Prepared for an ogre makeover?
Well, get ready to meet a new and improved Shrek in “Shrek the Third,” a widely anticipated summer blockbuster hitting neighborhood multiplexes May 18.
But if all goes as planned by the film’s creative team, you won’t notice the subtle improvements. You’ll simply enjoy a funny, entertaining story featuring the beloved animated green ogre, his princess bride, Fiona, sidekicks Donkey and Puss in Boots, and a huge cast of storybook and fairytale creatures — from crowd favorites like Pinocchio and the Gingerbread Man to new characters of Artie, Merlin, Snow White and others added to the franchise’s third chapter.
The original “Shrek” film began production nearly a decade ago. New computer models of Shrek, Fiona and other legacy characters were constructed for “Shrek the Third,’’ a task that fell to Lucia Modesto, character technical director supervisor, and her team.
Lucia Modesto, Character TD Supervisor on “Shrek the Third”
Photo courtesy of PDI / DreamWorks
“The hard thing about rebuilding Shrek is he had to be better, but look the same,” Modesto said. “The motor inside Shrek is all brand new and the outside is almost the same.”
These new models gave animators much more control over Shrek’s movements.
“For the first time, we have more serious acting moments in ‘Shrek the Third,’ ” said Tim Cheung, head of character animation. “A little bit of a change in the brow movement can change the entire attitude or emotion of a character.”
Modesto and Cheung are two of 10 key people who talked about creating “Shrek the Third” during a recent media event at PDI-Dreamworks Animation, just south of San Francisco International Airport.
PDI / DreamWorks Animation Studio in Redwood City, CA.
Photo courtesy of PDI / DreamWorks
The day began with director Chris Miller screening about 20-minutes of footage from the upcoming PG-rated film.
“Everybody is back. All of the original cast,” Miller said, referring to vocal talent Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas, Julie Andrews and others.
That continuity is also reflected in the film’s creative team. Many of them worked on “Shrek,” “Shrek 2” or both. Many remain working on the franchise with “Shrek the Halls” — a holiday TV special for ABC — and “Shrek 4,” both in the production pipeline.
“So much of the crew in place worked on the first two movies. It was a pretty well-oiled machine to step into,” Miller said. “I just had to give them the room to do what they do so well and stay out of the way.”
Miller, who was promoted to the director’s chair after serving as head of story on “Shrek 2,” revealed a few story tidbits as he showed about a half-dozen extended clips.
Shrek and Fiona are still in Far Far Away. They want to get back to their vermin-infested swamp, but Fiona’s dad, King Harold the frog, has taken ill. With Harold sick, Fiona and Shrek have agreed to take over the day-to-day duties of the kingdom.
Copyright 2007 DreamWorks Animation
But it’s one slapstick mishap after another as poor Shrek gets a taste of royal life. There’s brave souls to be knighted, ships to launch and a sidesplitting bit of business involving a wardrobe malfunction.
Harold would like to see Shrek become king, but Shrek doesn’t want the responsibility of the throne. Before he croaks, the king tells Shrek the only other person who can be lead Far Far Away is Fiona’s cousin, Artie — an underachieving student at Worcestershire Academy.
So Shrek sets sail with Puss in Boots and Donkey to find the gangly teen. But before the giant ogre leaves, Fiona tells him she’s pregnant — another responsibility that Shrek’s not ready for, Miller said.
With Harold dead and Shrek away, Prince Charming elicits the help of the villains at the Poison Apple Tavern to seize control of Far Far Away, declare himself king and give the villains their long-denied happily-ever-afters.
The miscreants swoop down on witches’ brooms and storm the castle a short time after Snow White has revealed her gift to Fiona at a baby shower — a live-in baby-sitter who also happens to be one of the dwarfs. “Don’t worry,” she tells Fiona, “I’ve got six more at home.” The baby shower is attended by Fiona’s mother — Queen Lillian — Snow White, Rapunzel, Cinderella, a narcoleptic Sleeping Beauty and the ugly stepsister voiced by Larry King.
Copyright 2007 DreamWorks Animation
“Prince Charming, voiced by Rupert Everett, is definitely the bad guy this time around,” Miller said. “In ‘Shrek 2,’ he was supposed to take over the kingdom. But it didn’t work out for him. He lost his mom and he’s got a major chip on his shoulder.”
As Charming’s minions search for Fiona, she and her guests escape into a network of catacombs. The rest of Far Far Away’s residents are not as fortunate.
The villains, including Captain Hook and Rumplestiltskin interrogate the Three Little Pigs, Pinocchio — who has mastered a very lawyerly way of speaking — and the Gingerbread Man, whose life flashes before his eyes in another great scene.
“When you have all these characters, you want to spend some time with them. But at the end of the day, they’re there to support Shrek’s story,” Miller said.
Meanwhile, Shrek finds Artie, voiced by Justin Timberlake. Artie thinks about his chance to turn from zero to hero and accept the crown, but he runs away because he’s afraid of the responsibility.
Copyright 2007 DreamWorks Animation
“This is where you begin to see how similar Shrek and Artie really are,” Miller said. “They share certain personality traits — very stubborn, very much outsiders. It’s all very difficult for Shrek to deal with.”
After crashing their boat on their way back to Far, Far Away, the foursome heads to the home of Artie’s former teacher Merlin, voiced by Eric Idle. The wizard agrees to help transport the gang to the kingdom. Unfortunately, his sorcery isn’t what it used to be …
Puss and Donkey find that they’ve switched bodies in the mystic transit. Puss has Donkey’s exuberance and Donkey now possesses Puss’ swashbuckling charm.
