If you missed my previous articles on the Bolt set visit, just click HERE for my overall impressions and HERE for an interview with lighting supervisor Adolph Lusinsky.
Continuing on with this week's Bolt coverage, we talk to Nathan Greno, the head of the story department on Bolt. When we walked into the brainstorming room (The actual room where the idea of Bolt was conceived), there were pictures of the Bolt film on all four walls. One wall had all three acts laid out in storyboard form. Another wall had an entire sequence that Nathan would act out in front of his co-workers so they got an idea of how the scene should be animated and its tone. This was when feedback would be provided. The other two walls were sketches, artwork and ideas. It was actually really, really cool to be able to sit in the room where ideas for the cartoons are shaped and born.
Check out our interview with Nathan to learn more about the storyboard process and how a guy like Nathan gets to the position he's in today working for the top animation studio in the world.
Greno: I'm head of story on 'Bolt' and so I was going to talk through, this is the actual room where we did the complete story process for the movie. It's much cleaner now than it was then, but we had a group of seven or eight guys at one time as a crew. We worked in this room everyday. We came in and shut the door and worked all day on the thing. On this movie Chris Williams came in to direct the film. He had a vision of what he wanted to do and a sort of basic kind of alignment that he wanted. So as the story team we would come in and work out the structure of the film and develop all the characters, the world, the tone – we kind of do all that stuff. So we'd work out the structure of the movie and try to figure who these characters are and so on. An example of how things constantly evolve and change, Rhino who stands right over there started off as a rat. He wasn't named Rhino. We had a board that had all these named tacked to it and no one ever seemed to like any of them and no one sort of seemed like to Rat Thing either. So we just kept pushing ahead and constantly tried to figure out what this thing should be. Our job is to bring the director's vision to the screen, but at the same time we're not robots and we're here to challenge the director. Like we can try to make the movie even better than what the director wants or whatever, and in this case we had this rat and we kept working and working on this and eventually the idea of a hamster evolved and so everyone really took a shine to that and all got pretty excited about that. The name Rhino, there's actually a big cat named Rhino, a twenty five pound cat. Then finally it was like, 'Well, that worked out.' So like I said things kind of evolve and change as we go. It's the same thing with the structure. We would record temporary scratch dialogue and we'd do screenings for the studio. It's the first time that they're seeing and it's great because you gage what's working and what's not working, things that we thought would be hilarious and would kill and then just lays there flat. It's like, 'Okay. I guess that doesn't work.' Then we'd come back up to this room and try to make it work. So we'd do that for chunks of the film and did that overall for the movie. We'd be writing things up and occasionally someone would have a funny idea and be like, 'We could do it like this –' and the story artists kind of wear two hats. We have our writers cap and our artists caps at the same time too. So there would be drawings. We kind of work out the movie and in the beginning we didn't have a writer and so we'd sit around the room and beat out what the sequence should be, what should be in there. Really, what we're trying to do is entertain ourselves and each other in that room, something that we'd think was fun to watch. If we don't like then why show it to anyone else. So we'd try to figure out who Rhino was. We kept talking him about the kid that watches 'Superman' and ties a towel around his neck and jumps off the roof of his house and we kind of liked that, something pure and innocent, an excited character. For a while he was this lackey, Bolt's lackey and that wasn't really working either. So at some point we cast the sequences. We figure out a chunk of the movie and then I'll go in and I'll think of the crew and it's like in 'Ocean's Eleven' where you've got your guy who's super good at action stuff and a really funny guy and someone who's great with drama, that kind of thing, and Chris who boarded the sequence is great with character. He's great at a lot of different things, but is really good at crafting characters. This is the final version of the thing, but we'd work on this for months and months and months and then six months later we might go back into because we figure out something that happens at the end of the movie, and you're like, 'Whoa, but we need to set that up here.' So you're constantly going back into things especially if you're not into production. It's easier to dive back into things and rework them. But Chris was given the assignment and he did a great job of figuring out who Rhino is and he got pretty close. Again, this has probably been through fifty passes, but he got really close right up front. The idea is to really sell the movie. [doing the voices]. So from this point everyone would give their notes and talk about what's working and what's not working. Maybe Rhino is working well in areas and it's just a really collaborative thing where everyone is throwing out ideas and trying to figure out what's best and then we go down to editorial and go through that whole process. There are things that change, like in the final movie, even when he gets out of the apartment the layout will be different and that kind of thing. Another example of things that change when you get to animation are like the knuckle crack that he does there. In the final movie he kind of cracks his neck and that's funnier. As you get every step along the hope is that everyone is going to out-plus what you did. In the writing there was a lot of changes that happened. There was a point where Mitten's, from the get go thought Bolt was delusional and knew that he didn't have superpowers. So when you figure that out you have to go back in the sequence and say, 'Okay, Mittens doesn't understand what's going on. She's just as confused as everyone else.' So then you take another pass at it. So we might get to a point where this is working really well. If the other sequences change though then this one can change as well. This just keeps going and going until someone tells you stop it because it's in production and you can touch it anymore.
