Hello, everyone, I am the director of...
Mike Mitchell, of Shrek Forever After,
and this is the Shrek Forever After team.
Why don't you guys introduce yourselves.
OK, I'm Walt Dohrn, I'm the head of story,
as well as the voice of Rumpelstiltskin.
I am Gina Shay. I'm one of the producers, and this is...
I'm Teresa Cheng, the other producer.
And here we go.
It's a book.
They know that it's a book. We don't have to tell them what it is.
For this one we did decide to go back to the classic intro of the Shrek movies.
- We did. - And use the book again.
- Yes. - To remind everyone of, you know,
- what story we had told so far. - Shrek One and Shrek Two
started with the book, and it was a beautiful opening
- and we wanted to do that again. - And these are beautifully designed
by Griselda Sastrawinata.
It's a crazy last name that Griselda has.
- Look how pretty they are. - We also thought it'd be a nice...
You know, using 3-D this time,
to have this book kind of float out into the audience, which it really does.
And this big 3-D moment here, which our sound guy,
Ethan Van der Ryn, really did an awesome job here.
And also this is animated by Marek...
- Marek Kochout. - ...Kochout, who did a great job.
Look at all those horses. That's a lot of horses to animate there.
And Daniel Hashimoto did the book, the 2-D part, the horses.
Otherwise known as Hashi.
And the witch trailer park.
- The Cronies' Nest. - It's the Crone's Nest.
- We went through a lot of names. - We did. We had a list of names.
All the art department were really helpful coming up with names.
There's Witchard, the one male person
- in the whole witch camp. - One male witch.
One male witch. He's really a vampire, technically.
It's a man-witch.
And there's Rumpel's carriage, that was designed 18,000 different ways,
- but always as an egg. - We never swayed from the egg.
I think that actually tied into Fifi really well.
- Yeah. - Maybe that's how we came up with Fifi.
- Fifi is the pet goose... - Yeah.
- ...that grew in size over time. - One of the most questions asked
is how did that little goose become big, and we refuse to answer it.
- Age. As we all do. - It's supposed to be a passage of time.
- See, there's... - There's Walt Dohrn.
- Walt Dohrn. - Thank you.
- You did it. - You'll see it's very creepy here.
You can hear everyone creeped out by his kiss.
- And look at the super favourite, Fifi. - Lowering.
That was actually how it looked like in RLO.
It's a very rudimentary way before it's animated.
Yong Duk, our cinematographer,
lays stuff out in a very simple way. And we just kept that move.
That's how the goose went down and we were like, "Hey."
We should say, it was fun to bring, like, John...
- John Cleese? - Yes.
Since, you know, he had died, this was an opportunity to bring him back
and it was a fun day recording him, as well as Julie...
Julie Andrews is amazing. We said... We told John that he did such
a beloved character that we're killing him twice in the franchise, which we do.
We kill the king...
How very dramatic.
See, Fifi is tiny there and later she's big enough to pull the carriage.
She is a magical goose. I mean, she does have teeth.
- Here he comes, one of our buddies. - Here he is.
Right. It's a...
- "She's been..." Chris Miller. - Yeah, that's...
That's Chris Miller, the voice of the Magic Mirror,
and a director at DreamWorks Animation that does that guy that burst in.
- That's how angry you are, Walt. - Yeah.
I think I really was angry that day.
There's Cody Cameron, does Pinocchio's voice.
He's a board artist, a very talented man.
- He also does the Three Pigs. - Yes.
We had to enlarge Pinocchio's foot there. Does anyone know that?
Is that a stunt foot?
The stunt foot, that foot is 150 times larger than it really is.
You know, that real boy, "You want to be?" creepy thing
really came from Derek Drymon early, early on.
- Yeah, in the alley. - That's right. It stuck.
Yeah.
"Do you want to be a real boy?" That was Drymon, a board artist.
And then, of course, this great sequence was designed originally by Dave Smith.
- Yes. - The whole intent of it and the idea.
The whole idea of the repetitive...
His rhythm when he was pitching it was just amazing,
and it always cracked everyone up in the room.
- Yeah... - And it sold the... It actually sold
- the idea of Shrek's problem. - Yeah.
Well, that was one of the things I really liked about this is he's not
that same ogre that he was in Shrek I, right?
And it was nice... I think it was nice for the...
It was actually Josh Klausner, our writer,
and helped come up with that, that that's Shrek's problem.
He's not that same... He's not that same ogre:
He's got three kids, he's not scary anymore.
He's becoming a studio icon for DreamWorks Animation.
And talk about real, I mean, this coming from Dave,
this came from a lot of us, where I think Dave really felt this way.
- Yeah. - So he had this honesty
of what a father feels like in his life.
Yeah, we all have kids.
Actually, fathers really relate to this...
- Yes. Yes. - ...particular dilemma.
We all have relatively same age kids, too.
- Yeah. - In fact, my boy does the voice
of the little girl. I told him that he's not doing the voice of the girl.
He thinks he's just one of the ogre boys...
- Uh-oh. - ...but Ollie does the voice
of little Felicia.
My daughter thinks she's the one doing the voice of little Felicia.
Let's make sure they never watch this commentary.
Especially Ollie. Oh, One Love.
This was... Onur Yeldan animated that. It's beautiful, isn't it?
- Look at that hug and the kiss. - The audience really likes that moment.
Yeah, and Antonio sings it, the full song, on the soundtrack.
- It's beautiful. It's so good. - It's great.
Beautiful lighting by Marc Scott's team.
- Beautiful pee by the effects team. - It was a shocking, shocking joke.
It's not really urine. That's one of those reactions in the audience
where people are going, "No, you didn't!"
We should mention you as the voice of the tour guide.
Let's not. Does he still have the name tag that has my name?
Yeah, it used to be Walt, but then we cast Walt as a lead,
and we were like, "We gonna take some voices away."
Walt was doing every voice in the film.
There goes another day rate for me.
That was funny, the punching that the animators did there.
Yeah, it's a great addition.
Funny. That's Ben, Big Ben.
You're still laughing at this. That's so nice, that's so sweet.
We have all seen this film probably 10,000 times by now.
I do think we edited this sequence over a hundred times.
Do you know why? Because we always started to stray away
from the original Dave Smith storyboards,
and every time we added something, or took away something, it lost its rhythm.
So it's a really testament to the wonderful Dave Smith.
- He's a great board artist. - Some great animation here of...
- Too bad he hates us all. - Not true.
I know, that's not true.
- This is... he looks so real there. - Oh, that was...
Jason Ryan animated his face. It was really well done by Jason Ryan,
an animator. And Ben Willis did a lot of this
Shrek looking in the mirror, which is some nice acting.
- Very introspective. - Another moment
we came up with early... We thought it was interesting to see
that Shrek is not that same ogre.
He kind of liked being that ogre that he was in the original Shrek movie,
which was the original Shrek movie, one of the best told fairy tales
of all time.
This is... this is... Ben Willis animated this.
The lighting is really pretty, too, by the way.
- Me. - This is a song by the Scissor Sisters.
Yeah.
It's also interesting that I think this movie shows Shrek without his shirt on
for the longest than any other Shrek movie.
I find Shrek to be... He kind of is like the Tony Soprano for kids.
And I like how he's just a big...
- He kind of has the build. - He does.
The animators, like, referenced a lot of Tony Soprano, too, for Shrek,
which is nice.
We cut out a scene here where she does eat the valet.
It was Nick Fletcher's idea.
Nick Fletcher, our editor, storyboarded it himself.
- He was so passionate about it. - She was chasing the valet
through the...
Some other DreamWorks employees doing some of these voices.
- Right there. There's Hoppy's voice. - And Jim Ryan.
Jim Ryan, one of our editors.
- I just love this band. - Look how obnoxious they are.
- Totally... - Yeah, Peter Zaslav
- I think designed that. I'm not sure. - Yeah.
He's our production designer.
Little squeaky thing. I remember that being designed, too.
The little... Sir Squeakles is the name of that toy.
And look who it is. Your buddy, your dad. There's you.
