An all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza filled with wild-haired little creatures that live
in a fuzzy world packed with colour and sparkle.
That's DreamWorks latest animated movie, Trolls, starring Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, it's Jan here!
And in this video, I'm going to be revealing loads of crazy fun facts about the movie including
a bunch of easter eggs.
Just before I start, I'm running a giveaway for this gorgeous hardback book from Titan
called "The Art of DreamWorks Trolls" which is full of concept and production art and
info on the movie.
All you need to do for a chance to win a copy is subscribe and leave a comment or reply
to a comment about the film on this video.
And because you guys are so awesome, I've even got a bunch of bonus ways to enter the
giveaway, so check out the Gleam link in the video description below for more details.
Ok, now, let's take a look at 15 crazy fun facts and easter eggs in the movie Trolls.
Because hair is such an important and distinctive part of how the Trolls look, the animators
wanted to make sure they got it just right in the movie.
So, they filmed slow-motion footage of the original Troll toys and used it as a reference
to see how their hair moved.
In fact, the movie had a dedicated Hair Task Force, with hundreds of artists and technicians
working solely on hair effects.
And the DreamWorks tech team even created a brand new piece of software called Willow
to help make it easier for the movie's artists to style, simulate and preview the Trolls'
hair.
In total, the animators created 1.8 million strands of hair for the movie.
To give you an idea how that works out for individual characters, Poppy has almost 84,000
strands, while Branch has nearly 50,000 strands.
But the character who has the most hair on her head is Lady Glittersparkles, whose overall
style is pure 70s disco diva, and whose rainbow wig is made up of over 230,000 strands!
But even Lady Glittersparkles can't compete with the number of strands required to create
the hair plus all the fur on the giraffe-like Troll, Cooper, because his head and body took
over 800,000 strands!
Not only did the movie's crew have their work cut out creating masses of super-powered Troll
hair for the film, they also had to deal with tons of glitter.
And that was not easy as their computers could only make glitter look realistic when it was
motionless, and not when it was moving around and reflecting light as it needed to do in
the movie.
To solve this sparkly problem, DreamWorks tech team put on their thinking hats again
and invented another new piece of software, the GlitterFlakes Shader, which made glitter
flakes in the movie look randomly scattered about, as they'd naturally look in real life,
but also allowed the movie's artists to easily manipulate their movement, shape and reflectiveness.
If there's one thing that isn't sparkly in the Trolls movie, it's the unhappy, ogre-like
Bergens.
When the animators were designing the gloomy land where the Bergens live, they turned to
1970s suburbia for inspiration, which is why the Bergens' world is mainly coloured in earth
tones like shades of burnt orange, dark green, and gold, and that's also why Bergentown is
influenced by popular 1970s things like shag carpet, wood panelling, polyester, Formica,
and Brutalist architecture.
But the 1970s wasn't the only era that influenced the look of Bergentown.
The animators also looked further back, to the Middle Ages, and used the layout of walled
medieval villages as a reference for how they arranged Bergentown.
Although the technology exists to make animated movies look more photo-realistic than ever
before – think of the landscapes in Pixar's The Good Dinosaur, for example – the filmmakers
behind Trolls wanted their movie to have a very handmade, textured feel, so, to achieve
that, they based the film's look on felt, fabrics, and fibre art.
Which means that when the animators were creating the Trolls' super-fuzzy world, things like
macramé, felting techniques, flocked material, velvet, and knitting were a big influence
on its look.
And to give the crew a proper feel for how the Trolls world should look, the film's production
designer asked Iowa-based artist Sayuri Sasaki Hemann to create a model of the Troll forest
out of fibre and fabrics.
The hit song Can't Stop The Feeling was co-written by Justin Timberlake, who voices Branch, to
resolve a problem the filmmakers were having with how to change the Bergens' glum outlook
and bring the film to a satisfying close.
The directors didn't like the idea of the Bergens being transformed after hearing a
character give a motivational speech and they couldn't find a song to fit the moment, so
they asked Timberlake to write a song that would have the right effect and Can't Stop
the Feeling was the result!
As director Mike Mitchell says, the song 'creates happiness when you hear it', so it makes sense
that it would bring the Trolls and Bergens together in the movie.
And in keeping with the movie's 1970s feel, Timberlake, who's also the film's Executive
Music Producer, channelled a mix of Michael Jackson, the Bee Gees, and Bill Withers when
he wrote the song.
