On Friday, one of the year’s best films will be hitting theaters. Dreamworks’ The Wild Robot, from director Chris Sanders, has been garnering terrific reviews (including one from myself) over the past few weeks, and it’s no secret why.
This gorgeous film features stunning animation, beautiful vocal performances, a wonderful, sweeping score, and amazing, human themes. And we were so fortunate to be invited to the press conference for, in my opinion, the year’s best animated film!
The conference featured Writer/Director Sanders, as well as Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o, and composer Kris Bowers. All were on hand to discuss the making of the film, and how they managed to brilliantly capture the magic of the novels by Peter Brown on the big screen. Here’s what they had to say.
The first question for Sanders was how his experience on his first live-action film, The Call of the Wild, influenced his experience coming back to animation for The Wild Robot; his first animated film in 11 years.
“I think it was the immediacy of the collaboration,” started Sanders. “Animation happens slowly over such a long period of time, and you’re there on the day, you’ve got to get everything. It’s all about collaboration, particularly with the actors, and that was… you only have a day to get everything, so there’s a lot more interaction, I think, in the best way possible.”
Nyong’o was then asked how she was able to express a wide range of emotions playing Roz, while only using her voice, and not in a mechanical “robotic” sort of way.
“I have an incredible partner here in Chris and he asked me for the role of Roz, and he mentioned that he liked the warmth of my voice,” said Nyong’o. “So we knew that we were going to end up with a Roz sounded more like me. to kind of depict that evolution she’s gone through. And then we kind of like reverse engineered. I was inspired by the automated voices. So Alexa and Siri, and, you know, the voices on Tiktok and Instagram. And in looking at those, what was similar in all of them was this kind of like optimistic brightness. So after a lot of trial and error, we have many versions of Roz. And that’s the beauty of doing it over two and a half years. As the script develops, so does the voice. So in the end, we ended up with that sort of like programmed optimism to start her off. And we had these markers in the script when and how Roz’s voice is evolving to show how she’s adapting to her new environment. And, yeah, it was all about just like dialing it up. And it was wonderful to have such an important and insightful partner in Chris.”
Bowers was asked about the difference between scoring a live-action film versus an animated film, and whether or not he felt the difference in the score.
“For me, as far as inspiration,” Bowers began, “I started this film shortly after I became a dad, my daughter is only about five months old, and we had our first meeting. By the time I was finishing, she was in the terrible twos. But you know, in those couple of years, just how much I was not only examining my own relationship with her and what it felt like to become a parent, and how many things I and my wife felt, you know, similar to Roz is learning how to do that. But also just looking at my appreciation for my own parents, my own mother, and looking at that sacrifice and the sacrifices of my wife. And so much of the emotion in this story that’s so palpable and involuntarily brings up these visceral emotions for me. We’re just also mirroring so many things I was already thinking about so much in my own life. One sequence in particular I think about is the migration sequence. There’s a cue that we worked on for a long time, and my first pass at it was really bright and happy. And Chris reminded me about the fact that this is this really bittersweet moment where Roz is saying goodbye to Brightbill. They don’t know if they’re gonna see each other ever again, and they’re not saying, you know, ‘I love you,’ and they’re not saying those things. And what would that feel like? And I hadn’t even thought of the depth of that experience and what that would be like with my own daughter. Chris was reminding me of what that experience might be like with my own daughter. And I just remember going back after that conversation with him and writing that piece of music, and it just kind of coming out of me very naturally, because of how much the emotion just kind of came top of mind. And so inspiration is definitely a lot of my own personal experiences. The difference is starting that early, I’m starting mainly with black and white pencil sketches and the animatic of the animation. So, you know, having to rely so much on Chris’s guidance as a director to understand what I’m scoring to. And look at the concept art to realize what this is going to look like in terms of color and imagery, and use my imagination. And so if I have, you know, still images that I’m writing to, I’m imagining it in its fullest form, so that I’m writing music that doesn’t feel like it’s it’s held back at all.”
When the group was asked what experiences they wanted audiences to take away from the film, the group had different answers.
For Sanders, he stated, “There’s the idea that, at some point, we have to change our programming to accomplish something. We’re all creatures of habit. We need change. And maybe, I’ve thought a lot about this, I think that sometimes we’re afraid that if we change our programming, we’re going to lose ourselves somehow, if that makes sense. And you’re not going to. You’re going to become a more dimensional being, and it’s going to be okay. And that was, something that was built into the book by Peter Brown that we identified. And it was a core. It was a load-bearing theme in the story.”
Nyong’o continued saying, “I like the message that kindness is a force. I think oftentimes kindness can be considered like, I guess, a vulnerability. And in this film, we really show Roz’s journey, shows how it is a force, and it’s a force to be reckoned with.”
