Hey guys.
Just getting ready to tape an episode of Recap.
But I got the chance to watch Spies in Disguise
last night and the directors are actually in the building today.
They're coming in for a quick chat.
Joyless: Lance Sterling -
the legendary spy who's always dressed to impress.
Lance: Woo!
Walter Beckett -
Graduated MIT at 15 and works in the tech innovations lab.
Walter: Imagine if I could make you disappear!
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[screams]
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What's the simplest explanation for what directors do
on an animated film?
Collaboration is the most important thing
working, I think, on any project, right?
Because we have 550 of the world's greatest artists
at Blue Sky Studios and our job is to communicate our
vision where we want to go, but also be open enough to
collaborating with them so that they can make it even
better than we imagine.
Lance: Don't you throw me off this roof!
He'll figure it out.
Did you see this, recently
Tom Holland was on a late night show and said this...
Did you have fun working with Will Smith?
Never met him.
We've been working together for two and a half years
and I just met him.
What's the secret
to building chemistry between two voice actors who are
never in the same room.
That is a tricky part
of the process, but that's-that's our job.
And either Nick or myself would be in the room with either
Will or Tom and we'd read.
We'd just read back and forth.
We make it really conversational,
we'd have fun, we'd laugh.
We'd take that, we'd go to the other one and say,
"Okay, here we go" and we'd read that.
And then we'd say, "That was really funny,
that part we just learned there."
We'd take that and go back to them
and back and back and forth.
And they were really generous with their time
to let us come back a number of times.
And that's what makes it feel really natural.
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Walter: We have different skill sets.
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That's what makes us such a great team.
Walter, you're squeezing too...
[pop] Ooh!
[all] Hm?
What happens in the submarine
stays in the submarine.
What's easier creating the animation first
or finding the voice actors first?
We wanted to create
a character with Lance Sterling that stood
shoulder to shoulder with James Bond, Ethan Hunt,
Jason Bourne, and we looked to the heroes we had
growing up and Will Smith kept coming up.
So we really built the character around him.
We knew Walter needed to be smart, opinionated,
a little socially awkward, right?
We liked to use the word "adorkable" and that one we
discovered a lot through animation first and then
we heard Tom Holland on a, what was it?
Troy: A trailer, way back, a couple years ago. Yeah.
And we go, "Who's that? That's the voice."
[beep]
Can you coo like a pigeon?
[tries to mimic a pigeon]
[laughs]
[beep]
Do you know hot air versus cold air?
No, I don't.
[exhales] Is breathing.
[exhales] Cold air is blowing.
So do hot air...
[exhales]
And do the gargle thing that you're doing.
[mimics a pigeon]
Now keep your jaw open...
Myah: OK.
..and put your lips closer together.
[mimics a pigeon]
[she laughs]
[beep]
The main message that I took away
is to embrace the weirdness.
Was there any other messages that you hope
the audience will take away?
Well, weird-- Weird is a good one.
Working together despite your philosophies can
really bring the world together and that's really important.
Troy: A pigeon is a flock animal
and Lance is a guy who flies solo.
You know, he's out there fighting bad guys
all on his own,
he doesn't trust anybody else.
It was really a way to take all of that great
cool physicality away from Lance Sterling and really
force him to trust in other people so he can
learn that he's actually stronger with the help
of people around him.
And then there's also
a non-violence message which is really important
because once we use violence to settle our
problems we definitely draw a line in the sand
and it creates a divide that makes it hard to
bring people together.
We learn a lot about pigeons
in the movie and I thought we could play a fast round of
Pigeon Facts.
Pigeons can fly up to 92.7 miles per hour.
[ding]
They can fly up to 100 miles away and be able to
find their way back
to a precise location.
[ding]
Because pigeons are so
fast they can see in a faster rate than we can see,
like seeing in slow motion, we refer to that as
pigeon bullet time.
[ding]
The fact that pigeons have their eyes in the side of
their head means they can see an almost 360 degrees
which means they can see your face and their butt
at the same time.
[ding]
Really hard to sneak up on a pigeon.
Wow.
Thank you so much for coming in.
The movie was great and I had a great time.
Oh, thank you so much.
[beep]
That was an intensive tutorial.
And then you open up your throat for a heavy one,
"Aaaah-oooo."
[mimics a pigeon]
Wow!
[laughter]
She's got it.
our pigeon voices I thinin the next movie.to for
Hey, I'm available.
[laughter]
[beep]
Well that was cool.
They were so playful.
Spies in Disguise hits theatres Christmas Day.
I'm Myah Elliot,
the host of Recap with CBC Kids News.
Happy holidays.
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