Behind the Scenes: Glen Keane’s 360-Degree Animated Romance “Duet”
Posted on November 5, 2016 at 10:45 pm
Google’s short animated Spotlight films, available via an iPhone app, are immersive 360-degree stories. As you move your phone around, you can explore the world of the film so that what you see is different every time. Here one of the greatest animators of all time, Glen Keane (“Tangled,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast”) takes us behind the scenes for his lovely romantic film, “Duet.”
Pup Star is available on Netflix today! It is a cute family movie from the “Air Bud” filmmakers, inspired by “American Idol” and “The Voice” singing competitions.
David DeLuise talked to me about appearing in “Pup Star” and about what he learned from his dad, comedy legend Dom DeLuise.
What is your role in “Pup Star?”
I’m playing the dad. Because I was on Wizards of Waverly Place with Selena Gomez, all the kids see me as the dad. I have two daughters, Riley who is 23 and Dylan who is 18, so that makes sense. It’s not so much a stretch because I know how to do it already. And it’s fun! I like doing that because there’s a lot of heartfelt moments in this movie. It is a big, loving, fun joyride with the kids. And my connection and my interaction with Makenzie Moss, who plays my daughter, makes this part so interesting to me, that connection with my daughter and wanting just anything for your kids.
How do you work with a child actor to create comfort and chemistry on screen?
You want to try to have as much time off set so that you can be familiar and comfortable with each other. And so Makenzie and her mom and Carla Jimenez who was playing the nanny/housekeeper/friend who is the kind of mother energy in the film, we all went out to dinner and we hung out, we went for a walk, we got to know each other. I wanted to know what she likes, what she doesn’t like, how her relationship is with her parents.
I was very lucky, we did get to walk around the neighborhood for a photo shoot that shows our house in the movie and so me and her just got to go play in the park. I’d ask her about her dad. “Oh, he makes movies. He likes movies? Do you like movies with your friends? What do you do? What are your favorite things?” I do this with anybody. It doesn’t have to be a kid. I love getting to know people. I just get in there and I find out as many details as I can so that ultimately she can feel comfortable with me so that she can express her true emotion. I will say I’ve worked with him a lot kids in this business and she is spot on right there, professional, really brings it. Jed Rees who plays the dogcatcher bad guy? We just looked at each other like “Wow! She’s good!” Like, “Oh she nailed that.” She really does know her stuff and it is also very encouraging as a grown-up actor to see someone younger not so much working very hard because it seemed to come very natural to her but working and doing a good job like she wanted to be there.
What was the first acting job you ever get paid for?
Being Dom DeLuise’s son. It’s like I was born into an acting improv class. At the dinner table it was, “Who can make me cry the fastest? Who can make me laugh the fastest?” My godparents were Ann Bancroft and Mel Brooks. We had Carl Reiner coming over and Gene Wilder was there. These are my dad and mom’s friends but they are also these heavy hitters in the entertainment business.
So to answer your question, the first thing that I got paid for was a Dean Martin special. My dad was doing a Dean Martin thing and I think I was in 4th or 5th grade. I had had to be a kid on the golf course. And then a producer said, “Does your son want to get paid $600 or does he want a Go-Kart and of course I said Go-Kart and that was my first paid job. I also did a Disney movie with my dad.
My dad always said to me and my brothers, “You can be this business anytime you want, but you can only have one childhood.” We all went to public school, and had a normal childhood. But we did plays and we also had a video camera when I was younger. That was like a hard thing to have back then. Now the kids have studios with their phones and laptops. They can score it, cut it, everything. We had to do like reel to reel VHS tape and try to put music on it but it was a good education.
And I did this TV movie called “Happy.” It was about a clown who witnessed a murder. I played my dad’s son in the movie and also my dad directed a movie this is a long time ago called “Hot Stuff” with Jerry Reed, Suzanne Pleshette, and Ossie Davis. Then in high school I started auditioning. My first real job was an episode of “Hunter.” That was my first real job on my own acting and I was like, “Oh okay, I’m going to do this.” I did some acting classes but I would go over my auditions with my dad and he always enjoyed it so much. He would always say, “Make it a problem, make something happen, don’t make it easy.” He would say, “Does this guy juggle?” And I would say, “He’s a lawyer; he doesn’t juggle.”