- Ryan Seacrest. - Ryan Seacrest is the voice
- of my father. - And there you are, Butter Pants.
Butter Pants, based on my youngest boy, Emmett.
- He was based on you as a boy. - All right, fine.
There's Conrad Vernon doing the voice of Gingy.
- And Muffin Man. Boy. - He plays him and his father.
This cake... I've got to give a shout-out to Gina Shay,
actually baked this cake in real life, not in CG world.
As proof of concept, to say a cake can be a story point
and really annoying.
- Did it ever get eaten? - No.
My kids Miles and Nina helped me make the cake.
It was very nice. When you brought that in, we were like, "There it is."
A lot of licking in this movie, I've noticed, too.
Donkey just licked and then the kids licking.
- Shall we count the licks? - Yeah, there's...
- Let's do a lick count. - I think... Is that two?
Look at all the extra animation, too. Every once in a while,
you see one of those little dronkeys flying through.
Remember us negotiating about that, Teresa? It was very nice that we...
Look. It kind of adds a craziness to it, all those little guys flying through.
And Gingy chaps. That was the first joke ever written, I think.
It was a super community-written scene. Everybody had a little touch on it.
Everyone touched it.
Very complex and beautiful lighting by Pablo Valle's team.
It really is. And, by the way, it changes subtly, because we see...
We come back to this at the end of the movie, right, Teresa?
And it's a little... Right now it's a little obnoxious, and then at the end
- it's more warm and lovely. - You'll see it in a minute.
That was Ben. Big Ben did the face manoeuvres, Ben Rush.
It's one of the most pushed faces I've ever seen on Shrek.
That was another thing we did on this movie, is at the beginning,
I'm gonna tech talk to you guys, Shrek has, like, 1,085
things in his face now, and at the first movie he had like 400.
- Or so they tell me. - You can tell.
He had a lot more complicated emotions to express in this movie.
I think so. As it's really told from Shrek's perspective, this whole movie.
It's like we're learning things
- when Shrek learns something. - Yeah.
And to initiate those expressions,
we went to marriage counsellors to figure out how to write this.
- We did. We did. - That's how real...
We went to three or four marriage counsellors.
And actually we did a lot of work on our own relationships together,
- as a Shrek team. - Yeah, we're very healthy.
Do you know what came out of that? We really did,
because we wanted this fight to be real and we wanted it to be, you know,
we really wanted it to strike a chord,
but the one thing that all the marriage counsellors...
They gave us a whole bunch of great information,
but they all walked away going, "Shrek cannot smash that cake."
- Right. - "That is out of bounds.
You cannot smash the cake.
That is angry dad. That's gonna scare kids."
- Like, "Well..." - I think it gave it that weight
at the end of the scene. We should say something about Mike Myers
and Cameron Diaz here. It's an amazing performance.
- Yeah. - I think Cameron is...
Both of them are really great.
This is Steve Melagrano, animated this little scene here.
A lot of Shrek acting.
What I really like about this scene as well
is that you think about making a 3-D movie and all the bang, zoom about it.
- Yeah. - And always the joke was you could take
My Dinner with Andre and invest yourself in it,
and this scene really becomes that kind of thing.
Where it's a 3-D movie, but the base is this husband and wife argument.
Yeah. It was really weird, what he just said. Right there to her.
Yeah, he basically just told Fiona that he wishes he never married her,
which is pretty harsh, but I think it happens sometimes.
- So... - It happened to me.
You can feel the audience gasp when he does that. They're like...
There the goose is big. Why is that? I wonder why.
She aged.
I love this acting by Walt.
- One of the earlier discoveries. - It was one of the first performances.
It was his fake... It's really interesting what Walt...
Even in the design, too, we had to make him...
...'cause Shrek's no dummy. We had to make him trusting
and innocent, but then be able to be really evil
and manipulative at the same time.
There's something about those big eyes that people feel empathy for him.
- Yeah... - And look how he pokes out cute,
just like your boards. Walt boarded this.
- You and I boarded it together. - We held hands and boarded it.
- Together. - Not exaggerating.
There, Jason did this bit. Jason, our head of animation, Jason Reisig.
Look at his little, tiny feet walking backwards. That's hard to do.
Apparently, his feet are like a children's shoe size.
Little, tiny, tiny... He's got little tiny hooves.
And it took a while to get that little walk. We...
The animators and I looked at Muppets, like, walking across the floor.
You know how Kermit the Frog goes...
- Right here... He's got little, tiny... - Kermit riding the bike.
I get a lot of comparisons in the interviews.
People talk to me and they say, "He reminds me of Chucky a little bit."
- Have you heard this? - Yeah.
Dave Hubert animated that mixing drink bit. That was nice.
This scene was done very early on and was used to showcase the movie
in all your presentations, Mike, remember?
It was, it's true.
And Greg Lev's team did the lighting on this, which is spectacular.
- I love the lighting. - Yeah.
It's a shame, you never see the beautifully designed light
that's right above them, you know, that's casting...
You see it for a second when he saw the rat belly.
There's his bed up there behind him.
- A little picture of Fifi. - I never noticed.
Yeah, a picture of Fifi.
There's a little box of tissues up there if you look closely.
Again this...
It's another kind of My Dinner with Andre scene,
- where it's two characters interacting. - Oh, yeah.
And we knew that it's a very small space, which, needless to say,
we cheated it up, right? We're inside his carriage.
This is Martin Hopkins, did a lot of this, I think.
- The animator, Martin Hopkins. - Yeah.
"...made sense."
So anyway, Shrek is locked down,
he's kind of trapped, and so we used Rumpel's energy
to kind of swirl and move around the room, right?
- Yeah. - That's how we did it
when we boarded it. And then RLO really helped out, too, to snake the camera
in little corners and crevices.
By the way, RLO means "rough layout," which is basically the cinematography.
Rough layout. Yes, cinematography, Yong Duk and his team.
Led by Yong Duk Jhun.
All those contracts. Are those signed?
- Are those ones that aren't signed? - They're not signed.
They're ones that he worked on. He's desperate to make a deal.
I want to see a few of them.
- Well, one of them is "Be A Real Boy." - True.
One of them's...
- I love how... - "King for a Day! Knight for a Week!"
I love how Rumpel is distracting Shrek, to stop placing importance on this.
- And then this is a hook moment. - Yeah.
- There's his hook right there. - Watch this.
Is that Ben Rush as well?
- I think so. Rush... - And Effects put a little bit of spit
in his mouth. I remember Doug Cooper is like, "Do you want spit here?"
Oh, please.
I think that's so beautifully designed, too, that Peter Zaslav
made a little pretty plate there, and I don't know if anyone notices,
- that it's like... - Oh, we should...
- He's suddenly the Iron Chef. - We feel it.
He made a beautifully little
- designed rat butt. - Garnished... Yeah.
Let's give some accolades to Max Boas
for coming up with the final design for Rumpelstiltskin's face, which...
- Is based on his own face. - Closely resembles...
- Yeah. Yeah. - It is.
That's Max, has a chin just like Rumpel.
- Can we hold up a photograph of Max? - And Max looks like this.
- Yeah. - We'll edit...
Based on a drawing by Mike Hernandez, our other art director.
Mike Hernandez did a lot of work on not only the ogres... They both did ogres.
Do you know what? We should have mentioned for Honey Boy, too, that...
- Butter Pants. - I'm sorry, Butter Pants.
He has two names. His dad calls him Honey Boy.
Now, I've forgotten who designed him.
- Patrick. - Patrick.
- Patrick Mate. - Patrick Mate.
Patrick Mate designed a lot of our lead ogres and Butter Pants.
- Look at this effect. - Derek Drymon did the toes.
Oh, yeah, the toes, which we thought would never be in the film.
We're like, "You can't make the toes burst out of the shoes."
- Yeah, that goes... - It looked very funny
in Derek Drymon's boards.
And we recorded this score at Abbey Road.
- That's your daughter there, Gina. - That's Nina.
Crash.
I think originally that thing exploded.
- Well, Paul Fisher, remember? - Why didn't we do that? That was funny.
- Because they can't. - We couldn't justify it exploding.
