E34 • Directing Live-Action VFX: Story Comes First • JEFF FOWLER, dir. of ‘Sonic The Hedgehog 3’ from Paramount Pictures

“Sonic The Hedgehog 3” director Jeff Fowler shares his filmmaking journey, focusing on his experiences with visual effects, animation, and storytelling, having been influenced at an early age by “Star Wars”, “T2”, and “Jurassic Park”.

Jeff emphasizes the importance of hard work and passion in achieving success, recounting his time at Ringling College of Art and Design and then being hired by Tim Miller at Blur Studios. He discusses the evolution of visual effects and the path that led him to direct the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. 

Jeff reflects on the challenges and innovations in creating compelling visual narratives, the importance of pre-visualization and storyboarding, and the collaborative process of working with actors and animators. He also shares insights into the production journey of Sonic 3, the impact of fan feedback, and the excitement of expanding the Sonic universe with new characters and stories.

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Chapters

• 0:01 Past Present Feature, Hosted by Marcus Mizelle
• 0:38 Introducing Filmmaker Jeff Fowler, dir. of "Sonic the Hedgehog 3" from Paramount Pictures
• 1:45 Visual Effects in Storytelling + Nostalgia for Sonic
• 3:08 Origin Story: "Star Wars", "Jurassic Park", "Toy Story"
• 6:04 The Path to a Career in Filmmaking, Animation, and Storytelling
• 10:16 Finding Passion, and a Path in Film and Animation
• 12:55 The Importance of Hard Work + Studying at Ringling College of Art and Design
• 15:07 Working at Blur Studios
• 20:28 Sonic's Cinematic Evolution + The Evolution of Visual Effects
• 26:08 Developing & Directing Sonic The Hedgehog + Jim Carrey
• 31:52 The First Sonic Trailer: Fan Feedback and Design Changes
• 34:19 Casting Sonic + Jim Carrey x 2
• 35:52 Directing Actors for Live-Action VFX + Bringing Sonic to Life
• 38:03 Post-Production, Pre-Vis and Pacing Live-Action VFX
• 40:44 The Future of Sonic and Beyond: Promoting the Film Ahead of it's Theatrical Release (Dec. 20)
• 42:01 Keanu Reaves as Shadow (He's the Best)
• 43:27 Parting Words of Filmmaking Wisdom

Transcript

Marcus Mizelle (00:01)
All of a these stories that you could never tell were suddenly on the table because visual effects could deliver the visuals. And of course, nothing replaces the need for a great story. it's always the visual effects are always there just to supplement the storytelling.

Welcome to the Past-Present Feature Podcast.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 director Jeff Fowler shares his filmmaking journey today, focusing on his experiences with visual effects, animation, and storytelling. Having been heavily influenced at an early age by Star Wars, Terminator 2, and Jurassic Park. Jeff emphasizes the importance of hard work and passion in achieving success, recounting his time at Ringling College of Art and Design, and being hired by Tim Miller at Blur Studios. He discusses the evolution of visual effects and the path that led him to direct the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.

Jeff reflects on the challenges and innovations in creating compelling visual narratives, the importance of pre-visualization and storyboarding, and the collaborative process of working with actors and animators. He also shares insights into the production journey of Sonic 3, the impact of fan feedback, and the excitement of expanding the Sonic universe with new characters and stories. And thanks to Jeff and his team for reaching out taking the time to do the interview. And wherever you're listening, please leave us a review. Thank you again for tuning back in. Where are you coming from?

I am in Orange County. We just finished color timing on the movie yesterday. We are, we're done. That feels good. Gosh, when you get to that point, we're done. Yeah. I don't think it's actually quite set in yet. hardly been 24 hours. Certainly these visual effects movies like Sonic, they tend to leave quite a hole once they're done in your life. So.

We'd have to just immediately try and fill it with something else. You do have all the delivery and the press and all this stuff, but the film itself being done. Yeah. There'll certainly be a lot of talking up the movie, which is also fun, but just crossing the finish line and finishing the movie, especially a movie with so many visual effects. It's just a lot. Kind of wrap your head around. How many visual effects? we're right around 2000. It's a huge movie and with four CG characters, that number, it is very believable how we get to something that big.

my God. I want to start with my Sonic Sega origin story. Yeah, go for it. After Nintendo. It's like you either went Super Nintendo or Sega. I fell in. The Rich Kids had both. I was always Sega and Sonic was the intro to Sega. And when you guys reached out, I got nostalgic because it's Sonic. I didn't see the second Sonic, but I did enjoy the first one. It was good fun. And the third one that you have here coming out, the trailer looks really fun. Where's your origin story within the world of filmmaking and the world of Sonic?