Did your dad give you advice about comedy?
What I learned from my dad is you’ve always got to be thinking, thinking fast. My dad, Jonathan Winters, Rob Williams, all these comics thought very fast on their feet. And you have to trust yourself. You have to trust your instincts and your intuition as to what’s happening. I think there’s something about comedy that you can learn but there is also something just whether comedy is in you or not. You either have it or you don’t and I did get a little piece from my dad. There is a little bit of the comedy gene inside of me, so I’m very happy about that. It’s not so much talking about comedy as it is talking about acting and the feelings so you can do funny and you can do dramatic. It’s all about listening and reacting to what the other person is doing and having a point of view. So it can be a very funny off-the-wall point of view or a dramatic one for that matter.
What do you think families will learn when they watch “Pup Star?”
Family is the most important thing. This movie has a journey to a realization that family is everything. There’s our family, our immediate family, my daughter and our dog Tiny but also Tiny finds her own family on her adventure with Charlie and everyone else. I think the idea is unconditional love will always be there no matter what. You don’t need a house, you don’t need a recording contract, you don’t need things; you just need the relationships that you have in your life, your kids, your parents, your brothers and sisters.
W.C. Fields famously said actors should never work with children or dogs. In this film, you have both plus lots of special effects. How do you hold your concentration with all of that?
We had a three split screen, we’ve got two dogs on the left, the humans are on the middle of the shot, and then we have the dogs running through on the right side. So there is a lot of technical stuff, I could be wrong but I think it was something like 2500 or more special effects shots. They have been doing this so long. Actually, they were editing on set while we were shooting. They could see what was happening so they would not move on until they made sure they did not miss anything. That is really smart because then I can focus on acting; I can focus on the moment and all that stuff because they are not going to move on until it’s right. Everybody on this crew was just so funny. When you make a movie like this you become a family. They are a well-oiled machine and everybody loves the dogs, everybody loves their jobs. But when you’re working with dogs, you can’t connect with them right away; their attention has to be on the trainer. And so over time I was allowed to get to know the dogs but you don’t want them to get to really like you because then you distract them while they are acting.
And the kids were great, so professional and easy to work with.
What’s next for you?
I did a movie called “Believe,” a faith-based film with my friend Danielle Nicolet who was just in the “Central intelligence” movie. We were in “3rd Rock from the Sun” together 21 years ago. I get to do a southern accent. It was really fun to work with my friend and play the bad guy. So in Pupstar I’m like this sweet dad and then in “Believe” I am this southern politician guy with a smile who will steal your candy.
Interview: Nicholas Britell, Composer for “Moonlight”
Posted on November 4, 2016 at 8:00 am
It is always a pleasure to catch up with composer Nicholas Britell, and I was delighted to have the opportunity to ask him about his gorgeous score for one of the best films of the year, “Moonlight.”
The movie includes three very different time periods with different moods and locations as the main character — played by three different actors — goes from child to teen to adult. How do you keep the score distinct, locate the audience in the time and place, and still keep the consistent context?
That’s a great question. It was very important that there be a real cohesion across the chapters in the film. Yet, at the same time, Barry and I wanted to make sure that there was a musical transformation taking place as Chiron’s life unfolds. Early on in our conversations, Barry told me about his passion for “Chopped & Screwed” music. This is a style of Southern hip-hop where you take tracks and slow them way down; in the process of doing this, the pitch goes down and you get this real deepening and enriching of the musical texture and the sound quality. This style of music is really woven into the film’s landscape, and we then had an interesting idea of how to bring it into the score. At one point in our discussions, Barry and I wondered: “What if we chopped and screwed my classical score to the film?” In other words, what if I wrote and recorded instrumental and orchestral music and then we chopped and screwed it? We both got really excited by the possibilities that this aesthetic approach presented. We thus started a two-part process of scoring the film. First, I would write music inspired by the film and record it with live instruments. Then, I would take those recordings and chop and screw then, bending them, slowing things down, morphing the whole audio of the pieces.
The results of that process were fascinating: slowed-down violins started to sound like cellos, cellos started to sound like basses, piano notes started to sound almost like weird bells – the possibilities were just huge.