It's my favourite song in the whole movie.
It was a great contrast to what Shrek was doing.
Chris Douridas said the other day, he said this was
one of best representations, like one of the best musical montages,
like the organic feeling with the song and the rhythm and the animation.
The song fits the sequence? That's nice
- to hear from the Chris Douridas. - Yeah.
- Our music supervisor. - Look at him dance.
That was Aron Warner's idea, to have him twirl in his dress.
Aron Warner is the voice of the wolf, executive producer.
- Executive producer. - Look, there's a 3-D spit take.
I don't know if anyone's ever seen...
That watermelon scene that's coming up by Yong Duk's team.
- John McInnis. - John McInnis came up with that joke.
He's very clever.
- Oh, dear. - Here's one of your jokes.
- That looks... - Extreme skateboarding.
- Let's not talk about that. - No irony, whatsoever.
- I thought it was funny, and then... - It is funny.
- Extreme skateboarding with Shrek. - The contrast of Shrek doing that
- with the Carpenters playing... - Oh, dear.
...is a good stew happening.
But the sign says "The Red Lion," which is where we wrote most of the movie,
- in Silver Lake. - Yeah.
Do you know who boarded this sequence, too? This was Paul Fisher.
Really owned this sequence. He did the whole sequence, Paul Fisher.
And here is... David Pate animated this.
Look at his finger. Watch Shrek's finger go... boing.
David Pate'll hate me for that, but I don't care. He's an amazing animator.
- He's the most subtle, emotional. - Look at it.
He gets the emotion across in the most subtle way and it's so real.
- Yeah. - It's so real.
It looks like Shrek in a suit sometimes when he animates.
- This is one of the first sequences... - Dried up the swamp.
Don't they have to animate each reed that he hits here, Teresa?
The ones that interact with him, they have to do.
- What a pain. - Don't they have a giant laser beam
- that just... move. - Yeah, that's what they do.
- My home. - This is quite a sequence, too.
This is one of the first scenes we recorded with Mike Myers, too,
who, by the way, was terrific and hilarious to work with,
especially when he imitates Lorne Michaels and tells us stories
about Saturday Night Live.
Look at this.
This next shot, I swear it looks like Shrek in a suit here standing up.
- It looks so real. - In 3-D, you could see the little...
- What's that stuff called in the air? - Particles.
Particles in the air. It looks very nice through the sun beams.
A lot of rats in this film, too, by the way.
But this again is another different kind of use of 3-D,
where you see the emptiness and you feel it a little bit more.
You feel that you're in the space with Shrek,
because again this is all through Shrek's perspective.
"Turn things back the way they used to be."
- Yeah. - We still have...
And we'll call it a day.
- Here come the witches, right? - I think Michelle animated this.
- Michelle Cowart? - Yup.
I love it. Look at that.
- This is Kathy Griffin. Right? - Yeah.
She's our lead witch. She's very funny. That was fun recording with her.
- Wasn't it? - Yeah.
Some of our other witches are Lake Bell...
- Kristen Schaal. - Kristen Schaal, who is the super fan
from Flight of the Conchords. There she is. There's Kristen.
- She's about to go into the... - Mary Kay Place.
- From Big Love.
She's from everything. There's Mary Kay Place.
- Billie Hayes did a little bit. - Billie Hayes, Witchiepoo
from Pufnstuf, did a lot of the cackling.
And my favourite, which is played by Mike Mitchell.
Baba.
Anyway, this scene was boarded by Anthony Zierhut,
and we stuck really close
- to his boards. Do you remember? - Yeah.
Anthony Zierhut was a board artist that we're lucky enough...
He's a director as well. But we got him from...
He usually boarded on the Spider-Man movies with Sam Raimi,
- and he boarded this whole sequence. - Yeah, he invented all these weapons.
He did a lot of research from these old '70s bikers movie.
He wanted to treat the witches like these bikers circling the victims.
Yeah, that's cool.
Bikers circling the dame.
- Usually at a gas station. - Yeah.
- Revving their engines.
But it ended up a lot scarier than I think we went.
That's interesting, and the boards... We always laughed at the witches.
And then we laughed at them when they're animated.
And then when they do the final textures on their skin,
then suddenly they're evil. And they had, like, black gums
- and a black tongue... - They were scary.
Remember the first time we saw them in this scene?
- Yeah. - We had to pull back, didn't we?
It looked like cement. It looked like stone-cold dead bodies.
They were scary, scary. They're still kind of scary,
scarier than I thought they were.
This is alternate reality as represented by Peter Zaslav's design.
Yeah, Peter Zaslav. Look at that.
It's great Eddie Murphy performances here.
Eddie, whenever he sings, it's so funny and amazing.
Think we had a number of songs... tried out.
Eddie's sang a lot of, a lot of songs for us. He was really polite to do that.
- He's a really good singer, too. - He is.
This scene. Look at the ground plane.
- We had to let that one go. - What was that?
Let's not point out the things that are wrong.
Let's point out the good things. Don't talk about the muddy things,
- just the sunny things, Gina. - You're right.
Again, I think this was Dave's concept, using Donkey as a radio.
- Dave Smith again. - That's right. Dave Smith,
board artist, came up with that Donkey was a cart radio
and that the two drivers are arguing over the radio,
which often happens on road trips.
It started out with Cyclops and his daughter, taking his...
Cyclops was taking his daughter to college.
- Yes. - That was... That part didn't stick.
Look, here's just a taste of what the sequence used to be.
This is Ben Willis animated this, and this used to be 45 minutes long.
And it was storyboarded by Bryan Andrews.
The amazing Bryan Andrews, and it was a whole long fight sequence
- that went on and on. It was awesome. - And we stuck with it forever
because we just so loved Gingy acting that way.
- I know. - I'm glad there's a piece in there.
And it ended with Shrek being tied down
- by Lilliputian leprechauns. - There's a leprechaun sequence. We...
There's a few things that you and I always wanted in a Shrek movie, Walt,
- and it's leprechauns and unicorns. - And shillelaghs.
- They have little shillelaghs. - We didn't get a unicorn in this one.
- We did. - Did their voices, too.
- Where was it? - It's in the book.
- It's not animated. - That's right, in the book.
- And look at... - This is our first...
- ...view of the ogres. - Other ogres.
- Oh, my gosh. - And here's Peter Zaslav's big "R."
I feel like he puts an R on everything.
You know, he had a "P" on his coffee cup for Peter.
- I know. Make fun of them. - I think I know where that came from.
Beautiful surfacing job on that R, though.
- Yes, it's amazing. - Iron gate.
This is interesting. Chains are very difficult to do,
so we just decided to make the chains into broomsticks that are holding Shrek.
- I thought that was kind of a nice... - It's even scarier.
- They're more aggressive. - What's funny, too, is the guy thing.
- It looks like a dog catcher. - It is, it's like a rabid dog.
The guys that animated the cycles for these witch dances,
they're the funniest dances.
You kinda can't see them, but they are hysterical when you see them
on their own, like how the witches dance.
There's one that has kind of a country western style dancing.
Two-step. Little two-step to the left and the right.
- Yeah, yeah. - A little two step. One hoof out.
- Two hoof out. - There are 400 witches in this scene.
- Mike Simpson... - He did the music for this
- and we loved it. - Mike Simpson,
one half of the Dust Brothers.
- He also produced a lot of the... - Aron Warner.
...Beck albums and Beastie Boys albums.
- He's cool. - He's so cool.
- Rumpel's wigs. He has four wigs. - ...Mike Simpson.
Oh, yeah, there's the first wig.
Although there were a lot more in concept.
- There was even the JFK at some point. - Yes.
Yes, there was the...
There's a boat in one of his wigs, right?
- Yeah. - With a swan.
Wasn't there the Cindy Wig? There's a whole bunch of them.
- Shoes, too. - Look how real that ink looks. Crazy.
It's the effects team led by Alex Ongaro.
Peter Zaslav came up with this spotlight concept,
that one window is open to make a spotlight. Isn't that pretty?
Yeah, really dramatic. Here's the touching of the ear.
