BoxOffice® Pro - November 2012

TM
troublemakers. So we tried to make it so that
for all the punishment they take, you also see
that they can take it—they actually kind of
enjoy it.
THE WAY YOU DID THE HAIR AND FUR
IS UNUSUAL. INSTEAD OF REACHING
FOR REALISM, THEY ALMOST LOOK
LIKE CARVINGS.
Definitely with all the designs on the film, we
wanted a stylized reality. We wanted the feeling
of reality with the textures and the detail and
the way the light works with these objects, but
we also wanted to not be truly photorealistic.
The film walks a delicate line there. When you
go too photorealistic, you get the zombie thing,
the dead stuff. We knew there was a lot of stuff
we wanted to do with our animation style that
would also kick the characters’ movements up
another notch above realism. For the most part,
I think our guys really hit the sweet spot.
GUARDIANS ALSO FEELS DELIBER-
ATELY INTERNATIONAL. YOU HAVE
SCENES IN RUSSIA, CHINA, THE U.S.
AND FRANCE. WAS THAT TO EM-
BRACE THE POWER OF THE GLOBAL
BOX OFFICE?
A little bit. But it was really to make the story
feel big enough to encompass the way you
feel about these characters when you’re a kid.
We know they go all over the world—there’s
versions of these characters, if not these exact
characters, everywhere. And there have been for
hundreds of years. So we really wanted to give
it an explicit global feel, and it also raises the
stakes. If they’ve got to go all over the world for
teeth instead of just one little neighborhood,
then it suddenly becomes an epic story.
THERE’S ALSO A RUNNING JOKE THAT
WHEN A CAR ALARM GOES OFF FOR
NO REASON, IT’S BECAUSE A FANTA-
SY CREATURE HAS JUMPED ON IT.
It’s so funny you say that because we were in
the sound mix yesterday and were working on a
scene where Jack Frost hops across a car and the
alarm goes off. His footsteps were too loud, and
I was like, “No, no, no—we’ve got to make it so
that you wouldn’t hear him if you were actually
there.” To you, it just appears like the malfunction
of a car all of a sudden or the wind blowing
the wrong way. You didn’t know it, but it was
Jack Frost crossing your path. We tried to do that
a lot in the movie, find things that you would
just automatically think are ordinary but a little
weird, when in reality it’s these invisible characters
going through their paces all around you.
BRINGING MAGIC TO THE MUNDANE—
IS THAT SO KIDS CAN STAY CONNECT-
ED TO THE FILM EVEN AFTER THEY
LEAVE THE THEATER?
Exactly. It’s important. The design of our town
that’s featured in the movie, I really wanted to
make it a real place—even a little shabby in
some places. It’s got a little wear and tear; it’s
not squeaky clean. We didn’t want to make it
some place that you’d see on a greeting card
or in a Norman Rockwell painting where of
course Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny come
there. We wanted it to feel relatable so kids who
live just about anywhere could say, “Oh, that
feels like my neighborhood—they’re coming to
where I live, too.”
YOU WERE ONE OF THOSE KIDS. YOU
GREW UP IN SOUTH CENTRAL AND
WERE BUSED LITERALLY ACROSS LOS
ANGELES TO A POSH BEACH HIGH
SCHOOL.
That’s true. I went to the neighborhood
elementary, but after that I was bused to junior
and senior high. I grew up in South Central,
and I’m one of six natives in the film industry.
It’s been a long and winding road.
THE BIG EMOTION IN THIS FILM IS
LONELINESS. A LOT OF KIDS FEEL
THAT WAY, BUT FEW KIDS FILMS AC-
TUALLY ADDRESS IT.
It’s so interesting. We really worked hard on
making Jack Frost’s story involving and compelling.
He’s the audience surrogate character,
but he’s also a classic reluctant hero, and we
really wanted to give him something that
NOVEMBER 2012 BOXOFFICE PRO 69