So, over the course of the film, one element of the score’s evolution is that the recordings are chopped and screwed and transformed. In the beginning, we hear Little’s Theme, which is a piano and violin piece. This comes back in chapter two, as Chiron’s Theme, where it is modulated down, a bit lower and deeper. Then, for the scene inside the schoolyard, Chiron’s Theme is totally chopped and screwed; I slowed it way down and it is pitched about three octaves down. Then I layered the track on top of itself and ran it through a vinyl filter. It comes out almost unrecognizable, and yet you feel it rumbling in the subwoofers of the theater. The result is this total transformation of the piece – at times you might just barely be able to make out Little’s Theme from the beginning of the film within it, but you feel it. So those ideas of continuity and transformation across the chapters of the film were really at the front and center of our collaboration.
The beach and ocean play an important part in the film. How did that influence your score?
That’s an interesting question. Actually, I was very moved by the soundscape of the film when I first saw an early cut. Barry and I spoke at that time about the sound of the ocean. I was very into the idea that there is this symmetry that happens where the movie could start right from the beginning with the sound of the ocean, as you are sitting in the theater, and then at the end of the film you come back to this sound.
The ocean brought to me certain ideas about the sensitivity of the approach that we could take. There’s something so beautiful and hypnotic about that sound of the ocean. And the ocean is significant to Chiron, and is at the center of many important life moments for him.
When I read the screenplay to the film, and after watching an early cut, the first word which came to my mind was “poetry.” There is a true poetry to the way that Barry created this film: there is a feeling of beauty, of tenderness, of intimacy and sensitivity. When I started work on the film, I said to myself “What is the sound of this feeling of “poetry”? “What is the musical analogue to that?” Among the first pieces I sent to Barry was a piece I wrote called “Piano and Violin Poem”, which became Little’s Theme. In some ways, the beach and the sea, the natural world — all of those things were influential in my trying to evoke a feeling of beauty, and tenderness, and poetry.
Do you use any unusual instruments or sound effects?
Absolutely. This is something that I really explored in depth in “Moonlight.” In fact, one of the pieces that I wrote utilizes certain sounds from the world of the characters, not just typical instruments. For example, just before the scene where Chiron is going into school to fight back, we see him looking into a mirror over a sink. Many of the “musical” sounds that we hear in the music are actually sounds that I drew from earlier in his life. There’s this sort of rushing-air texture in the music, which is actually the sound of the water from Chiron’s bathtub from when he’s a little boy in chapter one; I took that sound and wove it into the piece of music that I was writing.
Another example is where there’s a percussive drum hi-hat-like sound that plays with an insistent rhythm throughout the sequence when Chiron is going back into the school. That sound isn’t actually a drum, it’s the sound of Chiron and Kevin high-fiving earlier in the film. I was imagining that he’s about to go forth into this very intense moment of his life, and his memories and his thought processes are so wound up with his relationship with Kevin, so he might almost be hearing certain symbolic sound memories like that in his mind. There were quite a few places throughout the film where would I would take sounds from one part of the film and weave them into the musical landscape of another part.
As for specific musical instruments, to some extent their sounds are linked with the idea of the Chopped and Screwed music, where we were taking real instruments and morphing their sounds into unique textures. There are musical sounds you might not hear anywhere else, because they’re sort of impossible to create in the real world. But, after recording a cello and bending the sound lower and deeper, you get some very fascinating textures.
This film’s main character is silent and isolated for much of the film. How does that affect the responsibility of the composer?
That’s a good question. I was cognizant of the fact that there are many places throughout the film where Chiron isn’t speaking, and the film really embraces the quietness of certain scenes. I think it’s a beautiful thing when characters don’t need to speak in order for the audience to understand them and feel their emotion. There are moments where, for example in the third chapter, Kevin and Black are looking at each other in silence. I find those moments incredibly poignant, and there aren’t any words being spoken. So if there is music in those places it might be able to express an idea of what the characters are feeling. The music can connect us with unspoken thoughts. From the very beginning of the film, I thought about how certain types of music might be able to get us into Little’s point of view.
Along the same lines, while choosing the places where music goes in a movie is important, in many cases, an equally important choice is where doesn’t music go. Where should there be silence? This was something that Barry and I spoke at length about as well.