Copyright 2007 DreamWorks Animation
Eventually, Shrek, who’s now been imprisoned beneath a theater, uncovers Charming’s plot to change the outcome of fairytale history by putting on a play wherein he slays our big green friend.
This leads to Fiona and the other princesses having to save the day in an action sequence that turns more than one fairytale convention on its head. After the footage, we moved from one aspect of the production to another, meeting with the various creative talents.
The first stop was a session with production designer Guillaume Aretos and art director Peter Zaslav. They showed off several drawings, sketches and detailed models — Far Far Away’s castle, its catacombs, the Worcestershire Academy and the ship used by Shrek and the gang — built before the film was animated.
Copyright 2007 DreamWorks Animation
Aretos elaborated on the difficulties behind realizing the new challenges the art department set for itself on “Shrek the Third.”
“Every Shrek movie typically happens on the span of three days and it’s a road movie,” he said. “Every time we travel to lots of places, which we shouldn’t do in a CG movie because it’s difficult. But we’re not very smart, so we keep doing it.
“We travel everywhere in this film,” he continued. “There are 82 locations and only 15 that we’ve used in the previous movies. That means 67 of them are new — places we’ve never taken audiences before.”
Zaslav explained that for “Shrek the Third,” the filmmakers and his team wanted to do something different with the environments.
Copyright 2007 DreamWorks Animation
So where “Shrek 2” was set in Far Far Away and that was based roughly on Southern European cities, architecturally speaking, “we wanted to do something different because Shrek was going through a period of doubt about becoming a father,” he said. “We wanted to give it a little bit moodier, slightly darker, colder tone. We looked up Northern European locations for inspiration. So we end up seeing a lot of fall colors that we didn’t see in Shrek 2.”
The pair also described how some of the artwork for the film was inspired by Old Masters, including a set piece borrowing from Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus.”
The second stop was a visit with Nick Walker, the head of layout for “Shrek the Third.”
Nick Walker, head of layout on “Shrek the Third”
Photo courtesy of PDI / DreamWorks
“I’m essentially the director of photography for the film,” he said. “CG films actually work more akin to a live-action film than traditional animation. We’ve obviously got a virtual set and a virtual camera shooting virtual actors on that set. So layout is the group that actually goes and figures out where that camera and those actors will actually be standing on the set.”
That camera work even involves a momentary jerk or not quite centering the frame on the action to make it feel more like a film that was shot, not composed in a computer. Another thing Walker’s team did involved recreating that sense of shooting a steady-cam shot on an ocean, creating special software that slightly lags the rolling waves and makes the action far more believable.
Another thing Walker talked up was an orbiting camera shot in key scenes to underscore one of the main themes of “taking responsibility.”
“It’s just that subtle little language thing,” he said. “It just helps make that moment feel right and appropriate and supports the overall concept of the theme of the film.”
After Walker, we visited with Modesto.
In addition to talking about rebuilding Shrek, she talked about making crowd scenes far more believable by creating a half-dozen basic male and female character models with thousands of variations. Not only were animators able to change things like eye color, hair styles and a whole host of costume pieces, but these basic models could see alterations in width of shoulders, hips, length of arms and legs, etc.
Tim Cheung, head of character animation for “Shrek the Third”
Photo courtesy of PDI / DreamWorks
The fourth presentation was led by Cheung, who said that his job is “to make sure the quality of the animation is up to par and consistent throughout the entire film.”
Working on “Shrek the Third” is “like working with an old friend,” he said. “You know the character, you’re familiar with it — but that’s a good thing because you can then concentrate on the performance.”
Still, there were challenges, especially animating the new character, Artie.
“I don’t know if anyone has teenagers at home, but teenagers are challenging,” Cheung said. “Their mannerisms, the way they carry themselves. You can’t make them too old or too young so kind of finding that balance was pretty tricky.
“Artie is very realistic and to have a character look realistic, you kind of have to have the animation to reflect the emotion to make it look believable. To do realistic animation is pretty challenging. … The more realistic the character it is the harder it is.”
When we finished with Cheung, we headed into a session with visual effects wizards Philippe Gluckman and Matt Baer.
The team has mastered many of the water, smoke and fire effects in earlier Shrek films. The challenge for “Shrek the Third,” Baer said, was creating the visuals of Merlin’s magic. They also got to shoot reference footage of a burning bra to help animate a sequence involving the empowered princesses.
“Shrek the Third” producer Aron Warner and co-directors
Chris Miller and Raman Hui (L to R)
Photo courtesy of PDI / DreamWorks
After meeting with the creative staff, we sat down with Miller, co-director Raman Hui and “Shrek the Third” producer Aron Warner.
“It’s amazing working with this crew,” said Hui, a veteran of “Shrek” and “Shrek 2.”
“It was a great experience for me,” he said. “In the first movie, I was mostly concentrating on animation and helped a little bit on the storyboarding. In ‘Shrek the Third,’ I got to see the whole process.”
Warner, who co-wrote the screenplay with Miller, Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman, called the story for “Shrek the Third” a “natural progression of this guy’s life and his development as an adult.
“It’s very similar in tone to ‘Shrek’ and ‘Shrek 2.’ That’s not to say there isn’t a ton of humor to go along with it, but it feels a little more rooted in the story this time around,” he said.
“If something doesn’t make us laugh, it doesn’t stay in the movie. So there’s stuff that that appeals to both our more adult side and stuff that appeals to our complete juvenile, childlike sense of humor. We end up with a good combo just by going with our gut.”
Continuing, Warner said, “I guess the differences would be that there are a lot more characters. in ‘Shrek the Third.’ It’s a bit more of a character-driven story. There’s a really strong story to it that propels everybody along.”