Yeah, it has to begin with visual effects. feel like the first movies that I was really exposed to as a kid, the top of that list being Star Wars, visual effects were such a huge storytelling component. And so I just fell in love with all of it at once. I was born in 78. So a year after the first one came out and then saw the first one on home video, I was probably like maybe

or five and just became obsessed with this sort of these incredible fantasy worlds that just felt so real. It's just a huge space opera, right? Like you look at Star Wars and the scope of George Lucas's vision. It was just so incredibly inspiring. I think I probably wore that VHS down to a pulp. watching it over and over. And then of course all the subsequent Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, but then just visual effects in general, even at that young age, anything that had

Ghostbusters, you look back at some of these films and there's probably just a handful of actual effect shots in these movies, but those shots and those characters like Slimer and Ghostbusters, like they become so iconic. And that continued through James Cameron's work and just visual effects driven films. Of course, I love all films, but I think the ones that made the biggest impression on me at that early age were the ones that were more visual effects driven. But also hand in hand with that was just animated films.

Disney kinda coming into its own at the back half of the 80s with Little Mermaid. It kinda kicked off this real sort of golden age of Disney films and Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. That really just crystallized in terms of what I wanted to do. And then I guess the final sort of...

era of films that really just solidified what it was that I wanted to do was it was like 93 was Jurassic Park, which of course was now the computer as a filmmaking tool and a visual effects tool. And what that brought in terms of the stories you could tell and Steven Spielberg can make a story about dinosaurs and we can sit in theaters and see a Brontosaurus or a T-Rex or Velociraptor come to life in such a stunning way. And all of a sudden these stories that you could never tell.

were suddenly on the table because visual effects could deliver the visuals. And of course, nothing replaces the need for a great story. So it's always the visual effects are always there just to supplement the storytelling. yeah, and then the last film I would add to this sort of formative kind of years was Toy Story in 95. And that being the first all 3D computer animated film, it just showed what the possibilities were, not just on the live action side.

Jurassic Park, but also on the Disney and the Pixar sort of side and what they could do. And I just always loved film. I definitely had a very technical mind as well in computers and how I could use computers in my art projects in high school. And so just wanting to really understand, like I grew up in the Midwest in a suburb of Chicago, so couldn't have been further from Hollywood. My dad sold insurance for 40 years. So

No real ties to filmmaking or anything. Fortunately, the internet came into being around the same time that I was trying to figure out how do I pursue a career in computer animation? How can I chase this? How can I put myself on the path? And I absolutely have to just thank the internet because I just went into some of those early sort of forums, like video editing forums and started.

carpet bombing them with emails and questions and just being like, does anybody know where I can study computer animation or where I can do this job? And I would just really just send out these mass emails and try to find out what's the right school. Like where do I go to college? What do I need to do to pursue this? so- laser focus. Yeah. And a passion to build and think. Could you hear the internet at that time? The 14.4k dial-up? yeah. Of course. That would trigger a very emotional-

response. But so yeah, that kind of led to a school called Ringley School of Art and Designs. That was one of the art schools that had a legitimate degree program and offered a bachelor of fine arts in computer animation and just had a very well regarded program and faculty and had already had a few graduating classes by the time I would have enrolled there. And so it all clicked. And ultimately, that's where I ended up doing my undergrad work. And it was a great program. And I was surrounded by other artists that had the same passions and

We really motivated each other and learned from each other and it just got inspired by each other. And it was just, it was a very cool time because it really still felt like computer animation was such a new field and very exciting. And Hollywood was still playing around with what it could do. And you're starting to see stuff like the mummy movie that Steven Summers did. now ILM was like just on speed dial with a lot of filmmakers and doing just really great, compelling work. so, yeah, I just soaked it all up like sponge and then.

Four years later after Ringling, I graduated and took my demo reel, which had all my short film that I had created in my senior year Ringling, which was like a minute and 10 seconds on animated thing about this, about a baboon at a zoo and a bunch of other little animation tests. And that was my portfolio and sent it out to try and get work as a computer animator. And then fortunately got a call from Tim Miller who had started Blur Studios. He went on eventually to

direct Deadpool and Terminator. But yeah, he's the one that brought me out to California. He gave me my first job and little did I know I would end up working for him for 15 years. So in that time, was, there was so many projects that came through the door. mean, Blur is a visual effects company. We'd work on films, we work on commercials, we work on video games, work on ride films. It was just always something new and something different kind of coming in. And one of those back and forth.

was a Sega project, a Shadow the Hedgehog video game. with this third Sonic movie coming out in December, there's just this really crazy sort of full circle moment where I had worked and done some animation on that Shadow the Hedgehog video game back in 2004. And then now getting the opportunity 20 years later to do the movie version of it. So it's pretty crazy. Concise origin breakdown right there. It's almost like I've answered this question, or isn't it? First of all, I want to start with Ralph McCrory.

That's what I think about when I think about Star Wars. Legendary illustrator, of course. Yes, and I had those books, the Star Wars books. I was obsessed as well with Star Wars. I remember Ralph McQuarrie's concept art, man. And then how they, course, translated it. Now, my five-year-old is lightly being introduced to Star Wars and the earlier stuff, the kid-friendly stuff. And he's mesmerized. It's still there. It's just magical. for a lot of us, Star Wars is my big inspiration. I can't lie. I'd love to be more original than that, but...

