AFI Fest 2012: RISE OF THE GUARDIANS

By Melissa Thompson | November 5, 2012

On Sunday afternoon, WAMG attended the AFI-FEST Gala screening of RISE OF THE GUARDIANS – and man was that fun!! On hand to introduce the film were director Peter Ramsay and star Alec Baldwin. The film is a high-octane romp through the magical worlds of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman, and Jack Frost.

The 3-D works spectacularly and the voice talent is brilliant. Opening on Thanksgiving weekend, this is a great movie for the whole family. (5 out of 5 Stars!). The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences announced on Friday that RISE OF THE GUARDIANS was among the twenty-one features submitted for consideration in the Animated Feature Film category for the 85th Academy Awards®. It has my vote!

Spoiler Alert: Lots of cool details below so stop reading if you want to experience the movie with child-like wonder.

What if there were more to the histories of Santa Claus (Alec Baldwin), the Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman), the Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher) and the Sandman than anyone ever believed? What if the benevolent givers of gifts, eggs, money and dreams were much more than they seemed? In DreamWorks Animation’s RISE OF THE GUARDIANS they are! Immortal, strong and swift, these childhood legends have been tasked with protecting the innocence and imagination of kids of all ages to the fullest extent of their powers. When a menace arrives with a plan to erase the Guardians from existence by robbing children of their hopes and dreams, these beloved crusaders need the help of Jack Frost (Chris Pine), a reluctant new recruit who’d rather enjoy a snow day than save the world.

From the deepest recesses of the North Pole, to the rooftops of Shanghai, to a tiny town in New England and beyond, the Guardians engage in an epic, global battle against the seductively wicked bogeyman Pitch (Jude Law), whose machinations to conquer the world by spreading fear across the globe can only be conquered by the power of belief… and the magic of the Guardians.

Fourteen years ago, William Joyce’s 6 year-old daughter Mary Katherine asked her dad if Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny were friends. It was a question that intrigued the author and illustrator. After giving it some thought, he answered with a resounding “Yes!” and began to weave colorful bedtime stories for Mary Katherine and her younger brother Jackson, who heard tales not only about old Saint Nick and the Easter Bunny but also about Jack Frost, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman, the Man in the Moon and even the Bogeyman. As the stories became more elaborate, Joyce began to see their potential.

“This was the lore that began to develop in our household,” Joyce says, “and I soon came to realize that I needed to do something with it. It was interesting stuff! So I began to draw pictures of these characters and figure out a basic mythology for each one of them based on what I could find out about them,” which wasn’t much. Clement Clarke Moore’s “The Night Before Christmas” notwithstanding, Joyce found that Santa Claus didn’t have a lot of backstory. There was even less for the other characters.

“Superman and Batman have mythologies but the one group of characters we ask our kids to believe in as fact had none,” Joyce says. “I looked around and said, ‘Am I the only guy that realizes this?’”

Today, Joyce, the Oscar winning writer-director of the animated short film “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” and author of such books as “George Shrinks” (on which the PBS children’s series is based) and “Dinosaur Bob” has amassed a collection of 13 stories in the “Guardians of Childhood” series (only five of which have been released thus far) that depict the deep folklore of each character – and surprisingly, they’re more powerful than any of us imagined.

They’re “cool and grand and magnificent and heroic,” Joyce says. “They have giant empires that oversee what they do, whether it’s traveling the world in one night to deliver presents and Easter eggs or flying around 365 nights retrieving baby teeth.”

Given their unique premise, there was a lot of Hollywood interest in turning Joyce’s rich tales and exquisite art into a feature film – even before any of the books were published. “Almost every other studio in town vied for this property, but none of them saw the grander canvas that I wanted to achieve with it – because there’s so much to tell about these guys,” Joyce says. “I didn’t feel like it could be just in a movie or just in a book. It needed to be across a whole bunch of different mediums.”

It wasn’t until he had a series of meetings with DreamWorks Animation Chief Creative Officer Bill Damaschke in late 2006 that Joyce knew he had found the right home for his stories.

“DreamWorks said, ‘We agree. Work on the movie. Work on the books. Let the two feed each other.’ It has been the most interesting and exciting experience,” Joyce says. “I’ve worked on movies before, but I’ve never worked on movies and books at the same time and had them deal with the same subjects and yet be different.”

