came to be, Anderson never intended to become an in-box auteur. ¶ That choice was made all but inevitable, however, by the Oscar nominee's unorthodox decision to hole up in Paris for most of the shoot's one-year duration while principal photography commenced across the English Channel at London's venerable Three Mills Studios. He wasn't working on another project, and nothing Paris-centric demanded he be there; Anderson simply "didn't want to be at Three Mills Studios for two years." ¶ The move did little to endear Anderson to his subordinates. "It's not in the least bit normal," director of photography Tristan Oliver observed at the production's East London set last spring, when production on "Mr. Fox" was about three-quarters complete. "I've never worked on a picture where the director has been anywhere other than the studio floor!" ¶ Moreover, Andersonhad no idea that his ignorance of stop-motion (the animation technique in which a stationary object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames) and exacting ideas concerning the film's look would so exasperate his crew.

"Honestly? Yeah. He has made our lives miserable," the film's director of animation, Mark Gustafson, said during a break in shooting. He gave a weary chuckle. "I probably shouldn't say that."

Reached by phone in Paris this summer, a day after production had wrapped, Anderson, 40, sounded taken aback when informed of his underlings' grumbling. To hear it from the Houston native, a self-described "novice" in stop-motion, he ignored the majority viewpoint in pursuit of something specific: a cool-looking, detail-saturated, retro-leaning stop-motion movie. Even if that meant bucking conventional animation wisdom by avoiding the modern technology that pervades the genre these days.

"It's not the most pleasant thing to force somebody to do it the way they don't want to do it," Anderson said. "In Tristan's case, what I was telling him was, 'You can't use the techniques that you've learned to use. I'm going to make your life more difficult by demanding a certain approach.'

"The simple reality is," Anderson continued, "the movie would not be the way I wanted it if I just did it the way people were accustomed to doing it. I realized this is an opportunity to do something nobody's ever seen before. I want to see it. I don't want afterward to say, 'I could have gone further with this.' "

Targeting adults

With its autumnal palette, woodland tableaux and fur-covered puppets, "Mr. Fox's" conspicuously handmade style of stop-motion represents a departure from the computer-enhanced slickness of Henry Selick's critically hailed "Coraline" and yet is several large steps more refined than Adult Swim's "Robot Chicken."

Tonally, "Mr. Fox" shares the most with another children-targeted movie coming out this fall, Spike Jonze's adaptation of Maurice Sendak's " Where the Wild Things Are." Although both films are nominally intended for kids, their central themes, art direction and dramatic dialogue seem more intended to connect with grown-ups; specifically, the kind of urban sophisticates who compose Anderson's and Jonze's core fan base. That neither-fish-nor-fowl quality presents a challenge to marketers for both movies.

"It's got to be a movie for kids because it's based on a children's book," said Anderson. "It's an adventure. And I feel it's like the kind of movie I would have been interested in as a kid. At the same time, it doesn't cater to children. I guess it's for whole families."

"Mr. Fox," made on a medium-size budget, will make its North American debut at the AFI Fest's opening night at Grauman's Chinese Theatre on Oct. 30 and go into theatrical release next month. Befitting its title, the Fox Searchlight-distributed movie expands upon the fantastical narrative template set by Dahl's 1970 illustrated children's classic.

After a scrape with death, the maverick livestock thief and self-professed "wild animal" Mr. Fox (Clooney) promises his wife, Mrs. Fox (Streep), that he'll settle down and be more present for their oddball son, Ash (Schwartzman). But the lure of stealing chickens, ducks and hard apple cider from nearby farms proves irresistible to Foxey, who secretly comes out of retirement. The angry farmers whose stock Fox has been pillaging, meanwhile, cook up a scheme to put the kibosh on his antics once and for all -- resulting in Fox (and those he loves most) retreating underground as fugitives.

Execution is everything, of course. And Anderson devotees will be relieved to discover that Mr. Fox and his wildlife buddies share a certain sensibility with the rest of Anderson's eccentric outsider characters like "Rushmore's" Max Fischer. The animals wear corduroy suits and monogrammed pajamas, play a fictional sport called Whack Bat, listen to transistor radios and exchange pleasantries with an old-timey solicitousness that's also prominent in such Anderson films as "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "The Darjeeling Limited."

Although Anderson took certain liberties with the book -- namely, fleshing out Foxey's dicey status as paterfamilias -- the director performed his due diligence on Dahl. A lionized British literary giant behind such children's classics as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "The BFG," the author died in 1990.