I have such fond memories of like third grade or something like this. And just can't wait to get home to watch the recorded WGN broadcast or whatever of, it's funny I say WGN because it's Chicago or Superstation or whoever the it's called. And so anyway, it's just going home and watching it and escaping. But I guess I'll say, of course the story and the epic storytelling, the mythic storytelling, in all those films you name, including Toy Story, they're so well maintained and cared for. But on top of it, of course, is this at the time advanced beautiful visual.

new representation, way of telling the stories. I guess you, you realize at a young age what your passion was, right? That's a gift to have that some people might not have. You gravitated towards and seized upon a passion. Is that correct? Yeah, it's interesting because I don't think I really knew what to do with it was the trick because like I loved movies. I loved art. I was always drawing. I was definitely an art kid, but I couldn't connect the dots. Like it really wasn't until 93 and 95. I'm a freshman in high school.

Okay, time to really start just spitballing college ideas. I just didn't know how to convert my art skills and my love of films into a legitimate college path. was loosely aware of USC and a lot of that, like, felt like intimidating being in the suburbs of Chicago and couldn't have felt any further from the industry and just where to even begin. so.

It really wasn't until Jurassic Park and Toy Story where the clouds parted and the god rays came down and showed me this like path. You love movies, you love animation, and you love computers. This is everything you love. This is what you should be doing. And it took a while for it to all click, I guess is what I would say. Definitely didn't feel like I had this well laid out plan all my life. In a lot of ways, I just got very lucky with the timing. Suddenly these movies came out and this whole new field of visual effects emerged.

right when I was needing to pursue a college path. It was just meant to be, because a lot of times timing can be great. We don't take it. We don't act. And I can relate. I'm from North Carolina, and I felt the same way. I was making home movies out of boredom, and we thought we were funny. We'd always make stupid stuff. But I never saw it as a career until later in high school, when my mom was like, you should go to the School of the Arts in Weston-Salem. But I remember when I did finally say, yeah, wait a minute, this is what I should do, and this is what I love. It did feel like I was so disconnected and so far away. What do I do?

I'm trying to find the silver lining here in that situation because I'm grateful for it now because it made my imagination go even wilder and get beefed up. But also it made me hungrier and it made me just try to figure things out on my own. And then by the time I got to Wilmington and then came up through Wilmington, North Carolina, I had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder, which ended up helping me. And I felt like I was always catching up.

which is silly, but I think that still is in me. It wouldn't be like that if I was born in LA, here's a USC, here's a whatever. I don't know. Is there anything for you where you find benefit from being where you're from and not just immediately having access to the industry? Yeah, it definitely taught me a type of work ethic because there wasn't anything that was just laid out and it wasn't an easy way of getting answers. And I was very fortunate that my parents trusted me because they didn't know.

had help and like nobody in any circle, none of my high school teachers, nobody knew anything about any of this. So having to pursue that stuff on my own and really just really go after it, really chase down those answers and then just work hard. Ringling was a very competitive school. They turned away a lot of students, each graduating class is 40 students, which is not a lot. That just raises 10%. Yeah. So that's something if anybody asked me for advice.

Today, nothing is a substitute for hard work. Of course, there's luck, there's timing, there's all these other things that are outside your control. What you can control is how hard you work. And I'm very fortunate of my experience. The reason I was at Blur Studio for 15 years was because that was the culture and I'm surrounded by other artists. But I'm sure it's also something that you feel, which is like a little bit of something to prove that you really want to prove that you deserve to be there.

You can do great work that you're capable of doing great work. And so it's a great motivator. It's that passion. It's that you want to prove that you deserve your shots or you deserve to be there. And there's no shortcuts and it all just has to come from hard work. And people are products of their environment. If you want to be great, then you got to be around great people. It'll definitely help real quick. Back to wrangling. Sarasota, Florida. Yes. How was Sarasota? I had one friend from Sarasota, Florida, and it was Paul Rubens.

And I met him on a film set and our people, but that's all I know about Sarasota and the stories. my true man, Randy Savage, think are the two Sarasota alumni. That's funny. That's funny. Look, I was so happy and excited to get out of Chicago winters to go down to a place where it was sunny 12 months a year. And Sarasota is a beach town. It was awesome. The first time I ever lived near the ocean. Most of the time I was in a dark, cold computer lab. Yeah. But I could get out and get a little sun. Vitamin D.

That makes a lot of sense actually being up in a room on a computer screen and coming out into the sunshine. Yeah, but it was great. But Florida is his own thing. think now living in California for as long as I have at the time, I was just loving what felt like a very exotic. Change of scenery from Chicago. So blur studios, gears of war, a lot of call of duty stuff. seems it's just at the forefront of a lot of things here. Obviously Sonic.

