Feature
courtesy of Warner Bros
George
Miller first invited audiences
into the funny, compassionate, and emotionally complex
world of animals with the 1995 film “Babe.” The
film took critics and the public by storm. Nominated for
seven Oscars (and winning for Best Visual Effects), “Babe” was
credited with paving the way for intelligent children’s
movies that everyone could enjoy.
Eleven years later, Miller is once
again bringing to light the inner world of animals, only
this time it’s in
the frosty world of Emperor penguins, and like Babe, these
penguins are different – they sing some of the greatest
songs ever written. Emperor penguins – popularized
in a big way in the hit documentary “March of the Penguins” – take
center stage in “Happy
Feet.” The film dives
headlong into the day-to-day lives of Emperor penguins as
they live out yet another year. The emotional crux of Miller’s
latest film is that each penguin is born with a “Heartsong” – a
song that is the ultimate expression of who they are, a song
they were born to sing, and one which will ultimately unite
them with their soul mate.
“To us, it sounds like squawking,” says George
Miller, the director and co-writer of “Happy Feet,” “but
to each individual penguin, it’s like a song. There
might be 25,000 penguins, and someone will be able to recognize
his or her mate through these individual songs that they
make. That’s pretty extraordinary, and what a good
beginning for a movie!”
With the important place Heartsongs
occupy in these penguins’ culture,
what better way to tell their story than in the form of a
musical adventure. The film is packed with classic and contemporary
songs performed by some of today’s leading artists,
including Pink, Prince, Chrissie Hynde, k.d. Lang and Gia,
as well as superstars Robin
Williams, Hugh Jackman, Brittany
Murphy and Nicole Kidman.
The story centers around one young
penguin named Mumble, who is born without the ability to
sing. His parents fret that he could potentially face being
cast out because he’ll
never be able to find a mate. But Mumble discovers that though
he can’t sing a note, he nonetheless has his own Heartsong:
Mumble’s Heartsong isn’t a song at all – it’s
a dance. A tap dance! “I never intended to make a musical,” Miller
says with a laugh. “But here we have ‘the tap
dancing penguin movie’ instead of ‘the talking
pig movie.’”
It would be a film unlike any other – set in the visually
stunning icy world of the South Pole. Miller’s vision
was to make the penguins and their world so real audiences
would feel they could reach out and touch the cold of the
ice or soft fur of a baby penguin. This would lend itself
to Miller’s idea that, like “Babe” before
it, the experience of “Happy Feet” would be like
being a fly on the wall of everyday animal life – that
is, if human beings were capable of understanding what they
mean when they squawk.
Since Miller made the decision to
infuse the adventure with songs, he researched the tradition
of big screen musicals. “I
went back and studied all the great musicals, particularly
the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim,” Miller
recalls. “I wanted to make sure we weren’t going
to sell ourselves short just because they’re penguins.
After all, it’s a story about a world in which the
characters find their soul mate through Heartsongs. That’s
serious stuff.”
The solution – make the film utilizing a groundbreaking
combination of 21st century technology that would include
animation and motion capture. To handle the considerable
digital demands of the film, Miller utilized Animal Logic,
a digital visual effects company based at Fox Studios in
Sydney, Australia, known for having contributed to the dazzling
effects featured in such films as “Moulin Rouge,” “The
Matrix” and George Miller’s “Babe: Pig
in the City.”
The unique world of the Antarctic
was a critical component of the story the filmmakers wanted
to tell. “Antarctica
itself is extraordinarily beautiful, full of incredible colors
and great formations in the ice,” says Miller. “It’s
part of our planet, but it’s a very, very remarkable-looking
world. Nothing we could design in our heads could as be as
beautiful as what the real world offers up.”
Though Miller’s vision was to give Mumble and the
other penguins a photo-realistic world in which to live out
their adventure, “It became very quickly obvious to
everybody that you couldn’t go out there to Antarctica
and shoot real penguins doing stuff and then substitute them
with computer graphics,” explains production designer
Mark Sexton. “And, of course, you can’t train
penguins to do tricks the way you can train a young pig or
a group of dogs, as with ‘Babe.’ You would want
them to appear natural anyway, and not as if they were performing.”
A team from Animal Logic scouted Antarctica itself to gather
photographs. The expedition resulted in 80,000 photographs
and “traveling camera shots of real locations that
we could have used for background,” explains digital
supervisor Brett Feeney, who put it all together with archival
footage to produce copious reference material that would
be essential to create in a computer the authentic look
Miller sought. “The objective was always for the
audience to believe in the environment. If you take that
at face value, the penguins’ story becomes much more
real.”
Though it’s not live action footage, the motion capture
element and intensive, hyper-real background animation allowed
the filmmakers to shoot “Happy Feet” just as
one would a live action film. Senior layout artist David
Peers designed it as “a world you can step into. The
visual style is classic and epic.”
In designing shots for “Happy Feet,” Miller
wanted to show the scope of penguin life from a vantage point
in the sky, much as a helicopter shot might be used in a
documentary. Accomplishing such wide shots while so many
characters are interacting at once would not have been easily
accomplished without the uses of motion capture animation,
according to animation director Daniel Jeannette. “George
used a style of cinematography that would be difficult to
achieve with standard animation because shots are quite long,” he
describes. “Shots will often dolly with the character
or move from two shots to long shots in ways that wouldn’t
normally be done. This technology has really opened up the
possibilities.”