I have to ask about the theme music you did for Slate’s Culture Gabfest. How did you combine all of their ideas in such a brief piece? Is that harder than creating a feature-length score?
For those who might not be familiar with that theme music: a few years ago, I was asked to write the theme music for the Slate Culture Gabfest podcast show. The specific assignment entailed combining many different “ideas” and creating a sonic identity for the show. It was certainly a fun challenge to try to combine so many ideas into a sonic one-minute “signature” for their show! I would say the main difficulty with combining the ideas into 1 minute is in finding a way for the ideas to “blend together” in an interesting way. This can be tricky, as you don’t want the ideas to just be a noisy jumble! Writing a sonic signature like that and scoring a film are thus really two very different activities. The biggest difference with writing a feature film score is that the approximately 90min-120min of a feature film give you so much space to explore the musical ideas. As opposed to “compressing” them into a short span of time (as in the Gabfest theme’s 1 minute length), with a film score one is able to focus on the architecture of the film and the geography of where the musical ideas go within that architecture. One of the most exciting parts of the process of film scoring is getting the chance to develop ideas over the length of a film. A lot of the joy of the process is in seeing how things evolve.
Rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence and action throughout, and an intense crash sequence
Profanity:
Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
None
Violence/ Scariness:
Prolonged fantasy/superhero peril and violence, serious car accident, characters injured and killed, some disturbing images
Diversity Issues:
Diverse characters (Asian male character in the comics portrayed by a white actress)
Date Released to Theaters:
November 4, 2016
If they ever give a Best Supporting Prop Oscar, it should go to Doctor Strange’s Cape of Levitation, the most endearing magical implement/sidekick since Sorceror Mickey’s brooms in “Fantasia.” And if they ever give out a Best Superhero Movie Producer and Sustainer of the MCU, the lifetime achievement version should go to Kevin Feige, who has once again figured out just the right balance between consistency and distinctiveness, between action and wit, and, perhaps the most difficult hurdle, between magic and superpowers. “Doctor Strange” has a superb cast, a witty script, and some knockout special effects.
Doctor (not Dr.) Strange is a brilliant neurosurgeon. He is also arrogant and obsessed with work with a biting, acerbic wit. If this sounds a bit Tony Stark-ish, you’re on the right track.
He is severely injured in a car accident. (Distracted driving, kids, wait to send that text or review that CAT scan image until you have safely parked the car.) His hands are shattered, with nerve damage and tremors, which will end his career as a surgeon. The man who prided himself on being able to diagnose and cure the most hopeless cases cannot find a way to heal himself.
And then the man of rationality and science, with nothing more to lose, has to try something new. He hears of a man who found a miraculous cure in Nepal, so, despite his skepticism about “alternative” medicine, he goes there only to find that what is involved is an entirely “alternative” way of thinking about the world, the universe, and, perhaps most difficult, himself.
His sensei is known as The Ancient One (the white female Tilda Swinton as a character portrayed as an Asian male in the comics), an ageless and endlessly wise and powerful teacher who shows Strange that the reality he believes he understands and can control is one of many. The Avengers protect the material world from threats, but The Ancient One and her accolytes protect us from magical threats. Is it indelicate to point out that the most severe threats are all coming from former students, a la Darth Vader and Kylo Ren, and Professor X’s former students, so maybe the best course is for The Ancient One to shut down the school entirely? And follow her own advice that if you silence your ego your power will rise?
Oh, who cares. This is when we start to get the very cool special effects, with “Inception”-style planes folding over each other and M.C. Escher-style chases. And you gotta love a neuro-surgeon turned wizard who throws down references to Bob Seger and Beyoncé and, in the big, big moment, finds a solution that is as clever as it is magical.
NOTE: Stay through the credits for TWO extra scenes, one at the very end.
Parents should know that this film includes intense fantasy and superhero action, peril, and violence, car accident, disturbing and graphic images, characters injured and killed, and brief strong language.
Family discussion: Why does Strange insist on being called “Doctor?” Why does The Ancient One first turn him down?
If you like this, try: the Steve Ditko-era comics, “Inception,” Cumberbatch’s “Sherlock” series, and the “Avengers” films