A lifetime fan of Dahl and his work, Anderson acquired the rights to "Mr. Fox" from Dahl's widow, Felicity "Liccy" Dahl, in 2001, then began writing the screenplay with Noah Baumbach, Anderson's co-writer on "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou." (That movie also features stop-motion animated sequences by Selick, who was originally attached to co-direct "Mr. Fox.") In 2004, the duo was invited to spend several weeks crafting the script at Dahl's Buckinghamshire home, Gipsy House. There, Anderson also exhaustively documented the tiny hut where the author plied his craft.

"We wanted to make the movie an homage to Dahl," Anderson said. "Mr. Fox's study is based on the hut where Dahl used to write. Both the main farmer, Bean, and Mr. Fox are inspired by Dahl as much as they're inspired by what's in the book."

"Mr. Fox" went into production after the director released his picaresque road movie "The Darjeeling Limited" in 2007. With Clooney in place ("He sounds like a hero," Anderson says), Anderson assembled the rest of his ensemble cast. Among them: the director's go-to man, Owen Wilson, in a cameo as Coach Skip; Willem Dafoe as the malevolent Rat; Irish actor Michael Gambon as Fox's nemesis, farmer Bean; and Bill Murray, Anderson's de facto muse who has turned up in all but one of his movies, as Badger, Mr. Fox's lawyer. (The director also installed his brother Eric Chase Anderson as one of the leads and celebrity chef Mario Batali in a small role.)

"We recorded with George and Bill Murray and my brother in Connecticut at a friend's farm," Wes Anderson recalled. "We'd go outside and record in the forest and by a pond. Then we'd go inside and record in an attic, a basement, a barn. Meryl we recorded in France. Willem in New York. Michael Gambon in London. Different people, different places."

Up until just before principle photography was set to begin in early 2008, the director had been physically present for every step of the production. But all that was about to change.

Doing it his way

In keeping with the stylized nostalgia that looms large in almost all his films, Anderson knew he was after a particular lo-fi aesthetic. And despite giant leaps forward in computer-generated imagery in recent years, he put CGI and green screen off-limits for "Mr. Fox's" animators. Materials such as plastic kitchen wrap would stand-in for water, cotton balls would be puffs of smoke and green terry cloth, grass. Even though it was much more difficult for fabricators and animators, everything had to be shot "in camera" rather than be added digitally later. As well, the writer-director stipulated that the animal puppets have real fur -- long verboten in stop-motion circles for the material's discontinuous, blown-by-the-wind look on film.

"With older stop-motion movies, you always see the technique. There's some charm in that," the director explained. "That's why I like puppets with fur. The techniques are rudimentary, and they're appealing to me."

But when it came to implementing his ideas, Anderson exited London, stage left. "I thought I'd make the script and cast it and record the actors," he said. "I'd work with some people to design it, get it to look a certain way. But at a certain point, I'd hand it over to the people that animate it. And they'd give it back to me and I'd work on the music and kind of spruce it up."

Not everyone on-set was ruffled by the notion of an absentee director. "Mr. Fox's" unflappable producer Allison Abbate is a veteran of many stop-motion productions, including Selick's epochal "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and Tim Burton's Oscar-nominated "Corpse Bride." She pointed out that it wasn't unusual in the genre to issue directions from off-set.

"Tim wasn't here that much during 'Corpse Bride,' " Abbate said at Three Mills Studio last spring. "He doesn't need to be. Making stop-motion is like watching paint dry."

Unwilling to relocate to London for the shoot, Anderson and his editor, Andrew Weisblum, devised a system of communicating with the London-based animators via computer. The animators would send short digital film files of what they were working on and in return receive detailed e-mail instructions about what to change. "The e-mails are really thorough and very specific about certain gestures, how he wants a look to happen," said Brad Schiff, one of nearly 30 animators who worked on the movie.

As well, for reference, the director would send short films of himself enacting certain scenes. "It's kind of embarrassing," Anderson said, laughing. "For most of these things, the performance is just a few seconds. Somebody hearing a noise and looking at their watch. The simplest way to relate how to do it is to make these little movies."

Despite a near-total ignorance of stop-motion production design, Anderson instructed Emmy-winning art director Nelson Lowry to steer clear of certain visual tropes that have come to characterize modern animation -- to basically turn his back on modern technology that would have made the animation process easier.

