by Charles Warner
Innovation & Tech Today caught up with the directors of Sony Pictures’ 3D animated film, The Angry Birds Movie, and got the inside scoop behind the first film ever adapted from a popular app (over three billion downloads). Directors Clay Kaytis (Frozen, Wreck-It-Ralph) and Fergal Reilly (Spider-Man 2, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs) discussed how their creative vision and a tremendously talented special effects and animation team helped deliver a viewing experience that would be fun for the whole family while uniquely different from other 3D films. So what was behind the look and feel of the flightless birds and the rich colorful world they inhabited?
“Computers are good at making realistic things…but going into an artistic world it’s much harder,” said Kaytis.
Reilly agreed that they were going for a stylized look for the birds, the stars of the film. “We were not making Rio. We wanted the birds to have Muppet-like capabilities,” he said
If you thought getting the look and feel of the birds just right was a time-intensive process, well, you would be correct. The directors turned to Sony Pictures Imageworks, the most experienced visual effects house in the world, and they really knocked it out of the park. Danny Dimian, one of the visual effects supervisors at Imageworks, had a lot of experience in live action movies; however, this project required a combination of innovation and the artistry to achieve the birds’ unique look. They even brought in real bird experts.
It took months to perfect the look of the feathers for Red, the short-fused avian hero of the film voiced by Jason Sudeikis (We’re the Millers, Horrible Bosses). The result is an engaging and very likable protagonist. You feel like you could almost reach out and give the grumpy Red a big hug through the smooth 3D animation, a far cry from some previous animated films with characters that looked so human they were almost creepy.
However, the directors confided that there was one character that resembled a real bird: Mighty Eagle, the giant anthropomorphic Bald Eagle voiced by Peter Dinklage, best known for his role as Tyrion Lannister in HBO’s Game of Thrones. Incredibly, each one of Mighty Eagle’s wings is composed of over six million individual hairs. How’s that for attention to detail?
Speaking of attention to detail, 3D supervisor Todd Napier really delivered a calculated level of immersion to the audience. Instead of the typical herky-jerky protruding objects surrounded by a blurry background (a look that makes some films seem more like an amusement park attraction), according to the directors, Napier created a script to “weave the audience in and out of the 3D experience – subtly building up from the beginning of the film to the giant battle scene.” The result was exactly what the first-time directors were shooting for: a really enjoyable, immersive cinematic experience delivered by an all-star cast of comedic actors.
Whether or not audiences flock to The Angry Birds Movie is irrelevant. The movie is already a big hit from a technological standpoint.
Sony Pictures’ The Angry Birds Movie opens across the US May 20th in 3D and Real 3D.