Yeah, I've always... I was disturbed by that,
and I tried to talk everyone out of it.
And you guys ganged up on me. It was like, "Let him touch his ear."
He's such a jerk and that is a really jerk move.
- I hate your character in this, Walt. - Thank you.
- I'm so mad at him. Look at him. - We tried really hard.
This is his most hateful scene, I think. He's so mean here.
Here's where we kill John Cleese and Julie Andrews. Not fair.
No!
He reached into the flashback to get that crown. That's interesting.
- How do you do that? - Hours of discussion about that.
- Artistic license. - Wait, this is...
- John Hill's coming up... - Yup.
- ...when he does the splits. - I think that blew everyone's mind.
I think that helped define how he could move, that split move.
John Hill even animated this part, too, he really...
John Hill was one of our animators. He was our lead, one of our leads,
that helped us discover how to make Rumpel move
- in the most annoying manner. - This is him humming
Happy Birthday here.
Here it goes, splits.
Did you hear it? John Hill does the splits,
but Ethan Van der Ryn put a little squeak in there
- that helps it be annoying. - Perfect.
- Here comes Darren Lemke's... - "Hourglass."
Yes, our writer, Darren Lemke, incorporated this hourglass,
which became a very handy story element.
- Ticking clock. - A ticking clock.
He was essential. This scene is good...
...a good showing of how Lemke treated exposition
- and making fun... - Yeah.
That's true. This is so much information
and we wanted to make sure that kids could understand what was going on
as well, and Darren Lemke was instrumental
in laying the scene out where you really understand what has just transpired.
This is kind of inspired by old '60s films, too.
- Psychedelics? - Yeah.
Notice all the goose motif in all his furniture.
He hears it. Watch, he hears it.
Did you see that? Yes, there's goose motifs all over the place.
He's obsessed with Fifi.
Listen to Eddie Murphy make stuff up.
I think that went on for about ten minutes.
Yeah, we had ten minutes. It was hard to cut,
but we kept the "your feet be comfortable, breeze on your toes."
Gina came up with "Flip-flop Fridays," though,
'cause she doesn't like people to wear flip flops, I found out
when she told me one day to not wear flip flops anymore.
This is an old English Beat song called Click Click,
and Light FM and Lloyd Hemmings, they did the cover.
- Look at this 3-D moment. - It took us...
We went through about 25 million songs.
I was trying to think literally how many, maybe a couple hundred.
More than that. I did, until four in the morning every other night.
- You love listening to music. - I do.
- What are you complaining about? - Beautiful lighting done
- by Betsy Nofsinger's team... - Didn't get much sleep.
- ...on this scene... - Nofsinger.
...and the last scene in Rumpel's lair.
- Rumpel's lair. Yeah, Betsy... - Really difficult.
- Archie Donato was the lead. - Really difficult stuff.
Those lighters, look at that. It's beautiful.
- One of the leads. - Look at it.
It's mind-blowing, the scale on this and...
Eddie Murphy.
I love how Shrek covers Donkey's eyes before...
- Like a mom holding the kid before... - Yeah.
- Here it comes. - John Hill animated this.
Watch his little twitch. He almost likes it for a second,
and then he goes... Shakes it out, he's like...
Dave Smith came up with that in boards.
- That's a Dave Smith. - I love the joke.
- God, Dave Smith. - Yeah. The wigs.
That's always a moment there where the audience finally feels like
they could laugh at Rumpel and not be so scared of him.
I just feel like the kids go, "Oh, he's funny," and then they can laugh at him.
I believe this was one of the first scenes we really worked on, isn't it?
- Yeah, 'cause... - He used to barf there. Remember?
Yeah, he used to throw up. And we couldn't make it funny.
- Aron Warner liked the barf and... - Cute.
- ...we couldn't get it to look cute. - I kind of miss it.
Mike kept asking the effects guys, "Can you make barf look cute?"
- Cute and funny barf, not disturbing. - They tried.
- And it was so funny, because... - They tried.
- Mike Myers is... - Who's our head of effects?
- Alex Ongaro. - Alex Ongaro.
- Alex Ongaro. He's like, "I do it." - Mr. "We do it."
And I was like, "What's the dumbest thing you've ever heard?"
"Someone asking me to make vomit cute."
- Mike Myers is so funny here. - Yeah.
He knows how to sing, and he purposely...
We figured that Shrek would not know how to sing very well,
and so Mike Myers was very clever in doing that.
And this was... Didn't Maggie board this?
She did. It was originally, again, Mr. Dave Smith.
It seems like he did the whole movie now,
but I think... it was after this, it's no more Dave.
- Look at that face. - Maggie Kang.
- Maggie really helped. And Joel. - Joel, yeah.
There's a little scene coming up that Joel did that's just so...
Spot on. They followed his boards
in animation exactly, Joel Crawford.
- This... Oh, yeah. - Shrek on a log.
This scene still chokes me up.
- I might even cry now. - Yeah.
- Please don't cry on camera. - We might have to stop the tape.
Well, are you...? Do you want me to hold you again?
- Come here. - It really is effective.
I mean, the idea of losing his children
and having that photographable idea there.
It's also sad to see this in the theatre and hear all the kids go,
"Mommy, where's the babies?"
Makes me feel a little guilty.
- There. - Very nice camera work
done by Yong Duk's team there.
- And boarded by Joel. - Yup.
That's Philippe LeBrun, did that nose rub there.
- Animated it. - Yeah.
- I love this joke. - At one point it sort of,
instead of "baby grandma kittens," it was "baby grandma unicorns."
- Yeah, that's right. - We wanted to see a tiny baby...
It was a tiny joke that we overdid, didn't we?
And we even started it to have tiny baby...
- We designed them. - We drew them.
They had little glasses with the...
Look at this. Maryann Malcomb animated this.
Look at this. I love it, how Donkey looks at him.
Look how Donkey sits. It's great. I love it. It's good animation.
I like it, too, in the first Shrek, Donkey acted a lot like a dog.
And so in this movie, we're really conscious, the animators,
we wanted to get that kind of dog feeling back to Donkey.
He'd started to become more... more human. We wanted to get him...
That's...
Griselda sat down and figured out how to fold this contract up.
- Yeah, for real. - She actually designed a fold up.
Is that Pierre that did this animation, Pierre Perifel?
- No, that's... - This is also great exposition,
all, you know, delivery of exposition and rules and goals and stuff.
Yeah.
- I think we tried to figure out... - There's Joel's boards exactly.
Right there. Joel Crawford's boards.
I think we tried to figure out with Darren Lemke what all
the different things you could spell out with the words "True Love's Kiss."
He did he came up with "Try Lou's Bliss," Darren Lemke did.
- He used some program online. Yeah. - Oh, did he?
- He cheated. OK. - He did.
- Now, we know. - You can do it on the Internet.
- I should take that one back. - He's fast, but not that fast.
There was lists of it. There was like, "Let elves ski"
- or something like that. - Yeah.
- Which would have been interesting. - Yeah.
It's so funny how our composer did a waltz song in there.
- I love it so much. - During that one little section?
- It's one of my favourites. - It's like a little waltz
- when he picks him up and... - Me?
Know how to waltz Dohrn?
- A dance waltz. - Waltz Dohrn.
- It's the new dance craze. - Guys, let's focus.
As if anyone's still listening at this point.
- Lemke is. - Hi, Lemke.
Hi. Lemke... It was because of Darren Lemke
is how we came up with Fifi, remember? I don't even know if Darren knows that.
- Oh, yeah, we could tell that story. - It's too long.
It has to do with his little dog, this Chihuahua that he has.
Yeah, this whole next sequence,
or this sequence here, was all boarded by Maggie
- and stayed really close to our boards. - It did.
- She really got the emotion of Shrek. - She did.
Maggie Kang.
Yeah, that's right, this whole scene, she owned
- this whole sequence, didn't she? - Yeah.
She caught it right out the gate.
She knocked this one right into the ballpark.
Here's another kid question. "Mommy, what are those?"
They're elf tears. I don't even know what that means.
Mike had to have them make these bigger...
- I did. They looked too scribbly. - ...to read. Hash marks.
