Film Animation roundtable: ‘Transformers One,’ ‘The Wild Robot,’ ‘The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie’
The wizards behind several of this year’s biggest animated films that are jockeying for awards consideration sat down recently with Gold Derby. They discuss various topics, including the animation that inspired them to pursue that field, the recent pieces of animation that blew their minds and where they’d like to see animation go in the future. This was all part of Gold Derby’s Meet the Experts panel on Film Animation that included Josh Cooley (“Transformers One”), Chris Sanders (“The Wild Robot”), and Peter Browngardt (“The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie”).
You can watch the film animation group panel above with the people behind these three films. Click on each person’s name above to be taken to each individual interview.
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When remembering the animation that first influenced them, Cooley was quick to remember both Looney Tunes cartoons as well as the groundbreaking movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” Sanders pointed out that while “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was the first time he ever got emotional from watching something, it was the Disney film “Saludos Amigos” that really stuck with him. “Within it there is a three or two minute sequence called ‘The Three Caballeros’ and it was the most pure animation, high energy, imagination in the most unlimited free sort of flowing kind of way and I thought, ‘I would like to do that.’” Browngardt also referenced Roger Rabbit but also singled out a specific videotape from his youth. “Tex Avery’s Screwball Classics Volume Two” VHS was sort of the thing that I’d never seen anything so funny in my life and I just watched it on repeat over and over again and turned me on to not only classic Looney Tunes but all that sort of older animation stuff.”
In thinking of memorable reactions they saw people having to their work, Browngardt remembers the immensely positive reactions he got from the first animatic screening of the new Looney Tunes shorts and the big laughs each short received. Cooley specifically remembers a child psychiatrist coming up to him after seeing “Inside Out.” “She was using our movie as a way for kids to be able to express how they’re feeling. I never would have expected that and it’s still kind of surreal to think about.” Sanders recalled a test screening of “How to Train Your Dragon” and the audience being asked what their first thoughts were. “A lot of hands went up and a little boy, the very first thing he said was, ‘When Hiccup lost his foot, he gained so much more. Please don’t change that.’ And then the very next person said the very same thing in different words.”
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