The veteran filmmaking team that came alongside Joyce to bring “Guardians” to life was equally passionate about the project. First on board was producer Christina Steinberg, who had enjoyed a long career in live-action filmmaking and feature film development before joining DreamWorks Animation in 2005 as a producer on Jerry Seinfeld’s Golden Globe nominated “Bee Movie” (for which she was a Producers Guild of America Awards nominee).

“The idea was always that Bill was going to be writing the books simultaneously as we were developing the movie,” she says. “We loved the core idea, and we were excited by the deep history that Bill’s mythologies created. There are so many stories to tell. For the movie, we came up with the idea of jumping into the future after all these characters have become Guardians and telling the story of how they must come together to fight the greatest force of evil in the world, the boogeyman.”

Adds Joyce: “I didn’t want the movie to compete with the books and have people say, “Oh. It was different from the book,” and I didn’t want them to know what happens in the movie. I wanted to build a history for these guys. That’s why the movie picks up about 300 years after the resolution of the books series.”

Peter Ramsey, who spent a number of years as a story board artist on numerous live-action films including “Independence Day” “The Hulk” and “Minority Report,” was approached to direct “Guardians” after helming DreamWorks Animation’s hit Halloween special “Monsters vs. Aliens: Mutant Pumpkins from Outer Space” and having previously been head of story on “Monsters vs. Aliens.” He puts it this way: “These characters represent fundamental elements that are vital not just to kids but to adults as well: A sense of wonder, dreams, hope. It’s a big story.”

“We had a lot of conversations with Bill about the characters,” Ramsey continues, “about Jack Frost and his relationship to the group, about what the Guardians mean, about their personalities and their roles. The biggest idea that came from those conversations was that we knew that they were real, and to pay attention to the fact that people believe in them and love them when they’re young. For me, that determined everything about how to present them in the movie and how to follow them through the story.”

That keep-it-real philosophy naturally extended to the visual design of the film. “Veteran cinematographer Roger Deakins consulted with us as he did on ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ and helped us achieve a rich, real-world appearance,” says Ramsey.  “We’ve got incredibly talented people, from production design to animation to lighting and modeling, which have pushed hard to get a sophisticated and stylized – but very lifelike – look. It’s different from anything the studio’s ever done before.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire had just finished writing the lyrics for DreamWorks Animation’s “Shrek: The Musical” when Damaschke, Ramsey and Steinberg brought him on board to write the screenplay to “Guardians.” Says Steinberg, “Given his love of superheroes and fantasy, he was the perfect choice to screenplay.”

Lindsay-Abaire recalls a visit to DreamWorks Animation, shortly after “Shrek: The Musical” had opened on Broadway: “I met with Bill (Damaschke) and Christina Steinberg, they pitched me some basic ideas, showed me the most gorgeous concept art I’ve ever seen, and loaded me up with a stack of Bill Joyce books.  A few days later, I was writing a screenplay.”

Soon, Lindsay-Abaire was also swept up in the world of the Guardians. “They’re great entertainments,” says the screenwriter of Joyce’s books. “He (Joyce) writes these legendary characters and manages to make them flesh and blood without losing their magic. He captures the unique wonder of childhood that often feels like a distant memory to those of us who have grown up, and brings that wonder back and makes it present again.  That feat alone is a kind of magic.”

Joyce knew that “Guardians” would be in good hands, having previously worked with Lindsay-Abaire on the 2005 animated feature ROBOTS. “David is very astute and has a keen, subtle intelligence,” Joyce says. “One of the things that was difficult about the story is it’s so big. We have all these major characters and mythologies and we have to tie them together into one narrative. The hardest thing on any film is to get the story clean, clear, concise and entertaining – to find the emotional core of it, the thing that makes you care. David had an instinct about how to simplify that story and keep the characters centered while at the same time juggling all of them and all the situations. It’s got this epic feel to it but each story within the epic is very intimate and feels very real.”

Says producer Steinberg, “David was able to pull the plot of the movie together and uncover the heart and soul of these characters while simultaneously creating an epic fantasy adventure.  He has the ability to find a unique voice for each character that is expressive of truth and humor and universally relatable.”

