Sam Fell & Chris Butler

0:02I'm with Matt. Hey Matt. Hey guys, how are you? We're great. Thank you. How's this uh, I'm doing great. Sorry I couldn't come down to L.A. and uh, go throw the festivities with you yesterday. It would have been fun. Yeah, we had a good time yesterday. It was going to you know, mingle with the you know, we managed to head away with it. I didn't throw it out. Yes, so talk about this whole experience. I mean, this must, this must be incredible for both of you. This all this award season hoopla. I'll have to say it's slightly surreal. You know, it's not something that you really consider when you, when you start. And now we spent my suddenly by yourself in his mind when you're.

1:16It's crazy. So you said, you said, you said four years. I thought, I thought you've been working on this thing forever, basically. Chris, Chris did. Chris started like 15 years. It was about four years ago. Right. So I guess I know you've probably mentioned how you've been on this publicity to her about six months. I apologize in advance that a lot of these questions you, you've probably answered, but we're promoting the film. So, you know, we got to start with the basics. You don't mind it. Yeah. We appreciate your support. Well, good. I'm glad because I always feel bad asking the same questions, but if you're getting a little, let's start as to, well, where did the story come from? Chris, where did this all begin? Um, go. I've been watching and I hold points by all the movies and TV shows that I grew up watching.

2:47Like, um, so I looked at what to it that they all have some color.

3:51Like, when I showed up making it, then they tell what kind of movie we wanted to make. It was just uncanny. And we both liked, you know, difficult balance to pull, but you can.

4:45Yeah. So how did the two of you work together directing? You don't see too many. I guess in animation, you see it often enough, but how did two people do? Do all the time and animation, but I think the trick is not to, not to split up the movie and, you know, give separate pieces to see how to be complete where we pinned up all the influences, all the stories and design with the character design.

5:54We had the cats in there. It became like this. And then how does, how does the casting work for that kind of thing? Like, what are you looking for in an actor before they, like, did you have ideas for people you wanted to play these roles? Yeah, we did. And we definitely had a point of view. And again, it goes back to the sun. We wanted this to much in live action.

7:01I think we did was we got clip. Yeah. Oh, sorry. No, no, no. Go ahead. If you had something out to that. No, no, I forgot what I was going to say. Sorry. We were up like last night. No, that's fine. That's fine. As I would hope you would. You got to enjoy this experience. No, no, no. No, I was going to talk to the people. And now I lost track of what. Oh, I remember what I was going to say. I was speaking to Jack McBrayer during the junket for a wreck at Ralph when it came out.

7:50And he was saying he had never worked on an animated film where they were allowed to kind of explore the space in the booth and play off each other. How did you guys direct actors in the voice? Yeah. As often as we could, we put the actors together and allowed them to kind of work with each other. And the writer of the movie, the fly, the spontaneity, the thing to get with animation in a way because the sense of spontaneity.

8:51You've worked with the actors. Well, you mentioned the ad libby. How are you able to do that? I guess you go back and reshoot the characters. Now, if you record the voices well in advance, I think a good example would be the dick. Right. For each other.

9:43But in naturally just having a conversation and kind of finding themselves in that when they get that stuff. And how does the animator work? So at the end of the, if you sit through the credits of the film, you can see kind of how Norman was created. But how long does a, you know, I was just watching at the beginning of the film there, even just the brushing of the teeth sequence. How long would something like that take, you know, it's three seconds. I mean, we, an animator can knock out, you know, five seconds in a week and we have our whole philosophy.

10:52It took one person a lot. But you know, I mean, it's interesting that they are basically like actors, these animators that get themselves into, you know, some of them actually act like to read a lot about the character.

11:41Tell me then when that guy handed in the zombie scene after one year of working on it, you said, no, you need to go back and reshoot it. Just try and avoid that. What we do, we do a block, which is kind of like finding marks for an actual shot, but it's so back and do for real. Doing that, we. And one thing I noticed too was just characters in the background seem to be listening to each other.

12:37Like you put details into every little facet of every frame. Yeah, I mean, those guys, you know, they're in there. Everything, you know, everything is controllable. I mean, you know, again. It's fantastic. I know we're running out of time here, so I got something we do call five questions, five quick questions, one word answers.

13:25Oh, Michelle. Hitchcock or Kubrick? Hitchcock. Leonard McCartney. You're big. Sorry, do you know which one's which? You're biggest influence as a director. That's all right. Film your most proud of. You're being obvious. You just slap him over there, you just slap him. And in one word, Para Norman, one word.

14:17You can hype and make some. I'm a major listening. Dream is good. I like that. Thank you so much, gentlemen. I really appreciate it. I loved watching the film and hopefully there's some sort of sequel, perhaps maybe starting to brew up there. Yeah, I see you in five years without one. Yeah, exactly. I see you earlier. Well, best of luck with everything and enjoy the Oscar season because it's incredible. Thanks for your help, Matt. Thank you, Matt. Yeah, take it easy, guys.