How far in advance do you usually start this process before animation kicks in, what's the timeline of all of it?
Greno: I suppose it's different for each movie. On this movie we started, there was that shift that happened. I'm sure you guys heard about the American Dog and the Bolt thing, all that kind of stuff, but I was brought on the movie at the beginning of the last year. Then the shift happened and we only had from January '07. We didn't have much time. Usually you have a couple of years to kind of piece things together and we were on a really hectic schedule. Everyone pulled together on this though to make it work. What you usually have you get a sequence done, you first get a sequence and then have like a week to take your first pass and then a week or a week and a half for a second pass. It's like week to week to week. This was really aggressive, but all the guys lived up to it and got through.
Tell us about your background, how you got started and what else you've worked on?
Greno: I started twelve years ago. I worked in Florida at the MGM Florida. I worked there and went to the school in Columbus, Ohio. I had always wanted to work at Disney. That was my goal. For three years I sent my portfolio to Disney and after a few years of school Disney offered me a job. I did clean-up animation, 2-D. I was working on 'Brother Bear'. So that was fine. I was happy that I was at Disney, but I felt that I wasn't being challenged enough for what I would do. I would draw on this dry erase board in the backroom with one of my friend. I was always drying these cartoons and he said, 'You should get into story.' I took a story class in college and I hated it and then I realized that was the instructor and nothing to do with story itself. I said, 'Nah, no. I don't want to get into story.' I don't think that I would care about that, but he kept pushing and pushing. I was like, 'I'll come up with an idea for a test.' I said, 'If I like the test I'll turn it in.' I liked my little test and I turned it in and I started training. There was a short that I worked on for them for a few months and I came out to California and did eight months of training. Then I went back to Florida and I worked on 'Brother Bear' for four years, four plus years. Then I worked on 'Meet the Robinsons' for a long while. I worked on 'Chicken Little'. I worked on 'Rapunzel' and now Princess and the Frog and I'm not sure how long I'll be on that.
How is that coming along?
Greno: Great. I know I'm not supposed to talk about that, but it's a really good group and I've only been on that for like a month or so. I've had a lot of fun in there so far. It's good.
How have things changed at Disney in the post Pixar world for you guys?
Greno: It's a completely different studio. For the longest time we'd be here saying, 'Did you see what's going on at Pixar. Why can't we have someone like John Lasseter.' Then all of a sudden one day it was like, 'John Lasseter is running –' and we were like, 'What?!' Really, when John came in and slashed down all the kind of middle management positions that were gumming up the works, the way that it was setup around here was crazy. Now the idea is that the directors come in with their own vision. Before there were all these steps, all these creative executive levels, they were developing the movies, but then they'd give them to someone to make. John's great because he doesn't come in and say you have to do this and you have to do that, but comes in and really works with you. He just wants what everyone else wants and it feels like he's part of the crew and not like your boss coming in and saying that he wants to do something different. So things got better.
Stay tuned this week for an interview with Mark Walton, layout supervisor and the voice of Rhino, one of the main characters in Bolt!
E-mail: george@latinoreview.com