And so we had to go back and redo them.
- Here we go. A toe ring. - Listen to him.
We always picture him crushing it right here. Crunch.
And then putting it on.
- This is animated by Dave Pate. - Dave Pate, another David Pate.
Yeah, look how real he looks there. It's unnerving.
It's funny, whoever animates him makes him look a little bit like himself.
- I know. - It looks a little like David.
This is where people whisper, "It's Farquaad."
With the elf.
And unfortunately, we haven't done our job, or...
It keeps them engaged and interested and then they get the surprise.
It's cleared up here.
This is another sequence that actually Lemke wrote all these jokes.
- Yeah. - You guys know that?
"I'm not a donkey, I'm a dog."
But then Mike Myers added a lot of this, "Way you go."
Yeah.
There's another Dave Pate.
"Way you go, girl."
I like how we got Donkey's fur
- all matted and fluffed out. - Yeah, Donkey looks different.
I think it started out where it's even more extreme.
It was disgusting. He had whip marks and patches on him
but we had to pull back on, and it wasn't until we saw it,
- we're like, "Oh, no, that's too sad." - But now he ends up looking cute.
This is like a Kramer vs. Kramer scene, with the ice cream.
With Dustin Hoffman and the kid in Kramer vs. Kramer,
- where the kid's taking the ice cream. - Our boss loves this scene.
This is... and our head of animation, Jason Reisig, animated most of it.
- He did a great job. - I still find it odd
- that there's a fork on the top of it. - Oh, well.
- It's ready for you. Yeah. - Makes it more tasty.
Makes it more real, gives it scale.
I like these little contraptions that the...
...the creatures on the other side of the tunnel have come up with.
Look how beautiful this lighting is, too.
In 3-D, it looks really spectacular, crawling through this tunnel.
That's Pablo Valle's team, did that.
- And here we are in Ogre Camp. - Look at that.
The most difficult scene
- to storyboard of all time. - We storyboarded it.
It was a big deal, because we'd never seen ogres before,
especially this amount and...
We've only seen Shrek, Fiona and their three kids.
And from Shrek's point of view, he hasn't seen an ogre since he was seven.
Ever. There's...
The great Jane Lynch. The funny Jane Lynch.
And there is Jon Hamm from Mad Men.
He's... He's not only a fine actor, very sexy,
but he's also very funny. He's got a great sense of humour, Jon Hamm.
And for a long time, remember,
we were exploring Jon Hamm, you know, Brogan and Fiona
- as they have a relationship. - Yeah. Fiona's love interest.
Gina came up with that joke right there. What if they could make this tune
through their ears?
I remember you and Lemke were wondering
- what their little war cry could be. - Yeah.
Look, here's a mistake, a gaffe.
What happens to that apple in Donkey's mouth?
- He spits it out earlier. - There's Craig Robinson.
The funniest man in the world.
That was a session we really struggled in the recording booth.
Yeah, you had a plush snake that you were tug-of-war...
Tug-of-warring with Craig Robinson, and that was fun. This walk was...
It was actually discovered in RLO by Courtney.
Remember the...?
She really got into the layout of the sequence, the reveal of Fiona.
And Courtney's hair is very similar to Fiona's.
- That's right. - Yeah.
- Similar in colour. - Right in the face.
And Fiona's hair, done by our wonderful C effects team...
- Yeah. - ...led by Olee Finkelde.
Olee.
That hair was really important.
- Not only for her sexiness... - Early on we're like...
Well, here's what's cool, is it's very difficult in animation to do hair.
- It's like a super challenge. - Long hair.
It's nice that we got to lower the hair on a character that everyone
was familiar with and I think it's in a nice way,
it shows off, like, what this hair team can do.
You know, we've seen Fiona in three previous films,
but never with her hair down and she looks really, I think, gorgeous.
One of the references was Janis Joplin's head.
Janis Joplin. We looked at a lot of Janis Joplin, you're right.
Or a wet Britney Spears.
Yeah, we looked at a lot, a lot of stuff, now that I recall.
- Some just for fun. - Yeah.
I think we even wetted your hair down, Walt, and had you shake it around.
Hello.
- You did that little guy in the tree. - I'm the Krekraw, man.
And Joel Crawford storyboarded this whole scene many times.
He did a great job. And Chris Reccardi was one of the first people
- to board it, and Derek Drymon. - Derek Drymon and Anthony Zierhut...
- Did these ideas. - ...did this whole hideaway bit,
came up with that joke, the bush brothers.
- A great piece of score here. - I love... This is our favourite score,
- from Harry Gregson-Williams. - Harry Gregson-Williams.
Look at her, looking back, "Where are they?"
- And then as... - I like how they ride
side saddle on their brooms.
And the difficulty of now the sun's really going down,
we have to spend the rest of our movie at night.
Yeah. That was a issue early on.
- A challenge. - A challenge.
- This was an early joke. - One of yours.
Thanks.
Anyway, this is one of our favourite scenes.
The extra detail they put where the wigs, or cupcakes are shaped like wigs.
Yes, and also John Hill did a lot of Rumpel animation in this
and it really helped us find, you know, define the way he moves.
Look at him. Watch this one look that he does here.
How does he...? The witch has to help him up.
Those witches are enjoying their cupcakes a little too much.
- Yeah. - Something is going to happen.
A great Fifi moment. We all hate Fifi, too.
- I love her. - We had to make sure
she was just an animal. She's like a big dumb animal.
This is honouring Wizard of Oz, who set up that witches are destroyed by water.
Isn't it true?
Witches in real life are destroyed by water, yes. But we couldn't find...
There was an idea for a very brief moment
that when they got melted they turned into ladybugs.
- Yeah. - I think Fiona says,
- "The world needs more ladybugs." - I've had to fight for that one.
Kathy Griffin again.
- Mike Mitchell. - There you are. I got to melt you.
- Look at that animation, that's... - Second Baba.
- Manuel, I know two Babas. Manuel... - That's Baba Ganoush.
- What's Manuel's last name? - Aparicio.
Manuel Aparicio animated that,
- "Not a bad idea." - "Actually, not a bad idea."
And for a long time there we had him eat that cherry and he choked
and everyone was concerned that he had died. So we had to...
Look at... Eric Deuel animated Brogan here.
Keep your eye on him as the camera moves away. Look.
Now he looks at his buddy, watch, he looks back at his buddy and goes,
"Pretty cool."
Peter Zaslav came up with the idea that the... that cart is a pine cone.
- It's so clever. - With an R on top.
- Reggie boarded this, didn't he? - Reg Bourdages.
- Bourdages. - Great board artist
and he was the head of story on Shrek 3, right?
Willy Harber animated Craig Robinson here, Cookie.
We love this. We fought for this joke.
That's true.
You know what? Cameron Diaz does a great job in this, too,
'cause it's a tone of seriousness and joking at the same time.
Jon Hamm.
Brogan used to be called Gnimrahc, remember?
Gnimrahc which is Charming spelled backwards.
It was gonna be Prince Charming with a curse.
Were we insane? How does that ever work?
It's an organic process, you have to explore.
We thought that twist might be nice, but not needed.
- Gnimrahc. - Gnimrahc. Gnimrahc.
It's another David Pate. Look at his ears flop around there.
- Is this Joel Crawford? - Joel did a lot of this.
- He did a lot of good Donkey stuff. - He boarded a lot of this.
- Here's the classic frog balloon. - Maggie did this?
- Maggie did this. - Maggie touched this.
Yeah, Maggie Kang.
This is nice lighting, too.
We wanted to paint Fiona as a cat lady with a cat condo.
She doesn't have a man, she's got a cat.
Marek animated this, too. It's very funny.
Wow, did that work. You know, it was really hard,
can I just say, to put in our story
that Puss in Boots has taken off his boots
and has become overweight.
It was something that everyone was really resistant to.
But we were passionate about it, because it's a little story arc.
In another world, he's not swashbuckling,
he's living in the lap of luxury. And like a cop that's hung up his badge
and his gun, Puss has hung up his boots and his sword
to never, never ogre hunt again,
because that's what he was in part two, he was introduced as an ogre assassin.