Have you worked on anything besides the Sonic? I'm sure you have for Blur. Everything in between. We had all the biggest video game sort of franchises. Like we did a bunch of cinematics for Star Wars games for Bioware, which is a huge video game maker. But it was cool where Blur was almost like the best kept secret because we would get hired by the companies that make the games. They'd be focused on making the actual video game, but they know they needed promotional material. They needed really great cinematics. And so Blur would get hired.

to create these things, but it was awesome because they're like little short films. You go back and look at Blur's greatest hits and it's every franchise imaginable. Halo, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars. And so there was always something new coming through the studio and we were getting to play with all these iconic characters. These short films, basically, we really were in a great position because we built up this trust with a lot of these companies that we were hired by.

and we could do really a lot of the kind of creative. Again, they would be so focused on the games and then they would just need a great story to help promote their games. And so we would get to write them a lot of the times, we would do all the storyboarding, we'd do character designs. The way this hand in hand has to be, you direct this to Sonic films, it's not just visual effects, you have to know how to tell a story. exactly. And it was just a great training ground to really be able to develop ideas, to execute the ideas.

And Blur's still doing it. I'm sure, not sure if you're familiar with Love, Death and Robots, but it's an anthology flick. was Tim's baby. That was like something he was always very passionate about. He loves anthologies. He adjusted one of the most well-read people I've ever met. So he's got all these short stories that he loves. So that became his kind of vessel for a lot of that. And then now there's a Amazon series coming out called Secret Level, which is again, Blur.

is producing and it's all short stories that are based on video game IPs like Warhammer, Pac-Man, and Mega Man and all this. So anyways, Blurr was an amazing place and I loved working there and they taught me everything I know about how to do this job. Was it mostly visual effects or did they also implore you to learn how to tell stories? Or did you learn most of that at Blurr? How did you learn how to tell a story? Yeah, to Ringling's credit, it really...

were more interested in the storytelling than they were in the visual. It was an animation program, so you're always creating little motion tests and you can design a character and do little animation cycles. Animation takes a very long time to do. I joke about my, I finished my four years at Ringling and chalked up a pretty big tuition bill. I come home and what my parents get for their investment is like a minute and 12 seconds of footage. This is what we pay for?

But the coolest part about the Ringling program and something they still do to this day, your senior year, your entire year is just spent making a thesis, a short film. And you do everything. You write it, you design the characters, you model the characters, you animate them, you light them, you render it, you finish it. That's your whole year. And so there's a prep course. Your junior year, and that's when you pitch stories to the faculty.

You do storyboard animatics, you workshop the ideas, you beat them up, you just keep going. They give you notes. It really was like a little miniature kind of Hollywood sort of experience. And it taught me a lot. And what's interesting is early at Blur, what Blur did was it was very much in the vein is what Pixar does for did for a long time. I was just thinking Pixar, Lassiter. And so Blur had a shorts program and anyone could pitch ideas. And so this is

a little after the first year that I had been with Blur, but I submitted an idea for the shorts program. Supervisors would vote on the idea. And then the idea that wins would get selected for the studio to make. And Blur would just use some of its downtime, its unsold animation time to create the short. And so my short one, it was a short called Go for Broke. And so all this...

experience that I had gotten from the Ringling program about how to write something, how to do pre-production, how to make it, how to do all the sound and all the finishing and all of that just immediately became like very relevant to doing this short film at Blur. And so I made this short, Go for Broke, which ultimately got nominated for an Academy Award that year. Didn't win, but it was an amazing experience regardless. So yeah, it was this kind of funny thing where one experience would lead to another.

And all that experience and whatever skills that I had picked up always felt like it was just feeding directly into the next thing. And really that kind of culminated in the first Sonic film. And a lot of that is even just stuff picked up at Blur, which things like working with clients and having to turn around and pitch ideas to clients and managing clients and getting them excited about what you're doing. It's like all that.

is so directly applicable to filmmaking in Hollywood because you are always going to be in a partnership with a studio. You're always going to have executives that you're working with and you want them to be excited about what you're doing. And so it was all very invaluable experience. Directing is totally managing people. It's a huge part of it, especially with fiction filmmaking. So Ringling gave you this practical thesis, this element to take with you into the real world. That's huge. That's like some film schools or some schools might not give you that.

And then it's very clear as to how it helped you and you moved from blur. Okay, so Sonic, your first experience with working on Sonic is Shadow, yeah? Did you help design Shadow? What did you do exactly for that? So Shadow first appeared in a game called Sonic Adventure 2. This was like 2001. And then he was incredibly popular. Fans really loved him. And so Sega was like,

great, let's give Shadow his own game. And so they created a spin-off, a standalone game called Shadow the Hedgehog. And then they came to Blur with the same kind of request that, we'd love for you guys to create cinematics, some sort of short film elements that we could use to get people excited about. And so it's all pre-rendered, which basically means like video games back in 2004 were still very simple in terms of like their graphics and all that. so...

wouldn't use the video game pipeline. We used our pipeline, which would create much more high resolution, better animated, better looking stuff. But they, but it's great to promote the look and feel and tone of the game. So that's what Sega came to us for. It was their story and they, the plan laid out and then Blur basically went and created these really great sort of very high polished animations and scenes. And so I was part of that Blur team that worked on the Shadow of the Hedgehog stuff. And I had grown up with Sonic, first game.