Award-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, who collaborated with DreamWorks Animation as a creative consultant on “Megamind” and was an executive producer on “Kung Fu Panda 2” and “Puss in Boots,” returned as an executive producer to add his unique perspective to “Guardians.”

“Thematically, the movie has a lot in common with what I do,” del Toro says. “I really felt it was a project of great ambition, of great scope, of visual richness and that it also had a big heart. I was empathetic to what they were creating.”

According to Billy Joyce’s books, North, better known as Santa Claus, is the de facto leader of the Guardians – but it is the Man in the Moon, “the wise watcher of the world,” Ramsey says, who chose him many centuries ago. “When the Man in the Moon decided a group of special people was needed to protect Earth’s children from Pitch, the first guy he found was Nicholas St. North,” says Joyce, who envisioned North as a sword-wielding Cossack in his early days, “the wildest young warrior and thief in all of Russia,” until his mission in life changed to become a protector of children.

For the film, everyone agreed that North, with his booming voice, blustering, uncompromising attitude and “naughty” and “nice” tattoos emblazed on his forearms, was a boisterous, larger-than-life character that needed to be played by a larger-than life actor. Who better than Oscar nominee Alec Baldwin?

“Alec personifies North,” says Ramsey. “He’s playful and mischievous, and he’s a bit of a hotshot. When audiences see North’s eyes on screen with Alec’s voice coming out of him, there will be no mistaking whose soul is inside that character.” Adds Joyce, “No one could capture North’s personality as brilliantly as Alec does.”

Baldwin sees his character this way: “In my mind, North is a combination of personalities. He’s kind of a magician – almost like the Wizard of Oz. He’s very benevolent, like your favorite teacher, and he has the best interests of his constituency – children – at heart. On the more human side, he’s obsessed with getting credit for everything. He wants to make sure everybody knows that Santa is the one who’s laying down this deal here. Christmas is number one. He’s constantly fighting with the Easter Bunny about which is more important, Easter or Christmas. In that regard, he’s like Donald Trump.”

“I can relate to North, because like a producer, he has to will everything into existence, even when he doesn’t actually know if he can pull it off,” producer Steinberg says. “He truly believes he can make anything happen just because he says so.  We always describe him as a Hell’s Angel with a heart of gold. He has this amazing spirit of joy, wonder, and hope. At the same time, he’s tough and analytical. There are no gray areas for him.”

As our story unfolds, it is North (along with his massive Yetis, who make all his toys, and the ubiquitous elves, who just get underfoot) who encounters the shadow of an enemy he thought was long gone: The bogeyman Pitch, who invades the workshop of North’s magnificent North Pole Fortress and sends menacing black sand swirling around North’s sputtering Globe of Belief. The globe is an enormous orb usually lit up with millions of tiny lights representing the belief of children around the world. The fact that it’s growing dim is evidence that Pitch is up to no good.

Director Ramsey explains, “Pitch’s issue is that children love and believe in the Guardians. They have a lot of emotional investment in them, and their parents encourage them to believe in these characters.  But with the bogeyman, it’s exactly the opposite. Parents always say, ‘Oh, there’s nothing in the dark.’ ‘You’re just having a bad dream.’ ‘There’s no such thing as the bogeyman.’ The whole story gets going because Pitch is sick and tired of that dynamic. He represents fear and his ultimate goal is to be believed in by canceling out belief in the Guardians.”

“The Guardians represent hope, joy, wonder and dreams,” producer Steinberg notes. “If Pitch is able to take them out, they will literally cease to exist. The attributes they represent would be gone from the world and fear would reign.”

The way Pitch attempts to do that is by corrupting one of the Guardians’ tools. “He has a huge amount resentment for being shoved under the beds for hundreds of years,” says actor Jude Law, who gives voice to Pitch. “He figures out a way to take the Sandman’s dream sand – the positive, pure golden sand that gives everyone happy dreams – and twist it into nightmares (which take the form of amorphous black stallions subject to Pitch’s command), creating fear within children.”