- It's great animation here. Pierre? - That's...
Pierre, right here. This is Pierre Perifel.
I always say you can hear the weight in Antonio's voice.
He feels breathier, I think, than the other films.
Antonio got into it as well.
Look at this.
Look at that pillow, must be difficult to do.
- How do you animate that thing? - It's Olee.
- "Hey." - That's an addition from Mike Myers.
- Mike Myers. - That look she gives to Puss,
- little tiny one. - Yeah, it's a subtlety.
We had a lot of fun with this gift basket. Do you guys remember this?
- Yeah. - All this stuff that could be...
And when we can't... When...
Walt, I think it was you that came up with coupons.
- So funny. - I think we've all done that,
especially kids do it a lot.
For Christmas, "Look, Mom, I said I'll clean up my room coupon."
Make my bed coupon, make your bed coupon.
That's Michelle.
Michelle Cowart's animation is brilliant.
I love this acting here.
- Listen to how Mike Myers sells it. - Yeah.
It was a nice opportunity for Shrek to be playful before the story
- got more intense. - Getting closer. He's gonna get it,
- there's the kiss. - Oh, no.
Again, that's an Eddie Murphy improvised line.
Yeah, that's right, Eddie Murphy, he came up with that himself.
Look at this. When he says, "I am," that's Jacob Gardner,
animated this right here.
- It's amazing. - Look at, frightening.
This is one of our strangest scenes by far.
- It's very odd. - We have a lot of grooming.
There's... It's very hard to do feathers and wetness.
And so it was a big issue to do suds and scrubbing feathers.
This is one of our board artists, Ryan Crego, had a lot to do with this tone.
Ryan Crego. This is a Ryan Crego moment.
And again, that's... Oh, this is... it's crazy.
We used Sure Shot by the Beastie Boys,
and that's how we, you know, came across Mike Simpson
to help us with a couple other songs in this movie.
- Who animated this? Was this Anthony? - This was Antony Gray.
Who's a... we used some Korean break dance team reference for that.
So Lemke wrote that line for us and then this is us making fun of his writing.
We always added one more bit.
It was fitting for his character, because he likes to pretend
that he's that serious bad guy.
That he's that serious bad guy.
Yong Duk came up with that cut, too, our cinematographer came up
with the idea of it cuts from the flute to Shrek.
This was interesting. When we first boarded this disgusting scene,
Jeffrey Katzenberg wasn't into it.
And we said, "Come on, they're ogres, they're disgusting."
And he's like, "It's not how they eat, it's what they eat that's disgusting."
So we just put some nice music in there.
We just put some dinner music, and then that fixed it.
They do eat proper, it's just gross.
This joke came from, at the beginning of Shrek One,
everyone has always looked at Donkey's nostrils and pictured them as eyes,
and on everyone's desk there's a little picture
of what if Donkey's nostrils were eyeballs,
and there's another little creature that lives in the end of his nose?
And so we decided to put it in the film.
If you notice, Shrek is wearing a hair net there,
- and I remember you insisting on that. - I did insist, it was...
- For months. - ...a silly argument that I had.
It's not easy to put a hairnet on Shrek, but we did it.
Especially because he has no hair, when you think of it.
- He's got three. - Neither do I.
- He's got his idea face. - His idea face.
Here comes Shrek's idea. Watch, the glasses...
Idea.
Puss sleeping.
This... I mean, Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy do such a great job, don't they?
- I mean, the characters are so funny. - Yeah.
- This is one of my favourite scenes. - Anthony Zierhut boarded this
and it's almost frame for frame. And then Yong Duk and his team
really helped to make it dynamic in 3-D.
He says, "Diet."
Mike replaced that line about 18 times.
I struggled with this joke, because no one ever thought it was funny but me.
So... Oh, well.
It is, it's a good opportunity for Shrek to be fun and playful, you know.
Yeah.
He's trying to play tough guy.
And it's not helping that he has that little weird helmet on.
You want to talk about this song, Gina?
Yes, this song, it was a collaboration
between Landon Pigg and Lucy Schwartz,
and they came together for the first time to write it for the movie.
And we struggled to find a song here for a long time,
because the scene is Shrek and Fiona making a connection for the first time.
And there's a combination here of lightness and comedy,
as juxtaposed with them
beginning to feel intimacy for each other,
- intimate feelings for each other. - Wow.
- It's really romantic. - So... Yeah. Yeah.
Didn't Onur do the sparring shots there?
Yeah, he did.
It was another great idea you had there, Mike, to do that.
- We thought it was way too extreme. - I wanted them to punch each other
in the face because they're ogres. I thought that was important.
- It worked, it ended up sweet. - Sweet punching.
This is David Pate insisting that he do the tying of the strings himself.
Tying shoe strings are apparently really difficult to do in animation,
and he worked with the effects people...
...for her to tie onscreen.
I love Cameron Diaz's performance. I love her reads in this.
It was very hard to find her character, too, remember,
because she's very light and bubbly and fun and easygoing.
And Fiona, this Fiona, she never found true love
and no one came for her in the tower. It was really hard to find that character,
and not make her... still keep that softness.
Yeah, she gave up waiting for her true love.
She escaped the tower on her own, but after she left,
the walls still remained around her heart.
By the way, that was a flashback that used to be 23 minutes long.
- Fiona's whole flashback... - The one coming up?
The one coming up used to be... It's one shot but it...
- It used to be... - It was Puss' story on...
- He was hired by Rumpel... - Rumpelstiltskin to kill Fiona
and he was so moved by her, her...
- Viscosity. - The humanity.
The humanity to save ogre-kind. And he joined her,
not as another warrior, 'cause she had gathered many ogre warriors,
but as what she needed most, a friend.
And he still does subconsciously exist as he's...
Puss is supposed to be our one glimpse into Fiona's princess side.
You know, she combs him, she puts little pink ribbons around his neck.
But to her team, she's Ogre Warrior Woman.
Maryann Malcomb animated that. I love it.
How he puts his little paws on Shrek's...
The opportunity for Puss to be a real cat. Whenever we could do that.
- That's good stuff. - Olee's team did a great job
- on his fur. - Yeah, the fur has to stand up.
That's very difficult to do.
Lemke insisted on that scene right there.
- Did he? Oh, yeah, that's right. - There was a scene...
- It's good, it keeps the tension going. - It was Fiona and Puss hanging out
and talking about how she should have someone.
Not all the things we insist on are the best.
Remember when they were eating bonbons in bed together?
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- That was a Walt Dohrn joke. - Wait a minute.
- It was a team effort. - I think it was part Fletcher.
We did that as a joke, but then Nick, our editor, took it seriously
- and put it in the movie... - Team effort.
- It's in all the trailers, Walt. - I know.
Everybody loves it.
It's nice to have Puss and Donkey interacting.
There's the bush brothers. Back again.
- I didn't know they had a name. - Well...
See, I always think this is a funny reveal of Shrek,
- but no one laughs at it. Look at this. - I do, here.
What's he doing up there?
It was so hard for her to get up there.
- It was. - Oh, well.
He's more skilled. We did see him skateboard, so...
There's her thigh dagger.
Used to be tiny, remember, when Walt used to draw it?
And Brogan had made it for her.
"Fiona, I made you another thigh dagger.
Let me help you put it on."
- It's true. - Lowers off screen.
- Here's the little church and steeple. - Yeah.
- Does anyone notice that, I wonder? - It was a lot more elaborate.
It went on and on. You're right, we cut it down.
Here's the church, here's the steeple. Open it up.
Open the doors and see all the people.
I remember fighting for this moment here.
- It was very important to you. - I wanted him to be in the goose.
- So you see his feet, there it... - I know. He's actually...
It's hard to see, but his feet, he's got these leggings on
- that are feathered... - Big Bird style.
He's got Big Bird feet on.
- Didn't Raman Hui animate that? - Raman Hui animated that reveal.
Co-director on Shrek 3.
Walt, you came up with this exchange, if I remember.
- Yeah. - Right?
- It was both Lemke and I worked on it. - Yeah.