In 91, I was 13 and I was very much a Sega kid and just played everything I could get my hands on. And when Sonic came along, it was like, my God, this game is incredible. It's colorful, it's fast. The sound effects were incredible. Yeah, and the music, all of it. was just a really, just the whole package. And so when this sort of opportunity came along, just really through my employment at Blurr to revisit that world and now through this kind of exciting new angle with Shadow, I just remember thinking like, this is really...

special and really cool. So Blur was ahead of the curve as far as what the standard was. People came to you guys for the next level of cinematics within the game. Yeah. It's so funny too, at the time when you would see visual effects wherever at that time, it's like you were mostly impressed. Like, whoa, that looks like a real person. I'm talking maybe like Goldeneye, for example, the N64. And then you look back now, you're like, what the hell? This looks terrible. You get so spoiled rotten to like how good it got since then. yeah.

That's the hardest part about visual effects is it's always needing to get better. It's because people just become more sophisticated, even if they don't know why they feel something looks better or looks worse. It's just our brains and our eyes are very attuned to visual effects and to quality. The bar gets higher every year that it goes by, but it's great and it's an exciting challenge. It's nice to pull the hood up and pick your brain on this stuff too before we get into Sonic. It is interesting and I think it's going to be informative for sure for people listening to this.

And also before we move on to Sonic, I just think about how say Phantom Menace, Jar Jar Binks was picked on when it came out. It was fine. And then I remember seeing it again and my God, this is bad. And then I'm pretty sure they went back and cleaned that up. Did they did that? I don't know about Jar. I know there's a Jabba scene in A New Hope that was released as a special edition. I remember. And then a few years later, I think whether it was for the Blu-ray or something, they definitely went back and gave Jabba a little bit of a facelift. That's an interesting kind of dilemma to have.

It's such a slippery slope. think these movies belong where they were in time. It's crazy. You look at Jurassic Park and it still holds up. Now the T-Rex at night in the rain coming out and obviously they were very smart about how they did that because they also had a giant T-Rex model that Stan Winslow and so they're mixing the CG with the real prop.

Yeah. And it is baking it into a reality. And so it takes a lot of the pressure, I think, off the visual effects shots, because your mind is going back and forth between what is really there and this just giant T-Rex is there on set. And then when it needs to move and you need to see a walk, then it's got to become an animated visual effect. But yeah, I mean, you look at that now and it still holds up. G2, the T1000, the liquid metal Terme. I think they were really smart about

designing these effects and executing them and not biting off more than they could chew and not swinging for the fences, not trying to do fully animated humans too early because that's the stuff I think that really has not aged as well. Anything where they were trying to do photorealistic humans, the technology was not quite there yet. Saw the Abyss at the Fox Theater in Westwood. James Cameron was there. We went last year. Yeah, it's funny because the LA River is right here next to my house. It's fun. I always think about T2. That was so incredible. What was that, 92?

Yeah. 91. Like Him going through the prison bars and he walks through the bars and then he goes through his face. And the gun gets hung up. Yeah. James Cameron was just so brilliant about how to not overdo it, but create these like moments that were just so just iconic and then just have the visual effect and it'll stand the test of time. And then you got Avatar where this technology where you can see it while you're filming it, right?

The VR now, you can do a location scowl where you basically put on a VR helmet and walk around a virtual set, find your angles and even actually operate the camera. If you've got like early animation for characters and for mocap and capture and drive real time representations of the actors in the volume. it's crazy. Just when you think we've done it all, like they just keep finding new ways of just evolving the pipeline.

Remember that show, Movie Magic, that was on Discovery Channel back in the day? Yeah, of course. Shout out to that. Wow. Yeah, and Cinefx Magazine. was obsessed with Cinefx Magazine, which again, unfortunately has run its course, but it would come out quarterly and I would like obsessively go to Barnes & Noble when I thought the new issue was coming out and then it would just be just an actual absolute treasure trove of information. But yeah, Movie Magic, good call out. So you directed all three, correct? Uh-huh. First of all,

Jim Carrey is a legend, of course. How exciting for him to come out of retirement and do Sonic of all things, right? Is that correct? I don't think he was officially retired, but he definitely had been doing his show kidding for Showtime. It really felt like him coming back and creating this robotic character felt like he was tapping into all that magic that made audiences fall in love with him. And just to be watching that on set and to be looking to my right and to my left and seeing the crew, it was like...

their faces are just turning deep red and they're like holding their mouths because they don't want to blow the take, but they're just, they just want to burst out laughing because it's just incredible. And so after a few days of filming on the first movie, I was just like, my God, it just felt like lightning in a bottle. He was back doing just the thing that people love. And I couldn't have felt more fortunate that he was doing that on our film. Even like the Sonic 3 trailer, he looks fantastic in it. It's so funny. So funny that he's still got it after all these years. God bless you, Jim Carrey.