And by design, the manner in which he operates is quite compelling, Ramsey says. “We thought a lot about the way fear works in the real world, and the logic behind it.  If you think, ‘I want to go outside, but there are some clouds in the sky and that means it might rain. If it rains, I might get a cold. If I get a cold…’ Pretty soon you’re not going outside and you’re missing all the best stuff in life because you let your fear snowball into something unhealthy. Fear shuts down your world.  So we knew that we wanted a character that was alluring and could falsely convince you that being afraid was the only thing that made sense.”

Steinberg agrees. “These iconic characters needed a worthy opponent. Peter, Bill Joyce, David Lindsay-Abaire and I spent a lot of time talking about our favorite villains in past movies. We all loved the feeling we had watching ‘The Wizard of Oz’ when we hid behind our bedroom doors, peeking our heads out to watch the Wicked Witch of the West. She was scary, but exciting and charismatic at the same time. We wanted to bring that dynamic to Pitch as well. So, he’s not a terrifying, moustache twirling villain. He has a lot of personality. He’s wicked, funny and smart.”

Lindsay-Abaire adds, “There’s a human side to Pitch, as well.  Like our hero, Jack Frost, Pitch is a lonely soul who simply wants to be believed in.  Unfortunately, he thinks the way to make that happen is through fear and intimidation.”

“When Jude Law’s name came up for the role, everybody’s bells just went off,” Ramsey says. “We listened to his voice in combination with some animated tests and we knew we had the right casting. Pitch moves through shadows. He moves on the edges of what you can see. Jude’s voice has this beautiful quality to it – we call it ‘the velvet touch of Pitch’ – and you just want to listen to it forever even when it’s telling you these terrible things.

“Pitch’s story is pretty compelling,” Ramsey continues. “He’s a guy who’s been on the bottom for a long time and who has now found a way to strike back and take power for himself. Jude has been able to flesh out the nuances of this character’s many layers. It’s a magnificent thing to listen to – the hair literally stands up on the back of your neck.”

“The voice casting was, no pun intended, pitch perfect,” executive producer Guillermo del Toro says. “Jude brings fragility, refinement, intelligence and cunning – a lot of stuff that is beyond the lines – to his character. There’s a sense of isolation and loneliness in Pitch that is all Jude’s doing.”

After the bogeyman’s “visit” to the fortress, North summons his fellow Guardians – the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and the Sandman – to the North Pole for a summit. It’s been a long time. The Guardians don’t always work together, as each has “incredibly complicated jobs,” Ramsey notes. “North is delivering toys to everybody in the world in one night. It’s a huge operation! The Easter Bunny, too, has a lot preparation to do to give eggs to kids all over the world. And Tooth and Sandy are busy every night. So they only come together when they genuinely need to.” Well, they need to now.

In Joyce’s books, E. Aster Bunnymund, better known as the Easter Bunny, is a Pooka, the last of an ancient race of giant, warrior rabbit-priests that protect life.  Bunnymund has the ability to create magical portals that allow him to travel throughout the world in the blink of an eye to deliver beautifully decorated Easter eggs.

“This Easter Bunny is the coolest character you’ve ever met,” says Hugh Jackman, who voices Bunnymund in the film. “He’s pretty badass. Think Indiana Jones with a touch of Steve Irwin. He protects nature, he’s a brilliant martial artist and he’s very strong. He can jump high, of course, and he has these two boomerangs on his hips, instead of six-shooters, which he uses to great effect. It was great that they allowed me to play him as this irascible Australian – tough, a little bit grumpy, and no-nonsense. He doesn’t muck around. He’s got a job to do and he’s going to get it done, no matter what.”

“He’s almost like a cowboy in some ways,” Ramsey says. “He’s got a little bit of that feel about him. He’s a perfect counterpoint to North who comes into a room and knocks everything over because he’s so big.”

“He’s a fierce warrior when he needs to be,” Steinberg agrees, “but he also has this amazing other side to him. He’s a ranger and a nurturer – of Spring, of hope, of new beginnings, of the little eggs that he grows.”

“One of things Hugh latched onto was the rivalry that we’ve got between Bunny and North,” Ramsey adds. “Hugh loved that. He did so many riffs where he’s annoyed because North is always trying to steal the spotlight and elbow Easter out of the way. But Bunny is going to protect his holiday to the very last breath. Hugh brought that to life.”