I remember we had to go somewhere, and when we came back it was done,
- and we were like... - Well done, boys.
So here's a dance sequence that was so much fun.
We hired a choreographer by the name of Michael Rooney.
He's Mickey Rooney's son. And he had done a lot of Spike Jonze music videos.
That's how we knew of him. And we actually got a lot of dancers
and they went through this whole dance, he choreographed this whole dance.
And we shot it with cameras. And then the animators took it over,
and made these dancers into giant ogres and gave them weight.
We spent a week at a Silver Lake studio rehearsing and taping this.
But don't you think it was efficient to have the dance number all worked out?
- It was great. - We had the cardboard shields
- that all the dancers... - This was inspired by Yong Duk,
- by a Korean fan dance. - A Korean fan dance
with all the shields, that's true.
This beautiful lighting was done by Marc Scott's team,
really difficult scene to light as well.
- I think that's fun. - Yeah.
I say angrily.
- This is fun. - I still love the dance scene.
It started out even longer, like quite longer...
- It was. - ...and Derek Drymon's boarding it out
was like this really...
But even more Busby Berkeley going on. Swimming on their backs in the mud.
- Yeah. - Yeah, it was a lot of mud swimming
and spitting, and...
- Look, they're still dancing there. - More licking later on.
It was fun though to hang out at the... you know, see the dancers doing it live.
The guy who danced as a Pied Piper, moved exactly like Pied Piper moves.
And the guy who did Shrek was kind of like John Travolta in Staying Alive.
We did, we had to give him more weight, the animators did.
This is a joke we worked on for quite a bit because...
- Many breakfasts over it. - We had a lot of meetings on this joke,
mainly because you can't just do Puss' big eyes.
- Yeah. - It's been done twice before,
we have to make sure that it's done...
So, what do you do, you make them bigger.
And do it three times.
You even hear an effort that Antonio makes here,
when he makes them bigger the third time.
It's a strain to get that big.
It's funny.
By the way, Jeffrey Katzenberg is very involved in a lot of the story
and even a lot of the jokes.
There was a joke he knew that could really work...
He's spot on. Whenever he tells us to open up a joke, he's always right.
And he gives us such great notes and direction.
Yep and not just because he pays us.
We're saying that because we really like him.
- He's a really big help. - Big moment.
Look at that.
This is always a nice... Peter Zaslav always says the movie
has been so night-time, it's nice to get this little burst...
- Of Xanadu. - Of Xanadu.
That's what Gina and I call this, a Xanadu moment.
It's a lot of... Ben Willis did Shrek here.
I think this is really nice acting from Cameron Diaz.
I can't believe we got... let that necklace go through art.
Yes, that necklace was designed so long ago,
that we were now to the "what were we thinking...?"
Keep wanting to know what kind of creature that was.
She killed a bear, and pulled out his fingernails
- and made a necklace out of it? - We had explored that they did ride
around on giant wart hogs at one point.
- We did. - That's true.
That's left over from that.
- J... - JJ Villard.
- JJ Villard designed... - Exploratory ogres.
Back when the Ogre Camp was a caveman camp
and they rode around on giant warthogs.
And there was a two headed ogre, as I recall.
- Yes. - There was.
- Lemke wrote the two-headed ogre. - Did he?
But maybe JJ did at the same time.
I like that they're hanging in little bird cages.
That was an idea from like the first day you came on the movie.
You drew it on the board, they're hanging in little cages in act three.
- I don't recall. - I remember.
Here comes my favourite joke in the whole movie,
that no one laughs at, but Ryan Crego came up with it.
Here it comes.
It's so funny to me. And when we see it in an audience, no one ever laughs.
- It's crickets. - It was a great comeuppance
for a bad guy. They usually fall off something...
They wanted us to kill Pied Piper or push him into a pit.
More horrifying, you have to pull up someone's socks.
- Pull up someone's socks. - Sounds awful.
This is... Walt, you were instrumental in...
I worked really closely with Anthony on this and...
Anthony Zierhut. Yeah, you guys did an animatic that was...
...that then Peter did backgrounds for you.
- Yeah. - Peter Zaslav.
- Down to Enya, this is all you. - Enya, yes.
We had to have the Enya song here.
Now why is Gingy friends with the little animal crackers?
- I'll never understand that. - I thought they were part...
- It's an act. - It's an act.
- It's a circus act. - Muffin Man bakes more of the cookies
- and they hang out. - When there's a clown act,
they're not killing each other.
It's not a world ruled by Rumpel either, is it?
No, it's not. That's a very 3-D moment.
Here's my favourite animation. It's coming.
- I was like, "This one?" - It's coming, it's coming.
- What? Where? - Wait.
- Oh, it's gone. - We took that out.
We took that out when you weren't looking, I guess.
- We took that bit out, Gina. - Maybe it's in the deleted scenes.
You were talking about the little running man.
Yes. Was that turned off at the last minute?
We killed him.
Michelle did a lot of this animation here, Michelle Cowart.
That's a Mike Myers ad lib right there.
Yeah, "No day after that, no day after that after that."
The crowds were done by Allen Stetson's team.
Allen Stetson, yeah, did great crowds. He's the guy... he worked
- on the witches as well, right? - Yeah.
- Anything that's a crowd is Allen's. - It's a lot of work in this.
- Team, team. Did you hear it? - He didn't know what he had.
Actually, this scene was in and out and in and out and it was like, really,
I'm glad it's in, because I think it's well acted by Mike Myers.
- It just reminds the audience of... - And really funny stuff
by Conrad Vernon as Gingy as always.
And the word "cracker," which Mary Quinn came up with that joke.
- Mary Quinn's position is... - Script supervisor.
Script Supervisor Mary Quinn.
Idea! Here's another idea!
Look at Puss looking at the cookie.
This is another Ted scene, right? Ted Ty?
- Yeah. - This is Ted Ty's shot,
he animated this.
The shock. They actually killed Gingy.
Yeah, a beloved character kills another character.
In the audience, the crowd usually goes, "Oh, no, you didn't!"
They enjoy it.
There's a troll. We spent a lot of time designing a troll.
- I want to see more of him. - That's Butter Pants.
I know.
- Look at that. - That's a Chris Miller again.
Chris Miller does Geppetto's voice.
I love how realistic... When this movie was first created,
they were trying to make the humans look very real.
And now we're stuck with that design in a great way,
'cause now we're in this uncanny valley of humour.
Look at this crowd. That's a lot of work. Look at that.
They have to back up slowly and look scared.
A lot of Ken Fountain Rumpels here, the animator.
That's what Rumpel did at the beginning of the movie, remember?
We've turned the tables. How the web turns.
I like the score here. The score really helps link all these scenes together.
- Don't you guys think? - Yes.
- Yes, Michael. - So much.
- Who's with me? - Score links.
I can't believe we're all still talking to each other.
"I don't know." That's not what your voice sounds like at all,
- in real life. - No.
Although we always talked about me adapting that voice for real life.
I could enter a room and really talk like that.
- You should do it. - I think it would be unnerving.
What? Fiona is there.
This lighting is done by Pablo Valle's team.
Pablo did a great job, very important to show their separation.
Apparently, I was told that there are 2,000 links in those skull chains.
That's exhausting. A chain is way more difficult to animate than a rope
'cause it's all... every link acts independently, right?
- Yeah. - Do you see, that was John Hill
- with the tongue coming out? - Doing the... with the tongue.
- Very disturbing. - He was helpful in animating Rumpel
and making him as hateful as he is.
You're no slouch yourself, Walt. Your voice helps for me to hate him.
- Gee, thanks, Mike. - Your boards, too, really inspire...
- "In-spidered it." - You did "in-spidering" boards.
Your boards inspired the acting of Rumpelstiltskin very well, Walt Dohrn,
- and Mike Mitchell. - No, go on.
This is another moment where we had to be careful
not for Fiona to fall too much.
Yeah, the intent of this scene is to show that she's...
This is her first step. True love's kiss doesn't work unless she's in love.
And this is her first step of like, "Kind of like this guy."
I want to see a whole film with these three guys.
