The director and co-director of the Thai-Chinese 3DCG adventure discuss the challenges – and subsequent fun - of jumping onto a project with much of the animation completed but a story, and production pipeline, which needed significant reworking.
Few filmmakers would be willing to take on a feature film project with an already written story that wasn’t working, tight time restrictions, much of the animation already completed, with production headed by a studio on the other side of the world.
But ’s director Arturo Hernandez and co-director Andrew Gordon saw it as an exciting challenge.
“I think more than anything, it was just really fun,” says Hernandez.“The sequences that had already been finished were really great.
The story wasn’t working yet, approvals still needed to be met, but you could see the quality of the animation.The moment that the stuff was sent over to me, I knew that I was working with some really great and talented people.And it was the fun in those sequences.
The fun of the characters was enough to sell me on it.” , a 3DCG animation initially helmed by Thailand’s Riff Studio head and film co-director Veerapatra “Tun” Jinanavin, is produced by Thailand’s T&B Media Global, China’s Base FX and CCTV Animation Group.The film, with all animal characters, follows teenage delivery boy Arthur, a goat on a mission to acquire one of the most respected positions in the entire kingdom of Castilia: “the royal barber.” But when the royal fledglings are kidnapped on the eve of the new year, Arthur gets roped into a rescue mission where he will need all of his skills – and those of a few ancient masters – to save the family and the kingdom from the evil Dark Wizard.The film is now available to rent on Prime Video and will be having a screening at the AMC Burbank 16 Friday, January 9 at 7:30 p.m.
with a filmmakers Q&A to follow. Check out the trailer: “I came on to this film early on when it was called ,” shares Gordon.“It was a pitch initially made to a Bangkok animation company, Shellhut Entertainment, and this was going to be their first feature film.I was working on the second movie at the time but got involved with this because the guy who was directing it then, Veerapatra, he had been an intern of mine at Pixar.” The pitch initially came to Riff and Shellhut from T&B Media Global founder Dr.
Chawalit “P’Tan” Arayavarorm.But even the combined resources of three Thailand studios weren’t quite enough - the teams sought out the guidance of Gordon and co-director Jeff Schu, as well as the help of Chris Bremble’s Base FX team, who had multiple offices in China and one in Los Angeles.But sometimes, with so many cooks in the kitchen, things can boil over and burn.
When things started to blow up, Gordon, determined to see his protégé’s project succeed, also reached out to Hernandez. “I was working on a feature over at Hasbro through their animation division Allspark, but that was eventually shelved, so I had some extra time on my hands,” says Hernandez, known for his animation work on Disney films like and the franchise.“Andrew reached out to me, telling me the story needed to be rebooted.It was floundering and the team was looking for a director to take over.” Working with writer Gillian Berrow on the script and with Base FX adjusting the animation to fit the story changes, Hernandez saved the sinking ship by capitalizing on the fun foundations of what Riff had initially envisioned but struggled to execute. “When I joined, there was about 30 percent of the movie completed with final animation done on a story that wasn’t working, so we needed to prove it out,” notes Hernandez.
“It became a whole thing of, ‘How do we maintain what's there but fix the story?’ It involved a lot of reorganizing the sequence of events.There was one scene in particular that was all lit for daytime, and the only way the story was going to work was to shift the time completely to make it a nighttime scene.Considering it was fully animated already, the lighting people over at Base FX were brilliant in meeting the demand.
You can't tell that it was initially lit for the day.” Gordon adds, “We also had to work with Chinese markets and censorship, but I'm a Pixar person and Art is from Disney, so we were still trying to add our flavors to the film to make it a little bit more marketable for the rest of the world.” Hernandez actually drew inspiration from Disney to solve the issue of the seven fledglings.“The seven chicks were where the fun was, but it was also challenging for Gillian and me to figure out how we give that many main characters distinct personalities with a finite amount of screentime,” he explains.“They don't hatch until well into the second act.
At one point, my brilliant idea was to kill two of them off and get it down to five.Thankfully, that idea couldn’t play out because of that already finished 30 percent of animation.” He continues, “So we kept the seven chicks and my mind then went to the seven main characters most of us have known all our lives: the seven dwarfs.Nobody has ever done it better when it comes to giving distinct personalities to so many different characters.
So that became our template.” And, like with the seven dwarfs, color played a big role in differentiating the different fledglings.That, and the hairstyles. “I'll be completely honest,” says Hernandez.“The whole story being built around the hairstyles and royal barber concept was super weird to me at first.
I was like, ‘Why is this so important, especially to our main hero?’ So, when we were working on the script, one of the first things I did was dive into the psychology of hairstyling and how much trust is involved when you sit in a barber's chair or at a hair salon.And knowing that Arthur was an orphan, and that the big haircutting ceremony referenced in the film might be his one chance to be seen by, and even maybe reunited with, his parents, became the big motivational point.And it worked.” The next big challenge was English voice recording, some of which had to be redone two months before the film’s initial release. “T&B decided that we should re-record five or six voices, one of which was our principal voice,” notes Hernandez.
“We had very little time and very little budget left.So, to re-record the dub, I looked for studios here in Burbank and found Keywords Studios, who were phenomenal.They very quickly got sent out character descriptions and the kinds of voice quality that I was looking for, and they turned it around in like less than a week.” But while the acting was important to get right, Gordon believes the real strength of the film is in its visuals. “Visually the film is rich,” says Gordon.
“The most rewarding part for me was working with the animators.Honestly, I did wish the film could have had less dialogue because it did not need it.The visual storytelling is very strong.
But all of it came together wonderfully.” And both Hernandez and Gordon hope that inspires more U.S.filmmakers to partner with studios abroad. “I think we're seeing a lot of those borders and a lot of those limitations torn down with productions like this, and others,” says Hernandez.“This film was a lot of work, but it worked out and was very rewarding.” Gordon adds, “There are just so many stories beyond the USA and it’s important to understand how we can all make more films together.
Stores can come from anywhere and I think as the tools get better it will be easier to bring stories to life from anywhere in the world.I’m excited for that.” Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime.She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment.
Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
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