Isla Fisher plays the half-human, half hummingbird Tooth Fairy who is able to collect lost teeth all over the world, 365 days a year. “She’s tiny, but with these gorgeous teal blue and green wings and big, big eyes,” Fisher says. “As far as personalities go, she’s definitely type-A and a little bit like Tracy Flick from ‘Election.’ She has to get everything right and on time. She’s quite militant in the way she collects teeth but she has a soft side too, and gets extremely excited when she sees pearly white incisors.”

“We envisioned her as a hummingbird because she’s always on the job,” Ramsey says. “She’s always flitting here and there, always with a thousand things to do, her mind always in a million places at once, always talking, always communicating.”

She doesn’t work alone, though. “Tooth has lots of Baby Teeth, little fairies that are miniature versions of herself,” Fisher says. “They flutter around, collecting teeth and leaving little gifts and money.” Says Lindsay-Abaire, “Tooth is an air traffic controller, managing all of the children and their teeth in every country.”

“For a long time, the Tooth Fairy was, conceptually, one of the trickiest characters to get right,” Ramsey says. “But there were a few tests that the animators did early on with Isla’s voice where we all went, that’s the Tooth Fairy. Isla is a great comedienne.  She also handles these very emotional scenes, with the perfect balance of toughness and vulnerability, where you really see what matters to her about her work. She gets all sides of Tooth dead on.”

Whereas one would be hard-pressed to get Tooth to stay quiet for more than a minute, the Sandman – Sandy for short – doesn’t say a word. The architect and bringer of good dreams, “the one who sets your imagination free and let’s you dream of possibilities and fantasies at night,” Ramsey says, doesn’t need to.

“It’s great to have one character who’s in the center of the hurricane,” adds Ramsey. “Sandy ends up being a pivotal character in a lot of scenes. He may not say anything, but he packs a huge punch in terms of his role in the story and what he means to the Guardians. His ability, the power of dreams, is one of the strongest any of them has.”

“He communicates with dream images above his head,” explains Steinberg. “He’s like Buddha. He’s very mellow and calm, but he, too, has another side, and when he needs to he will defend himself and defend children. He’s actually a fierce warrior, who, like Yoda in the ‘Star Wars’ films, can pull it out when he needs to. He can use sand to create and control any object he needs in a pinch, and he usually wins every fight he’s in.”

Guardians convened, the Man in the Moon shines down on them and gives them some surprising news. In order to defeat Pitch, they’re going to need some help from an unlikely source: Jack Frost.

“They know Jack as a troublemaker, as this immature kind of guy,” says Ramsey, and by all appearances, he is. Jack is a 300-year-old prankster in a 17-year-old body, with the power to create frost, wind and snow.  Happiest when he’s causing havoc, controlling winter with a swing, tap or touch of his staff, to him, a successful day is measured by how many snowballs he’s thrown, how many windows have been fogged and how many schools have closed after it’s been declared a snow day. He has no responsibilities, no one to answer to, and ultimately, at least in his mind, no purpose.

“That bothers him,” says Ramsey. “Other than knowing that his name is Jack Frost, he doesn’t know anything about himself, much less what he’s meant to do in this world. To make matters worse, no one can see him and, unlike the Guardians, no one believes in him, so he’s kind of a loner and an outsider.”

To play the role of Jack, Ramsey and the “Guardians” team knew they had to find an actor that could demonstrate the conviction of a leading man – in many ways, “Guardians” is Jack’s story – but who could also be playful and vulnerable to express Jack’s range of emotions in the film. They found what they were looking for in actor Chris Pine.

“We loved Chris in ‘Star Trek,’” says Ramsey. He’s exciting and smart. That comes through as soon as you see him on-screen. He’s got a twinkle in his eye that can be heard in his voice. He’s a leading man with energy, charisma and a sense of fun – all the qualities that Jack Frost has.”

For his part, Pine gravitated to the role because of Jack’s plight. “One of the journeys of this film is how Jack finds a home, friendship, community and a sense of purpose,” he says. “Jack will instigate snowball fights, desperately wanting kids to have fun but also wanting them to know that he’s the guy behind it, that he’s reason that they’re having a good time. Jack’s quest – to have connections with others and to find the answer to what are we put on this Earth to do – is something that’s so very human.”