When it came to getting the right vibe between Poppy and Branch, who start off as polar opposites
and are both very determined characters, the filmmakers took cues from the classic 80s
action-comedy Romancing the Stone, specifically the on-screen energy and back-and-forth between
its stars Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas.
In fact, Romancing the Stone is actually one of Trolls director Mike Mitchell's favourite
movies.
According to the directors of Trolls, their movie's "strange fairytale-like dream" quality
owes a great deal to the odd creatures and dream-like worlds created by renowned Japanese
writer-director Hayao Miyazaki, who co-founded Studio Ghibli and gave us such classic animated
movies as Spirited Away.
And for the scene where Poppy sings "The Sound of Silence" accompanied by a variety of weird
and wonderful creatures and plant life, the filmmakers channelled not only Miyazaki, but
also the animated TV show Adventure Time.
And director Mike Mitchell has said that in this scene, Poppy is like a "quirky twist
on Snow White or Cinderella, who are friendly with all the forest creatures".
At the start of the movie, when Chef plucks what she believes to be a Troll from the Troll
tree for the young Prince Gristle to eat, the Bergens are all horrified to discover
that it's not a real-life Troll, but a wooden one, as the real Trolls have cunningly escaped.
This moment is a lovely Easter Egg and tribute to Thomas Dam, the Danish creator of the original
Troll toys that the movie is based on as the first funny little figures that he made were
carved out of wood.
And it was the popularity of those early wood carvings that led Dam to create the very first
Troll toys we know today!
And as a little Easter Egg and homage to the Troll dolls that became so popular in the
1960s and often didn't wear any clothes, the filmmakers invented a character for the movie
called Guy Diamond, who's naked except for glitter.
By the way, the character of Guy Diamond is voiced by The Big Bang Theory's Kunal Nayyar.
Trolls also makes references to a number of other movies and stories.
For example, when Poppy leaves the Troll village and heads to Bergentown to save her friends,
she crosses paths with a bunch of spiders, and falls through a series of webs getting
completely wrapped up in one of them.
That scene in the movie really tips its hat to Peter Jackson's movie The Hobbit: The Desolation
of Smaug, and in turn, of course, to JRR Tolkien's original novel The Hobbit.
And there's the scene where scullery maid Bridget, who's disguised as Lady Glittersparkles,
is on a date with King Gristle Jr and she gets all tongue-tied, so the Trolls help her
out telling her what to say.
Well, that scene is a nod to the French play Cyrano de Bergerac, which has been adapted
in many movies over the years, including the 1987 hit comedy Roxanne starring Steve Martin
and Daryl Hannah.
And when Lady Glittersparkles accidentally leaves behind one of her roller skates after
her date with King Gristle Jr, it's a clear shout-out to the story of Cinderella, which
has also been adapted for the big screen many times, including Disney's live-action version
with Lily James and Richard Madden, and Anna Kendrick also played Cinderella in Disney's
version of Into The Woods.
Speaking of roller skating, for the design of Captain Starfunkle's, the filmmakers took
cues from Moonlight Rollerway, a roller skating rink which is just a stone's throw from the
DreamWorks Animation offices in Glendale, California.
And, actually, the movie's crew went skating there several times while they were making
the film!
As well as co-directing the movie, Walt Dohrn also lends his voice to a number of small
characters including Smidge, who's a little Troll with a very deep voice; Mr Dinkles,
who's Biggie's pet worm; Fuzzbert, a Troll who's mostly hair with a pair of feet sticking
out; and Cloud Guy, the white sock-wearing, walking, talking cloud who loves high-fiving
everyone!
Dohrn's co-director, Mike Mitchell also stepped into the sound booth to record various voices
for the film including a Spider, and Captain Starfunkle, who serves pizza to King Gristle
Jr and Lady Glittersparkles during their date.
And the directors kept some of the other movie's cameos in the family with Iris Dohrn as Baby
Poppy, Phoebe Dohrn as a Bergen Girl, and Ollie and Emmett Mitchell as trolls.
Now, who's your favourite character in Trolls?
And what would you like to see happen in a Trolls sequel?
Tell me in the comments below!
And don't forget to subscribe and comment for your chance to win this gorgeous The Art
of DreamWorks Trolls hardback book!
So, guys, if you liked this video, do also check out my Trolls movie review and my animation
playlist here.
I always appreciate your likes, shares, and comments on my videos.
For bonus ways to enter the giveaway, check out the Gleam link in the video description
below.
Thanks for watching and see ya next time.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!