Sanders also added, “I’d also say all of those things, and maybe as just thanking the people that have sacrificed for you to be here, to be who you are. And remembering that, you know, whether it’s our mothers or whoever else is playing that role, just that there’s so much that they are doing for us to be able to thrive in this world. And to remember that remember to thank them and say, I love you when it makes sense.”
Nyong’o was then asked about how the experience of recording for Roz was, and whether or not she learned anything new about vocal performing.
“I had a lot of fun,” she started. “You know, every time we got to a recording session, it would start off with me giving notes on the new pages. And Chris was very receptive to that. It was really awesome to be able to share a thought, or like, be struggling with something on the page, share it with Chris, and then he would take this beat… and I wouldn’t be able to hear what was going on in the other room. And then he would come back on the mic, and he would have solved the problem or, you know. And it was a really wonderful symbiotic relationship, I think we had, working on this. So I always I was valued and additive. So seeing the final product was just…I swelled with gratitude for having been a part of it, and to like, see my fingerprints on it, you know. And then to see what everybody else brought to it. So that was amazing. I think finding the right creative chemistry is so important for me. That was something I already knew, and then it was fortified in this experience. And then I also learned to be easier myself, because I had a vocal accident when I was working on the early part of Roz. That voice was quite vocally athletic for me, and I injured myself. And I was rendered silent for three months. So I learned a very important lesson there to really pay attention to my limitations.”
Sanders was then asked about what his considerations were designing the island and its inhabitants, as well as to describe what it was like envisioning Roz’s arc as the protector of the island.
“We built Roz with a lot of articulation. We knew she had to be humanoid, because of the book and the role that she played in the story. But we also wanted her to be surprising and interesting. We wanted to give the animators opportunities to move her in interesting ways, which, by the way, they exceeded every turn. They surprised me with what they were able to do,” he began. “I was very insistent that the island be uneven. That we never make things convenient for Roz. We don’t want these mysterious flat paths that were magically waiting for her so that she could make her way easily through everything, especially in the beginning. We wanted her to actually bend and duck. We wanted to be sure that the audience understood very, very clearly this is not where she was supposed to be, but she doesn’t get it. I think that’s the one of the fun things about it. The engineered optimism that Peter was talking about. She’s walking through the forest, and she’s, in a sense, she’s advertising. She’s looking for whoever bought her, literally somebody out there. So she’s walking around and she’s spinning around, and she’s kind of doing a promo with this music that Kris designed… This futuristic music is coming out. Music is coming out of her advertising, and waiting for whoever ordered her… it’s kind of sad in a way.”
The final question was for Bowers and Nyong’o. It was whether or not they both recalled any childhood memories while making this film.
“I definitely just thought a lot about when I first realized the power of music to help tell a story, which was in early animation, like when I was a kid,” Bowers started. “I just watched cartoons most of the time. There were mostly those cartoons that didn’t have any dialogue. It was Tom and Jerry or Silly Symphonies or early Mickey cartoons or Looney Tunes. And how much you’re getting from the physical gestures of the characters and the music alone. How much you’re not even thinking about whether or not there should be dialogue, [and yet not] confused about what’s happening. Which is all very, very clear emotionally. And so you know, for Chris, we talked about his inspiration to have this be told so much with the visuals and the music, and to be able to really lean on that and have moments where, you know, once I had a cue. I even talked about with Chris what would happen to those moments if we took that dialogue away. And that was so inspiring. And so for me, it was just not only an honor to work on a project that utilized music in that way, but also wanting to pay homage to those great composers that were able to make us feel so many different things with just music on the oral side.”
Nyong’o added saying, “Roz is a very sophisticated robot, right? But when she lands on this island, she’s brand new. She’s like a child, you know? And I think that’s what makes her such an endearing character, because she’s very childlike in her fresh eyes and naivete in her wild island life. So I think the innocence of children is something that I thought of, not necessarily for anything from my childhood, but in interacting with children, they say the darndest things. For example, yesterday, we asked this child, like, ‘how would you look out for other people?’ And she said, ‘with a telescope.’… And that’s what Roz does. Like, this sort of like literal way of looking at the world, because she’s brand new. And keeping that innocence, I guess, by remembering the innocence of babes.”
Hands down, Sanders, Nyong’o, and Bowers all got together to give us truly one of the most beautiful and emotional experiences in cinema this year. And we were truly grateful to be part of that wonderful conversation.
The Wild Robot hits theaters this Friday, September 27! Be sure to stay tuned to The Nerds of Color for our one-on-one interview with the incredibly Nyong’o later this week!