As Bill Joyce tells it, he had many sources of inspiration when he created his book series. “The backstories for these characters are so unanswered, I was able to take bits and pieces of other mythologies – Greek and Roman, fairy tales, Tarzan – and swish them all together in ways that would fit each story,” he recalls.

The resulting drawings that brought life to those backstories were so intricate, elaborate and visually stunning, they provided an invaluable launching pad. “Everything in the film was inspired by the original Bill Joyce mythology, which is fantastical, magical and wonderful,” production designer Patrick Hanenberger says – it was important to the filmmakers that “Guardians” have its own look, separate from its literary counterparts.

Hanenberger, who joined DreamWorks Animation in 2004 as a visual development artist (“Over the Hedge,” “Bee Movie,” “Monsters vs. Aliens”) and later served as art director for the TV special “Monsters vs. Aliens: Mutant Pumpkins from Outer Space” prior to his current role on “Guardians,” notes, “Because the whole story is based on belief, the audience needs to believe in the veracity of these characters,” he says. “That limited us in certain stylistic choices that we wanted to make. If you make something too outrageous or too crazy audiences are just not going to relate to it. If it’s too photo real, it’s not an animated movie anymore. For us, the big challenge was to find that sweet spot: It’s an animated movie that feels as real as it can be.”

A step in that direction was the envelope-pushing work done on the complexions of the film’s human and human-like characters.

“The way we dealt with skin in ‘Guardians’ was groundbreaking for the studio,” producer Nancy Bernstein says. “Our R&D department worked with a team who formerly worked at Stan Winston’s studio and together they built it the way you would build prosthetic skin, that is, in layers. This allowed for translucency, the way real skin responds to light. In the past, light would reflect off it but wouldn’t be absorbed by it. We had much more control over the way our characters looked and the way their skin moved. We were also able to add subtle elements such as facial creases, which take the animation up a notch.”

Another challenge for the filmmakers was creating six unique environments – one for each of the Guardians and for Pitch – that reflected the personalities of each character, but that made for a unified film when looked at together as a whole.

“Each environment is distinctive, but we made sure Bill Joyce’s original style was present throughout,” Hanenberger says. “We wanted each of the Guardians to be differentiated by their own color palates. For example, in the North world, there are warm and cool blues and red-grays, with bright red crimson for North himself; in the Tooth Fairy world there’s lavender, salmon and preach, accented by Tooth’s iridescent turquoise. Our color palates were inspired by traditional turn-of-the-century children’s book illustrations done in pencil and watercolor because they evoked a feeling of nostalgia.

“We also felt the need to have six different environments to give the movie an international appeal,” he continues. “We didn’t want the story to take place in a fantastic place that no one recognized. It couldn’t be in outer space, it couldn’t be on another planet, it had to be on Earth.”

Not surprisingly, the team was inspired by real-world locations. “Since North is a Russian Cossack warrior, we looked at Russian architecture such as the Kremlin,” art director Max Boas says. “His home in the North Pole is a giant wooden fortress. He’s a gung-ho, untamable wild guy, so we wanted his architecture to be very masculine and strong. His home is built by interlocking wood pieces, a bit like the game Tetris. There’s no glue, no nails, it’s just wood jammed together like a big puzzle piece.”

For Tooth Fairy’s palace, located in Southeast Asia, the team turned to Thai architecture. “It’s very bird-based and has a lot of wing and beak motifs,” Boas says. “Tooth is amazingly complex and a really fast communicator. Since she stores the baby teeth of all mankind, she’s basically a librarian, so we wanted her environment to have the sense of a library,” he says. “There’s tons of detail everywhere: carvings, mosaics and wall murals, because it’s all about communication and visual information. It’s the most visually overwhelming of all the locations because it fits her personality best.

“Her palace is made up of giant columns that represent the continents of the world,” he continues. “Within those continents are rings that are organized by country, state, city, street, and house, and within that are millions of little boxes in which the fairies store the teeth. It’s all organized, color coded and really beautiful.”

Pitch’s dark dungeon was motivated by classical Venetian architecture and, in fact, the production design team placed it beneath Venice, Italy. “Think of an ancient palace that sunk into the ocean floor, surrounded by mud and rock,” Boas says. “That’s Pitch’s home. His whole environment is built at an angle and it feels like it’s falling off a cliff into an abyss. In addition, it has negative elements from all of the Guardians’ respective worlds. For example, he has a globe, just like North does, to keep track of the belief of the world’s children, but it’s colored grey and black.”