"We avoided wild animated flourishes of fantasy," Lowry said. "Normally, an animated film allows you crazy camera angles shooting through a wild landscape. Instead, this feels like a dry adult drama."

Animation director Gustafson (who has extensive claymation experience, having created the " California Raisins" TV series and served as supervising director for episodes of Eddie Murphy's animated series "The PJs") admitted he found some of Anderson's directive's bewildering. "There's lots of things I lobbied against in this movie," he said.

"He's pushed it further than I would have been comfortable pushing it," Gustafson continued. "He definitely doesn't have some of the reservations that I have from working with this stuff for years. But that's good. I came here to be challenged. And he's certainly challenged me."

Not everyone could muster a magnanimous word for Anderson's M.O. -- especially his on-set absence. "I think he's a little sociopathic," cinematographer Oliver said. "I think he's a little O.C.D. Contact with people disturbs him. This way, he can spend an entire day locked inside an empty room with a computer. He's a bit like the Wizard of Oz. Behind the curtain."

Informed of Oliver's discontent, Anderson said: "I would say that kind of crosses the line for what's appropriate for the director of photography to say behind the director's back while he's working on the movie. So I don't even want to respond to it."

Whatever the hullabaloo, the writer-director voiced no regrets about his process. To Anderson, directing boils down to precisely one thing: what you see on the screen.

"Even when I was there [in London] during shooting, I spent most of the day in my office on the computer," Anderson said. "There are thousands of decisions to be made. Each has to do with a rectangular image. If you can judge it, you can make a decision about what to do.

"That's how I directed the movie," he continued, matter-of-factly. "It's not that complicated to figure out."

[Reinhold]

thanks for posting that, mac.

that does seem to be a kind of bizarre approach, doesn't it? i wonder if any of these people said to him that they'd prefer to have him around. notice that they didn't say that their lives would have been less complicated, etc. if he actually were there?

[modage]

There will be an advance screening of THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on November 10 at 7:30pm.

Tickets are available here.

[MacGuffin]

Wes Anderson Interview
Director discusses Fantastic Mr. Fox.
by Joe Utichi, IGN UK

Wes Anderson, arguably the godfather of the quirky American indie thanks to the likes of Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, takes his first steps into the world of stop-motion animation this week with the release of Fantastic Mr. Fox. Based on Roald Dahl's classic children's book, it's the tale of a wily fox and his adventures thieving food from three of the meanest farmers around; Boggis, Bunce and Bean.

With a stellar voice cast including George Clooney, Bill Murray and Meryl Streep, the film received its world premiere last week at the London Film Festival. On the eve of its global rollout, IGN sat down with Anderson to learn more about his passion for Dahl and making the switch to stop-motion.

IGN: Why did you want to do this book, particularly?

Wes Anderson: It was the first [Roald Dahl book] I ever owned and I particularly thought the digging was something nice for movies. I loved the drawings that were in the book I had. And I do love this character. Beyond that it was just one that hadn't been done, and it seemed like a great chance. I love stop-motion where the puppets have fur, and with all the animals I thought this would be a good opportunity to explore that.

IGN: You spent some time in Roald Dahl's hometown while you were writing, what was that like?

Anderson: The place where we went is called Gypsy House, which he bought later in his life, but it's where he wrote many of his best-known books. Mr. Fox was written there, certainly. We were interested in the idea that we wouldn't just base it on the book; we'd base it on him. He'd written memoirs for children - which is an odd thing, not many people have written autobiographies meant for children - so from that point of view we were always very aware of him and aware that kids reading his books didn't just know the books, they knew him. We tried to get as much of his personality into the character, and we also had his manuscripts. In fact, we had the manuscript for Fantastic Mr. Fox, which had a different ending which we used in the movie. That's a great luxury - to be able to say, "Here's an idea we can use - it's not in the book, but it's from him."

IGN: You donated some of your suit fabric for Fox's costume - did you identify with that character specifically?

Anderson: Not particularly. The reason I used the material from my suit was that I really liked it, and I thought he'd probably like it too. I just thought Corduroy might be good for Mr. Fox!

IGN: You've blended your style of filmmaking with Dahl's style of storytelling - did you find it was a comfortable fit?

