For director Alex Woo, production designer Steve Pilcher, and VFX supervisor Nicola Lavender, anchoring their animated film with an emotional story about a child trying to keep their family from breaking apart gave its dream world both meaningful and believable stakes; now streaming on Netflix.
From an idea first conceived in 2017 to its streaming debut this past Friday on Netflix, Alex Woo’s took some time to find its creative legs.Woo’s feature film directorial debut may spend considerable time in the fantasy world of dreams, but that unlimited creative landscape came with a considerable burden.
Stakes.If anything is possible, nothing really matters.And if nothing really matters, what will draw audiences in about the story? What makes the main characters’ journey worth caring about? Woo ultimately found his stakes… by drawing on a very difficult, emotional period in his own childhood.
The 3DCG tells the story of a young girl, Stevie, and her younger brother Elliot, who journey into the absurd landscape of their own dreams in search of the Sandman, who they believe can grant their wish to save their parents’ marriage.The siblings brave zombie breakfast foods and the queen of nightmares in an effort to see their ultimate dream come true...the perfect family.
But the controlling Stevie will need to find common ground with her free-spirited brother in order to avoid getting swallowed up by nightmares. Produced by Netflix Animation and Kuku Studios, the movie stars Craig Robinson (Baloney Tony), Simu Liu (Dad), Cristin Milioti (Mom), Jolie Hoang-Rappaport (Stevie), Elias Janssen (Elliot), Omid Djalili (Sandman), and Gia Carides (Nightmara), as well as SungWon Cho and Zachary Noah Piser.Woo directs, with Erik Benson serving as co-director.Gregg Taylor and Tim Hahn produce with the screenplay by Benson and Woo from a story by Woo and Stanley Moore.
Steve Pilcher handled production designer duties; Nicola Lavender was the film’s VFX supervisor.AWN spoke to Woo, Pilcher, and Lavender about their film, and how they found its emotional anchor while determining the best way to bring the director’s unique vision to the screen.First, enjoy the trailer before reading about the production.
Dan Sarto: Alex Woo: Well, it really started when I left Pixar to start Kuku Studios.We spent the first year just sort of brainstorming ideas for movies and TV shows that we wanted to see and felt like other studios weren't making.One of the ideas that we stumbled upon was a movie about the dream world, because we felt like that was one of those big universal experiences that nobody had quite tapped into yet in the animation space.
Obviously, you had with Chris Nolan, but the idea hadn’t been done before as an animated family adventure.And so, we thought that this was a wide-open opportunity.But once we started brainstorming story ideas, the challenge we found was that in a dream movie, it’s really hard to create stakes.
In a dream, anything can happen, right? And if anything can happen, nothing really matters.So, we needed to find a way to ground that fantastical world with really intimate, real world human experiences and stakes.We were looking for some sort of anchor, which made me think of this moment when I was about six years old.
I woke up one morning, and I found my mom at the front of our house with her bags packed.She gently explained to me and my brother that she was going away for a little bit to figure things out for our family.And I didn't know what that meant, but I knew that things were going to change in a very big way.
And I remember thinking at the moment I watched her drive away that all I wanted in the whole world was to find a way to keep my family together.So, I told this story to my team and they were like, ‘That is really juicy.It's really emotional.
And it's real.There's your core right there.’ We decided that it was a great motivation and goal for a character.By paring this really emotionally rich and deep human story with the world of dreams, we figured out how to give that dream movie its stakes.
DS: AW: We came up with that marriage of the dream world and this personal story in late 2017.Once we cracked that, we started beat boarding and writing the full first, second, and third act.We put a 30-minute beat board pitch together, which we used to pitch all the studios.
We spent about 6-8 months writing the script based off that outline.And it was so well thought out and so solid as a story that once we pitched it, we pretty quickly got a greenlight.DS: AW: It happened pretty quickly.
I pitched the idea to Steve, and he got really excited about the project.He had just come off [as production designer].was a movie that dealt with two worlds.
And so, our film was sort of like an extension of that approach.But it was even more exciting because the dream world had multiple worlds in it.Steve Pilcher: I did say to you long ago, you know, this is going to be really expensive.
AW: Yeah.SP: I wasn't joking around because I knew the kind of effects and visuals you wanted… I just didn't say anything, which is fine.So anyway.
Yeah.AW: We basically landed on the look of the film pretty early because it's all rooted in story.Half of this movie takes place in the real world and half takes place in the dream world.
If we chose a really pushed, stylistic version of the real world, you'd have nowhere to go when you got to the dream world.So, we knew the real world had to be grounded in its aesthetic.SP: It had to be relatable.
So, you want to make sure that surfaces are soft, or they're hard, or they're translucent, and everyone understands what that is.We based the film in Minnesota where Alex grew up.So, you know specifically where it’s going to be set.
We caricatured things a bit to amplify reality, but we arrived at a tasteful balance.We started creating that right away.When you went into the dream world, you didn't know whether you were in the dream world or the real world, right? That's just like our real dreams.
We go to sleep, and we wake up sometimes because we think it's really happening.So that was an important component right there that they matched.But once you realize you're in a dream, it can go really weird.
It can change its style depending on what's going on in the story.So that foundational approach visually just worked right away.Lots of environments would come and go.
Once we had a quilt landscape, which would have been really cool based on the quilts on their beds.Often, they would become miniatures in a lot of the sets, which brought in fantasy elements.It wasn't like we were looking for a style.
We just used our own taste and aesthetics.And we [Alex and Steve] had similar taste and aesthetics, I guess.DS: SP: That’s something that follows you through your whole career.
You just carry it with you, every experience, everything you make, and everything you do each time you go onto another film.It's an accumulation of all that knowledge and experience.For me that goes even further back than my time at Pixar.
When you’re a young artist.You paint; you draw… all that comes into play.It's just what you bring with you.
AW: I never felt like we were trying to find cost efficient ways to achieve the desired look of the film.Nikki [VFX supervisor Nicole Lavender] and her team did such a good job of accomplishing what we presented to them.I think probably had to think about it...
Nicola Lavender: I was going to say I've done my job well if they didn't have to think about that.We never want them to ever have to consider that.We never say no.
There are always compromises to be made along the way, but we try to figure out how to get everything they want on the screen.DS: NL: Ultimately at the end, yes.Working with them [the filmmakers], bringing all their visions to life and creating it on the screen along with the whole team.
DS: NL: We did have a screening when I started.So, we watched the screening, broke it down, saw where the challenges were going to be, and what we thought we needed to develop.With the effects, some of the characters, like Nightmare, we knew we were going to need like a six month ramp up to just figure them out.
So, it was a lot of breaking down, planning, setting up the right team and getting them going.Then, just iterating with Steve and Alex on the Kuku side to get the right feedback so we could keep moving and get ready for the shot work.That's a whole other step.
Getting into the shots, getting the animation going into the VFX.Because again, another complicated part of this movie was the interactions.You've got characters that have long hair, clothes… they're sitting in a bed with a sheet, a duvet, and a pillow.
A lot of interactions to figure out.I don't think it's obvious, but they were technically hard to figure out.So, it was really quite a long process.
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
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