In complete contrast to the architecturally significant domains of North, Tooth and Pitch, Easter Bunny’s garden home is an underground oasis where all life originates. Bunny lives there with giant sentinel eggs, ancient stone sculptures that come to life when invaders intrude, as well as magic eggs, which, on Bunny’s order, march out on little feet into the world and become the eggs found during Easter egg hunts.

“Bunny’s environment is very understated,” Hanenberger says. “It’s basically rocks, grass and trees but it suits his personality and reflects what he’s all about, that is, to protect nature. Since his home is the birthplace of nature, we designed a shrine environment after doing a lot of research on old temples, forest spirits, hieroglyphs and ancient carvings. It’s only featured briefly in the movie but it’s actually my favorite world.”

To bring dreams to the world every night, Sandman doesn’t need an elaborate home base, either. He lives on a Dream Cloud right between night and day and travels with the sunset.

“Think of him as navigating an ocean of clouds,” Hanenberger says. “If you’re on a red-eye flight to the East Coast at sunset and you see that last little bit of sunlight hitting the clouds, you should look outside for Sandman, because that’s where he would be.”

And then there’s Jack Frost. He’s an  Earth-bound vagabond and, unlike the Guardians or even Pitch, he doesn’t have a place to call home – although something keeps drawing him back to a small town: Burgess, Pennsylvania. “Jack has a magical connection with that town but he doesn’t know why,” Hanenberger says.

The filmmakers made an intentional contrast between the all-American human town and the global feel of the Guardians’ dominions. “To ground the human world in reality, we built it fairly flat so when the audience sees the Guardians’ various realms, they’re beholding really breathtaking stereo moments, which emphasize the magic of their worlds,” Boas says.

When viewing Burgess scenes, Ramsey notes, “We wanted to see some of the grit. We wanted to feel the atmosphere. We didn’t want to feel like we were watching some kind of Christmas card.”

The “Guardians” team set out to use Tru 3D – standard in all DreamWorks Animation films – in an organic way that was integral to the story, not as a stunt or an afterthought. “The use of 3D was never discussed as a gimmick, ever,” notes producer del Toro. “We wanted to create a world that was different from any other 3D animated movie that we have seen. The movie takes a lot of risks and succeeds in texture, color, lighting, and cinematography.”

“3D is an integral part of the process,” notes producer Bernstein, “Our goal was to use it as another tool to enhance our storytelling.  From the very beginning, we envision every aspect of the film in stereo.  Every decision regarding the film’s design, camera placement and movement, as well as animation and visual effects is made after reviewing the work in 3D.”

“We were constantly thinking about 3D in our production design,” Hanenberger agrees, “creating spaces that would look interesting in 3D and then trying to find a rhythm throughout the story: How do these sets tie into the overall stereoscopic kind of motif of the movie?”

“The challenge presented in a 3D film is how to assimilate the effects into the story, and to be aware when composing a shot how it might be enhanced by 3D,” says Visual Consultant Roger Deakins.  “The film has a sense of wonder and magic to it that 3D is very much a part of.”

Adds del Toro: “Jeffrey Katzenberg is a huge believer in animation as a medium to tell big stories with big canvases. He has a vision for 3D, for the expanse and scope of the movies. The stories we tell are meant to be told in a big way. They’re not meant for the small screen, so we go for huge vistas, big moments, big movements, big characters. But at the same time, we populate that with moments of grace and intimacy and relationships that are even beyond what a live-action movie can do. We’re not emulating any other film. We tend to use the medium to the max.”

“Our movie is the biggest, most dramatic film DreamWorks Animation has ever done,” Hanenberger says. “It’s a giant, epic story that needs to be supported with giant, epic visuals. We had to do justice to this powerful story.”

“You often hear live-action movies being called ‘visual effects extravaganzas.’” says Bernstein, “Guardians” is every bit as visually complex and sophisticated as those films. I believe that what makes our film different is the artistic use of effects in the development of the characters; the visual effects are seamlessly integrated into our characters and help define their personalities.  Jack Frost’s power over wind and frost reflect his mood. Sandy’s dream creations display his playful and gentle nature. Pitch is able to corrupt dreams and create brand new nightmare characters which are literally a combination of visual effects and animation. We were careful to strike a balance where the visuals would support the characters and not overwhelm the story.”