Okay, the first Sonic movie, how did it come to be? How did you lock that up and get from like idea to actually getting on set and filming that? What did that look like? Sega had been wanting to make a Sonic movie, I think for a while and had had some near misses and it was set up at Sony at the time and was just looking for a filmmaker to have a vision and really come in and find a way to just tell a great story with their characters.

We were very fortunate. Tim had just come off Deadpool, which was huge hit. Definitely shined a light on blur. And just suddenly everybody was just very interested in what Tim was up to, what blur was up to. And Sega, we had continued to do projects beyond Shadow, the one I originally mentioned. We'd also done some cinematics for a Sonic game in 2006. And so we were very familiar with Sega and they knew us and then we loved working with them.

And so it just worked out. was something that they came to us and wanted to partner on a film and see what that would mean and what our take on it was. And Tim is very respectful. a Sonic is a cool character, but he had no interest in doing a Sonic movie. So he's, don't want to do it, but I know somebody who does. And fortunately I sat next to him at the studio and was happy to jump on that one. And it just became a development process with Sony and original film Neil Merz and Toby Asher.

And we just really started rolling up our sleeves and working on story ideas and an outline and treatments and the first draft. Eventually things came to an impasse. Sony and Sega didn't have an agreement on what the next steps were. And Sega was basically, let's, let's find another partner. That became Paramount and Paramount became an amazing partner for us on these films. yeah, once we had a script that we were really happy with, got into casting and starting to plan the shoot. And this is all.

Back in 2018, I just coming from a background of working in animation, like I loved storyboarding. I loved really feeling like I was prepped. And so I did a bunch of storyboard animatics, not me personally. I had a storyboard team, storyboard artists. And so anything that had Sonic in the scene, we storyboarded, we would do temp VO, we would sound design it, do temp score, and just start making the movie like in storyboard form. Pre-vis on Star Wars.

Yeah, so it was great because then you can take those little animatics and it was some of the kind of signature moments of the film. Like when Sonic gets in the fight at the roadhouse and we do the bullet time thing and he's running around doing all the gags. That was just, everybody always loved that in the script. So we're like, okay, let's get that going in storyboards. Let's start fleshing that out. Another one was the drone highway sequence, which is what we called it. That's when James Marsden character and Sonic are on the run on the highway. Robotnik sends all his crazy.

drones after him and it had this sort of really fun babushka nesting doll idea where it started as a tank. And then each time they defeated it and thought that they were done, a new drone would come out of it and ending on, and yeah, ending on very tiny little hornet size of the drone at the end there. That's all storytelling too. That's all concepts. It's smart. It's fun. It's Yeah. It's just establishing tone. It's getting the studio excited about what you're going out to do.

So anyway, so I just did a ton of that. And to this day, all these movies, it's no different the way we work. And step one, once we have a script that everyone's feeling good about, it's just starting to make the movie in storyboards because it just helps everybody. think when you have a character like Sonic, who's never going to step out of his trailer, he's never going to be on set. He just doesn't exist. It can become a very abstract thing for a crew. For a cameraman, it's like.

How do you get people excited about what they're doing? And I think animatics, like you can pull out an iPad and say, hey, this little three minute scene we're doing, like, here's the rough cut of the storyboard and it's got all the personality and it's got all the charm and their humor, the action, whatever the scene needs to be. If you could represent that in a storyboard animatic, then I just think everyone will just get excited about what they're doing and just feel like they know what they're doing versus it just being like, okay, we're filming plate and.

tennis balls on sticks. yes. I used to be a grip for a while, but I worked on a movie called Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter and all the second unit stuff, all the action, the fun stuff. I remember they knew exactly what they wanted and it was just collecting it in real life. It was specific and it was like something that left an imprint on me just as far as previs and whatever you would call it. yeah, and it turned out great.

because it was so developed and refined. Yeah, you have to do your homework. You have to plan it. You can't just be like, we'll just go out there and we'll get inspired. You got to do the planning. Back to the internet real quick. So Tim released that Deadpool trailer, right? And it got so much hype, which was super cool to see. It was like, man, like the people win. And then the Sonic trailer, I remember it coming out and people were talking shit about it as far as the eyes or something like this. And then y'all went back in and tweaked it and fixed it. And there was no issue whatsoever. Is that correct? yeah.

No, that was a very dubious start to the whole thing with the first trailer. But I also look back and I'm just like very proud how it all went down. The fans really by voicing their opinions and just calling us out on that we needed to go back to work and make Sonic's design better and look like the character that they loved. And it felt like the right thing to do. I think that was such a, important moment and it will always be really the important moment in the story of these films. So yeah.