Anderson: Yes, but for me I didn't, in advance, have an idea of how I expected it to turn out. I knew I wanted to do it in stop-motion and I knew I wanted the animals to have fur - to not be Plasticine or something like that. I wanted it to be autumnal and originally I thought I wanted there to be mud everywhere and it wouldn't be very colourful. That stayed - not the mud, but there's almost nothing blue or green in the movie. I thought it would be nice with this sort of handmade feeling. What it really ends up like is the result of a thousand little decisions rather than one overarching thing.

Me and the production designer, Nelson Lowry, tried to design things one way or another but what we figured out was that the more realistic we could make things the happier we were with them. If I was travelling I might see a building or something and I'd take a picture on my phone, send it to Nelson and we might change something about it but we tried to base it as much as we could on research and photos and things. The style is set by how authentic can we get it. How realistic can we get it to look with our resources in miniature, and that's the look of the movie, basically. Given that the grass is going to be made of towelling and the smoke will be cotton wool, that's the range, I guess, that we're working in.

IGN: The animation is really pared back to basics; you've embraced the "invisible wind" effect of animators' fingers on the puppets' fur.

Anderson: Yeah, animators always think that's a bad thing, like it's bad form. But I think they really got into it on this one. They became comfortable with it because there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Also, the stop motion I've loved was always a bit primitive - King Kong and the Brothers Quay - you see these objects that you recognise and you're very aware it's handmade. The other thing was that, to me, it was more important that the animation have energy and personality and be funny. I wanted it to be fun and upbeat rather than perfect. This kind of animation is particularly suited to that - we can work more quickly if that's our goal and we can focus on it and make it our priority. I don't think we could have made the movie if it had been a Coraline level of precision and smoothness. It would have been a $100m movie rather than the $30m we ended up spending.

IGN: Did you enjoy exploring the world of animation and figuring out those particular challenges?

Anderson: It was great. What's nice is there's a chance to invent. Everything there is an opportunity, because you can't just say, "Oh we'll use a table that we find." You have to make one. Everything is manufactured, so everything is a chance to see, is there a way to make that funny, to connect it to a character or to find some sort of motif. Also, because it moves so slowly, every aspect is in slow motion, so things kind-of develop.

IGN: Presumably you don't have the luxury to go back and make changes after a certain point in that process because of the time involved in animating shots. Do you have to make all of those decisions ahead of time?

Anderson: You certainly try to. If something is going really wrong during a shot, then we'll stop. Sometimes you can find a place - you can go back a bit and say, "OK, let's take it from frame 63," and they'll rearrange everything and try and make it match and sometimes there'll be a little bump when you see it, which is OK, it's not the end of the world. But to go back three seconds may mean to go back two days, depending on how many puppets they're moving around. It's a big deal and definitely something you want to avoid. Also there are other solutions a lot of the time. It could be adding another shot or ending a shot early, or we can try something with sound or add some elements we can composite into the shot. There are always different possibilities.

[modage]

If anyone gets the Sntk. for this, can you send it along?

[picolas]

[matt35mm]

I told you all that this was inevitable several months ago in my review of Antichrist.

[B.C. Long]

The Fantastic Mr. Ratner, polka?

[MacGuffin]

Watch This: Wes Anderson Acts Out 'Mr. Fox' Storyboards
Source: Cinematical

In this month's Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson makes his first foray into animation with an adaptation of Roald Dahl's story about an upwardly mobile fox (George Clooney) whose drive to steal chickens threatens his family and community. While it's Anderson's first non-live action project, Mr. Fox nonetheless shares qualities with his other films, including a meticulous attention to detail, stylish design, and idiosyncratic characters. So how did the live-action auteur tackle the challenges of stop-motion filmmaking, especially considering that he spent much of the production in an entirely different country than his crew?

HitFix has a fun little glimpse of the director at work that shows us how Anderson collaborated with his animation team to bring the characters of Fantastic Mr. Fox to life. From his base in Paris, Anderson shot video storyboards of scenes and character movements by acting out scenes and blocking himself. He then emailed the videos to his crew in London, who took their visual cues from Anderson's performances. The end results, when viewed side-by-side with Anderson's versions, are near identical.


http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/2008-12-11-awards-campaign-2009/posts/exclusive-watch-wes-anderson-act-out-the-fantastic-mr-fox

[tpfkabi]

those 2 videos just doubled my interest in the film. i think i will have to see it in theaters if i can.

[modage]

I didn't like this.  At all.

[socketlevel]

I didn't like this.  At all.

i'm with you there

[©brad]

Huh. Well critics sure are loving it (92% on RT).

[JG]

Aw, I thought it worked!