Chris Sanders Recalls The Collaboration Involved In Creating "The Wild Robot"

Transcript

00:00There's, uh, there's a culture within animation that I was introduced to way back on Beauty and the Beast at Disney.

00:05Um, everyone who works on it takes it very, very seriously.

00:09It's, it's, it's, it's, you adopt a film like this and you live with it for years, um, and it becomes, it becomes very, very real to you.

00:18Um, you, you don't just work on it during the day and then you go home at night and forget about it.

00:22Like, it's a 24-hour thing.

00:24Um, there's so many moments that I would wake up in the middle of the night and I'm like,

00:28I've got it. I know what to do. And I would wake up and I would storyboard it.

00:31Um, and I think there's just, and you can see it, um, so easily in, in so many of these films and in particular this one.

00:39Everyone who worked on it, um, they, we couldn't have done this if everyone hadn't exceeded what they needed to do.

00:47Everyone went above and beyond and, um, and it was weird.

00:51Like, the message of the film began to soak into every corner of the production.

00:57Which the, the message of kindness and exceeding your programming.

01:00Um, I've never had a film that had to break so many boundaries and reinvent so many things, software-wise and animation-wise.

01:08Um, but with all those monumental difficulties, it was actually the weirdly, I want to be careful this word, easiest film to make.

01:18It wasn't easy, um, but it was, it was such a, a generous, supportive crew.

01:24Uh, and Chris, and you can see, like, Chris is, is, is an aspect of that.

01:28Like, everybody was so kind and, and, and, and supportive and positive about the whole thing.

01:34We didn't want it to end.

01:37These things take years and even if you love the film, there comes a time, as Catherine Keener told me once,

01:43it's sometimes it's good when a project ends.

01:45Um, and, uh, but we didn't want that to happen.

01:48And as each animator finished their inventory, they would say, don't you have one more shot?

01:53Um, and we wished we had.

01:55I, I, we actually had, this has never happened before.

01:58I went to, uh, Animation Daily's more than once and I began to pitch the shot to the animator

02:04and he'd stop me and go, actually, I already animated it.

02:08And I'd say, wait, what?

02:10And he'd broken into the database and he'd pulled it out and he did it.

02:13And he said, and if I did it wrong, I will do it again.

02:15I get it.

02:15I, you know, I should have asked you first.

02:17Um, and that was how much enthusiasm there was on the, on the project.

02:20Um, so in that sense, it was, it was, it was really the film of a lifetime.