How you start is how you finish. Because the movie came out, it was a hit. So was just like bam. How did you feel once the first film came out? How did it feel to have a success? Almost impossible to describe. You work so hard, but it's not just you. It's a whole crew of people that really give these films everything they have. And so you just want it to have a happy ending and to just reward everyone for their hard work. And I think when a film gets that sort of validation and is well received by audiences, it's just an incredible feeling because they're

The movies are so hard to make, they take so long. You really just give it everything you have. And so I've just been incredibly fortunate that these films have been received the way they have. But then, you know, that moment, there's no point to resting on laurels. And for me, just personally, the thing I think that I was the most excited about was that we were going to get to do another one because the success of the first meant we teased Tails at the end of the movie, Sonic 1. And all I could think about is, my God, I cannot wait to get Sonic and Tails together and have a scene together.

How many times have there been movies where they've like left things open ended or they dangled something, a carrot at end of the movie, and then they never get to do it because the film underperforms. That's what was just so exciting was we were going to get to continue the journey, bring in new characters. And it's been the same every time out. I look at Sonic 2 and the minute we teased Shadow and his cryo tube, I was like, yeah, I cannot wait to get to work on that movie. It's not like we just want to, you know, cross the finish line and be done with it. It's like.

You finish these movies and then you give the audience and the fans a glimpse of where things are headed. And it's just so awesome and so exciting to get to do that. I was going to say, you have to be excited, right? And pass on to the cast as well. And if the actors are having fun and enjoying what they're doing, audience is going to pick up on that. And I think.

Jim is having the time of his life with Robotnik and to the point where he's doing two Robotniks in this third movie. Nothing could be more challenging for an actor than to play two sides of the same scene. And not only did he did it, but he just absolutely crushed it. And I think fans are gonna just, audiences are gonna go crazy. They're gonna love it. I'm so glad you brought up cast again, because I do have a question as far as working with cast mixed along with the visual effects. That shot at the end of the trailer, Sonic 3 with two Jims, is that just simple split screen?

Pretty much. That particular scene, we actually did do a motion controlled camera. The part you're seeing where they're just standing there doesn't really have much of a camera move on it, but we did do for that first meeting scene between Ivo and Gerald, an actual motion control so that we could do some little operation. It's fun to briefly talk about just shooting the same actor playing two different roles in the same shot. So fun. I did that one time with a friend who played three different parts in the same scene. And I was like, wait a minute.

If I just took 50 or 70 % of this side of the screen and then did the other 70 % on hit, my God, they're in the same shot together. You've got more toys than that. Sometimes the simplest tricks are the best. And we were never trying to make anything harder for ourselves. It wasn't like, Hey, let's do motion control cameras. No, like when it adds something to the scene or the story or the moment, then sure. But we would still be shooting the movie right now if we were doing that. You have the toys, you keep playing with toys and all of a sudden you forget your business. Yeah, exactly. It's easy to get.

carried away. working with actors for a film like this, I'm curious how that process looks like. Is it different for them besides looking at tennis balls? Is Sonic usually a tennis ball or? We've been refining our methods. Sonic 1, they were definitely tennis balls involved. But what we also did is we cast an on-set Sonic. Scott Patey, an incredibly talented actor and great improv comedian. I wanted to give James Marsden and Tika Sumter just

somebody to play off of. You don't want it just being somebody just reading Sonic's lines, just very bare bones. Like you want to have real actors in there. And so while we would have a tennis ball or whatever in there for James's eyeline, we would take like in the scenes where Tom and Sonic are on the run and they're in the truck, like Scott would be wedged into the back seat and he'd be doing the lines with James. But what was great is after we did the scripted version a few times, like

then Scott would just start throwing out curve balls and they would do a little improv, which was awesome. And James is an incredibly funny guy and could roll with it and had fun with it. And so much of that is in the movie because it just feels organic and it feels real and you just get better performances. think the rapport is being built with James. Yeah. Yeah. It makes complete sense. By Sonic 3, we actually upgraded from tennis balls to puppets. We actually had puppets. We'd done a Knuckles television show where we had

Then the first experimenting with having a little Jim Henson style version of the characters that was the right size. And we'd put it, make sure it was like the right eye line. But then the puppeteers were all incredibly talented performers and they could do both. Right. So rather than it being a tennis ball and somebody doing the line, you're putting the, all that performance into one. So they're doing the little bit of puppetry.

and they could open the mouth, they could even do little blinks and little simple things and do the dialogue and do the ad libs and then that would all just get painted out. But they were very charming to have these little puppets around and I think the actors had a lot of fun with it and yeah, we just continue to experiment and try to improve our filmmaking. One of my questions was like, what's changed for good? How has it progressed the process between Sonic 1 and Sonic 3? That's a great example. Okay, what does post-production look like for you in this film? What does it look like? No, that's a great question because by and large,

It's more of an animated movie. If it doesn't have a human in it, then it's basically an animated movie. And there are scenes where the entire environment is CG and all the characters are computer generated. If it's been storyboarded, if we've done sort of layout and we've done previs and there is like that stuff does get put into the pipeline, into the visual effects pipeline and can start getting animated and actually created at any point. You don't want to just put everything off to post-production because it would just, it'd just be too much.