Unlike traditional animation, in which
artists conceive and control a character’s every movement, with motion
capture, the live performer dictates the character’s
physical style. Hundreds of sensors pasted on each actor
or dancer’s body transfer all the nuance of body movement
into a 3-dimensional space within the computer that can then
be mated with background animation to create a complete picture.
Further refinement and characterization is also done to enhance
the characters’ expressions. The final result is stylized
but lifelike.
Because Mumble is gifted with the
art of tap dancing, the filmmakers would need the real
deal to provide his trademark moves. So, Miller called
on world-renowned tap dancer Savion Glover, whom Miller
considers one of the greatest “hoofers” ever
known. Like Mumble, Glover has always used his feet as an
expression of who he is. He began tap dancing as a young
boy and made his Broadway debut at the age of 10. “You
could never animate that,” says Miller. “It would
take you a lifetime to animate one great piece, because it’s
taken a lifetime for Savion’s ability and instrument
to develop those very extremely exquisite and refined skills.”
But capturing Glover’s moves – too fast for
the computer – was a formidable challenge to the motion
capture team. “Savion would just lift his foot off
the floor and start nerve-beating, and it makes this motor
sound,” recalls choreographer Kelley Abbey. “And
the sound guy’s going, ‘what’s that? What’s
that? What’s that?’ and they’re trying
to control where the sound’s coming from, and they
can’t – because they can’t see his foot;
it’s moving too fast!” “We could only capture
him at 1/24th of a second,” adds Miller. “This
man is something quite extraordinary.”
In addition to pure movement, motion capture also picks
up on subtleties like attitude, mood and energy. Therefore
choreographer Kelly Abbey and the dancers charged with some
key musical sequence would need to realistically portray
dancing penguins so that the digital versions of themselves
would be as graceful as real penguins.
Abbey sent each dancer not only to “penguin school” (to
understand how penguins move) but also to “character
school” (to learn the small ways in which penguins
distinguish themselves from one another). Turns out, penguins
have many ways of expressing themselves – not only
in how they move, but through their own unique personalities. “Just
like people,” says Abbey.
Penguins express themselves through “shaking and the
flippering and the craning of their feathers and their courting
moves, which are quite beautiful, actually,” Abbey
says. “They will go up each side of each other, and
then they’ll do this swaying dance, and then they’ll
form a heart shape together, and it’s quite beautiful.
It’s a dance in itself.”
Gazing at penguins is a lot like looking
at human beings, which gave the dance sequences an added
element of fun. Though the stars of “Happy Feet” have penguin bodies,
they have human moves through the magic of motion capture
technology. Abbey was satisfied with the ultimate result
of developing each dancer into a unique penguin: “You
can see individual performance in every single penguin that’s
dancing, and when you see them en masse, you can see that
they’re all individual. And I guess the message of
the movie is about being your authentic self, your true self.
The dancing really tells that story.”
But for Abbey, the jewel in the crown
was working with Glover. “He’s
really a musician, and just different from everybody else,” she
says. “He expresses himself through his feet all the
time. You will hear Savion enter the building because he’s
tapping. And then he’ll tap into the trailer and he’ll
get dressed and he’s still tapping, and then he’s
at the catering table getting food and he’s still tapping.
He constantly, constantly tapping. And so is Mumble. That’s
why it’s perfect.”
“Kelley’s no longer human,” jokes Glover
about his dance choreographer and collaborator. “She
became a penguin on this movie. Working with her was great.
She guided me, she had my back…I actually started
calling her ‘my right-hand penguin.’”
Miller wanted the film to have a more
documentary-style look to allow the characters to jump
fully to life. Animation director Daniel Jeanette believes
that what makes this movie unique from feature animation
that has come before it is that everything is imbued with
meaning, “Not just clouds
for the sake of clouds, but every component of the design,
the way the camera is used, the way the characters are designed,
the way the world is and the way the world behaves amplifies
and echoes the value of the story and the foundation of that
world in which Mumble lives.”
Like “Babe,” “Happy Feet” tells
a universal story through a unique combination of comedy,
music and adventure. Mumble’s journey in many ways
informs complex human issues, like the search for love and
acceptance, and ultimately finding the courage to be oneself.
Because penguins stand upright on
two legs, people have always identified with them. Miller’s film takes that
a step further. “There’s an individual spirit,
a sense of ourselves which we all have,” says Miller. “To
somehow find somebody who could connect with that is what
all of us want, really.”
Warner Bros. Pictures presents, in
association with Village Roadshow Pictures, a Kennedy Miller
production, in association with Animal Logic Film. A George
Miller film, “Happy
Feet” features the voices of Elijah
Wood, Robin Williams,
Brittany Murphy, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Hugo Weaving
and Anthony LaPaglia. The film also features the tap dancing
of Savion Glover.“Happy Feet” is directed by
George Miller, who also co-wrote the screenplay with John
Collee, Judy Morris and Warren Coleman. The film is produced
by Doug Mitchell, George Miller and Bill Miller, with Zareh
Nalbandian, Graham Burke, Dana Goldberg, and Bruce Berman
executive producing. The music is composed by John Powell,
and the soundtrack also includes songs performed by Prince,
Yolanda Adams, Fantasia Barrino, Gia Farrell, Chrissie Hynde,
Patti LaBelle, k.d. lang, Jason Mraz, and Pink. “Happy
Feet” will be released by Warner Bros. Pictures, a
Warner Bros. Entertainment Company, and in select territories
by Village Roadshow Pictures.
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