The role that music plays in “Guardians” cannot be understated. The filmmakers knew they needed a score that was as sweeping and heroic as the story itself. When it came to finding the right composer to do the job, four-time Academy Award nominee Alexandre Desplat (“The King’s Speech,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox”) was the only name the “Guardians” team had in mind.

“There is much more music in ‘Guardians’ than is found in the average live-action film,” says Desplat, who conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in the recording of his original compositions. “It practically runs throughout the whole movie. The goal with the score, which is primarily a symphonic one – though I did bring in a few babies of mine, like saxophones and a fantastic cimbalom – was to emphasize every moment of joy, sadness and soul so that audiences would be able to dive with the characters into their worlds.”

“We began meeting with Alexandre over two years ago, so by the time he began writing the music, he was as familiar with the story and characters as we were,” says Steinberg. “I think that what we tried to do was emphasize every moment of joy and soul throughout the film, so that we are not be distant from the characters – we dive with them into their world so it is all very exciting, emotional, and real.  With Alexandre, his music became a new character in our film.  His score adds richness, tenderness and humor, all of which support the characters and emotion of the story.”

Ramsey is also thrilled with the results. “Alexandre worked furiously for months on the music,” he says. “It’s perfect. Magical and fun, it’s the crown on our film. I predict there won’t be a dry eye in the house when audiences hear it.”

It has been 14 years since Bill Joyce’s daughter first asked her innocent question: “Do they know each other?”  The filmmakers, eagerly anticipating the film’s imminent arrival in theaters, reflect on their labor of love. Joyce, for one, is looking forward to audiences coming away from the cinematic experience with a renewed faith and sense of wonder. “I’m excited for them to see these characters that they’ve all known and grown up with in this new and heroic way,” he says, “that, yes, they deserve our devotion and our belief, and that they’re grander than we realized.”

Ramsey predicts, “It’s a world audiences will want to be a part of. There’s adventure and drama but there’s humor, too. Every character is really funny, and the way they poke fun at each other and argue with each other and work together on this incredibly important mission is inspiring.”

Says Steinberg, “By the end of the movie I hope they’ll feel the way we do, which is that the Guardians are everything you’d expect heroes to be – awe-inspiring, powerful and courageous – but at the same time are as delightful and approachable as old friends.”

“What amazes me the most about seeing the final image on-screen is the fact that we actually made it happen,” says Hanenberger. “ I call it pixel magic. You’re creating something out of nothing. The most rewarding satisfaction I get out of it is from seeing a tiny little sketch I had in my sketchbook become a beautiful finished image on the screen as the collaboration of all the people involved, because you can’t make these movies without tons of very dedicated and extremely talented and smart people that collaborate and communicate to pull off this insanely creative undertaking.”

Finally, Joyce contemplates nearly two decades of association with his Guardians. “To get to hang out with these guys I believed in so powerfully as a child, and reconnect with them…I mean, now we’re buddies, you know?” says Joyce. “So many kids dream of doing that when they’re small, hanging out with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, getting to see how they do what they do. That’s my job. That’s what I get to do when I write my books and watch this movie – hang out with the guys I thought, as a kid, were the coolest guys in the world. How does it get any better than that?”

DreamWorks Animation SKG Presents “Rise of the Guardians,” a PDI/DreamWorks Production featuring the voices of Chris Pine, Alec Baldwin, Hugh Jackman, Isla Fisher, Jude Law and Dakota Goyo. The film is directed by Peter Ramsey. The screenplay is written by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire (“Oz: The Great and Powerful,” “Rabbit Hole”) based on the original story of award-winning author William Joyce. It is produced by Christina Steinberg (“National Treasure,” “Bee Movie”), and Nancy Bernstein (“The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring”) with executive producers Guillermo del Toro (“Pan’s Labyrinth” “Hellboy”), William Joyce (“The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore”), and Michael Siegel (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”) The music is by four-time Academy Award nominee, Alexandre Desplat. This film has been rated PG.

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