The reality is that you are still fine tuning the story. are still refining the edit. And so you don't want to put too much money or time or resources into visual effects too early because obviously if the shot gets cut and scene gets cut, but it happens and it's all part of the process. yeah, no, you're right. In some ways it is traditional post-production, but in other ways, when we are doing these very refined storyboards and animatics and previs, you're making the movie. Like those are all.

things like that are going to find their way into the film. I'm curious about just pacing in general. The first one had such good pacing. So it has to make its way into the previs, at least a little bit. And then you're refining the pacing on the back end, maybe? You can only take it so far because if I showed you a clip of what our previs looks like, the characters don't have any facial animation or expression. They're very limited in their movement. You can only edit it so tightly. And then once the animators come in,

Then the timing will fluctuate. If it's a dramatic moment, you're like, you know what? We need that look to last another 20 seconds. It needs to be more emotional. So all those little things fluctuate a little bit, but no, we really try to get it. But pacing another great question because it's like, it really is with these films, we make them for everybody. It's not like, let's just make a kid's film. Because there's so many fans like myself. I'm again, I was 13 when the first Sonic game came out. And I'd like to think that even if I have a five-year-old, but even if I didn't, I would be.

intrigued by the character and by the movie because I would have such nostalgia for it. We're just always trying to make sure that these things have a forward momentum. They have an energy that again is very appropriate for a character like Sonic, but also that you're telling a story that's got a lot of emotion, a lot of heart. And if we need to find those moments to slow down a little bit, to really make an emotion land, then of course, then we do. yeah, facing it really is everything.

with not just this film, but with all films. I look back at my first two micro-budget features and I'm like, want to go back in like George Lucas and just tighten it up. A little funky, a little off. It's so important, the rhythm of it all. You feel good about the movie? You just colored it yesterday. So what does it look like from here? What do you have to do now between now and December 20th when the film comes out? We've got some really

great promotion plan. We're going to go down to Brazil. I've never been to this big Comic Con event down there and there's a huge Sonic fan base. So we're all really excited. Just go down there and say hello and show some footage. And then, yeah, then we're going to do a big London premiere. And the UK was such a great home for us while we were making this movie. Like it was all shot over there. Okay. Einwood and just had an incredible crew over there and definitely feels very appropriate to go there and have a

moment there and then celebrate the release in London. And then we'll be headed back to LA and the kind of last stop will be just doing the premiere back home in LA. Yeah, lots of promotion, lots of talking it up and just letting people know what an exciting movie it is. But also I'm just so proud of the movie and I think it's really going to sell itself. It's just got everything that we've done in the other films, but it's just another level. Amazing. I'm excited. I feel like there's been an evolution here and I think Sonic 1 is, it's a simpler story. It's just Sonic and Rabbani.

And once we brought in Tails and Knuckles and got to go off on this big globetrotting adventure, like, it felt like the world was growing a little bit. And it's the exact same thing with this third film. The world's continuing to expand. We're bringing in more of these great characters. Shadow, Keanu playing Shadow. that's right. How was Keanu? He's the best. I've always heard he's the best. No, he's just incredible. Just so wonderful to work with. Really wanted to get it right and just gave us great stuff. Perfect.

So me and my kid will watch the first two and then I'm taking him on to the third one. Is this your trilogy that you're wrapping up or you might do another one of Too Soon to Say? Too Soon to Say, there's a lot of full circle kind of moments in the third film celebrating where we've been on the journey and the characters and callbacks and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I would stop short of calling it a trilogy or give it any finality, but it's a great celebration, I think, of where we've come since the first film.

Nice. Do you have any plans to do any live action films? Whenever we have a scene in any of these movies that doesn't have a CG character in it, like if it's just Agent Stone and Adam Pally, Lee Majub and Adam Pally in the last movie, there's a few moments where there were no CG characters. I'm just looking at the monitor to thinking like, people should make entire movies this way. Fantastic.

Because it's all just right there. What is what you get? And there are no tennis balls or lengthy animation conversations for the next six months. I would love to at some point. just feel like visual effects is such a component of who I am. It would hard to ever just walk away from all that too much. But if it was the right story in the right circumstances, I would love nothing more than to just be purely both feet in the world of live action.

What would you tell your earlier self if you were just starting out? What maybe information or advice or whatever would you give your earlier self? I'd say you're on the path. Keep pushing hard. Don't give up. Amazing things can happen, but you got to just keep busting your ass and working hard. Please like and subscribe to this podcast and follow us on social media at past present feature and let us know in the comments section what movies you're watching. Thank you so much for listening to the past present feature podcast and we'll see you next time.

Peace.