Look right, cut right to the ball. Does everyone know? I'm curious.
Does an audience know they're in the ball or is it a surprise?
And that wig is fantastic. Max did a whole bunch of wig designs, didn't he?
- We exhausted Max. - Yeah.
Yeah, there's over 240 shields making up that ball.
- Is that right? - With about 30-some ogres in there.
That doesn't make sense. There's only 30 ogres.
I know. We don't have to make sense,
- we're animation. - Oh, right.
It is a world of fairy tales.
Fiona's old flame.
That's where he sounds most like Grandpa there.
Look at this reveal. Jacob did this reveal of Dragon.
He's an animator. It's beautifully done, and great effects, by the way.
- The fire and the smoke. - Yeah.
Leagues beyond the other Shrek movies.
That fire, which was demonstrated to us.
We thought the fire on the other movies looked really good.
Yeah, he tricked us. He said, "Look at this fire. What do you think?"
We're like, "We love it." And he goes, "That is no good.
Here is the new fire." And we went, "Whoa, that's even cooler."
This scene was lit by Betsy Nofsinger's team.
- Nofsinger! - Betsy did an amazing job.
A hundred thirty shots in this battle scene.
That's a lot going on, too. Look at all the characters as well.
- I liked Rumpel's his little... - Little funny noise.
We tried to make him scream like a girl when we could.
Yeah.
The story team did a lot of explanation with this, you know,
- with the use of their weapons. - Anthony Zierhut.
You know what? I gotta tell you, I do miss... We did the effects team
even tested it, but them holding a little water balloon frog
that they'd squirt at the witches and melt the witches.
- This is Mike's idea. - This is my... one of my few boards.
Well, you boarded it so comedically
that when we did layout, they put way too much into it.
It was too much dynamic. You guys had to dumb it down.
That was Betsy's idea to have the lighting change. That was really clever.
There was a time when Donkey wasn't spit out of the mouth.
I think for a little while, he was actually eaten.
He would have been another character we killed.
I find it was quite violent, too, that Puss stabs Dragon in the tail,
- but no one ever... - It's like a tiny pin prick.
- You're right. Did he kill Fiona? - No.
- It's like acupuncture. - Oh, yeah, maybe it felt good.
- It's pretty nice, actually. - Cured her backache.
This is fun. Look at this swinging.
That's good commentary. "Look at this."
- "Hey, guys, look at this." - At a certain point,
you start to become so engaged in the story again. It's like, "Go Fiona."
- Here comes Cookie. - The chimichanga cart, you know,
at one of our parties at work, they actually built a chimichanga cart.
And we ate chimichangas, which were quite delicious.
Should we give a shout-out to Lee and gang there?
Yeah, Lee, bon appetit Lee. Loving ya, every minute.
DreamWorks. It's a really great place to work, isn't it?
- Free food. - And it is like a big hippie commune
because, you know, none of us had made a 3-D movie before,
and thanks to Jeffrey Katzenberg, he put us in contact
with James Cameron, we got to see scenes from Avatar before it came out.
A lot of 3-D movies were screened at the studio.
And we learned a lot from each other. The other films going on at DreamWorks.
And I gotta say Bill Damaschke and Ann Daly sure know how...
Sorry, I didn't want...
Didn't want to talk over a "foo" moment.
It was very exciting. It was like midnight in editorial,
we know what he should say here.
"Foo," he should say "foo," that's it.
We've done it. Let's all go home. We've solved the picture.
- Kind our skadoosh. - We've saved the picture.
But yeah, Bill Damaschke knows how to gather the talent at DreamWorks,
'cause I think everyone there, it's really stellar.
The animators, the lighters, the effects people.
It's really a studio full of people that know what they're doing.
Now, was that you, Gina, that was demanding him to do a dance?
'Cause I kept...
- Was it? - I think it was.
You were like, "A flamenco dance has to happen somewhere." Was that you?
- Was it...? Not Jeffrey? - Sounds like Jeffrey.
- I think it was Jeffrey. - Jeffrey's idea.
But it allowed us to do the boots ripping joke.
- That's good stuff. - This effect was...
We spent much time on this effect. It looks beautiful in 3-D.
I hope you're watching it in 3-D right now, audience.
I hope it's the future where TVs are 3-D.
- It is, in about a month, I think. - In a few months?
I think it's by the time we're done.
We really struggled and pushed for the emotion
between the two of them here, to make it as honest as we could.
Yeah, we didn't want to fake it out.
It took a while to come up with his ending line,
and we went out to a lot of writers to help us with that.
And look at them tears. Those tears aren't easy to do.
And really good effects, weird effects on that hourglass as well.
- And here... - It all ties together.
The ink, the hourglass, the fading away,
it's all got this golden, inky, glittery look to it.
Very emotional music by Harry Gregson.
Yeah, Harry tinkling on his piano.
The lighting here, beautiful. Another Betsy Nofsinger.
Know what I just learned recently? You know how these characters
poof away or they poof into existence?
Well, when they poof away, they called it a "foop,"
- which is "poof" spelled backwards. - Oh, yeah?
- Isn't that fun? - Did Doug Cooper come up with that?
- I... Probably, I don't know. - Doug Cooper did a great job.
Doug Cooper is amazing.
He's our V effects supervisor.
- Shocking. - I think they told me
that there's like 500 million particles in each one of these frames.
- Unbelievable. - That's a lot of particle.
Yeah.
I think I burst a vocal cord trying to go from Rumpel's yell into Shrek's roar.
Yeah, you did. It was worth it.
- Gingy. - Gingy.
Gingy turns the little blind mouse around.
- I never noticed that. - You just saw that now?
Look at Shrek's hat, very hard to have a real scene
with that silly little hat on. But look, he takes it off, that's good.
Yeah, really nice lighting, and again it changes subtly
than what it was in the beginning.
- That's what we hear every night. - Yeah.
- Roar? - That's right.
Our kids roaring.
It is moving. That's your son, as the voice of the girl.
The little girl is my boy.
- Call back to the horn toot. - Look at how heavy Butter Pants is
- in his father's arms. - I know, Butter Pants is gigantic.
It's a nice sentiment.
Yeah, we actually had that early on honouring the original Shrek movie.
- This is crescendo. - It's nice.
It almost feels more of a classic fairy tale than we usually go for.
Yeah.
- This was Weezer doing the song. - Yeah.
Yeah, they did a great job, nice and energetic.
This was an interesting sound effect.
I've never heard these sound effects before.
- I don't remember that... - Yeah, that's new to me.
A lot was done in the ninth inning on this movie, that we haven't caught.
- In the wee hours of the night. - Instead of torches, it's sparklers.
What is that saying?
The king, as you know, has passed on.
That's why he has to appear as a picture.
Isn't this disturbing?
Yeah, it's very mean-spirited.
- But he deserves it. - It's a great little dance.
Yeah, look at that.
Look at her, it's got pink hair, Gretched does.
Party outfit.
She does on the DVD extras now, right?
- Girl with pink hair. - Pink hair the whole time.
- Does she have leopard tights? - Story concept party.
- Yes, is there a party? - Leopard tights?
That's in a lot of the commercials now.
- Did you guys know that? - Yeah.
You weren't happy with just two mud angels. You had to have 30.
The call-back, it's easy to do, isn't it? That's not a big deal.
Gotta have a nice last shot, and that really did it.
It's great.
And this is our tribute to all the movies, a retrospective.
And I have to say, when we started off on this,
everyone was big Shrek fans. We all...
Everyone that worked on this really loved the character Shrek
and was into all the old Shrek movies in the past.
This being the final chapter, this was kind of a nice homage to...
- Aron! - Andrew!
We have to close by saying we had the best time working on this movie,
- every day. - We had way too much fun.
It was fun to put together and everyone working on it.
It's sad to... for it to end.
- I'd go back and do it all again. - Would you?
- I would. - That's interesting to hear.
I would have never thought that.
If I could be four years younger again, I would do that, too.
Four years, you just added an extra year to be younger.
No, it was about three,
- three and a half years at least. - Four years in it's entirety.
Well, it was loads and loads of fun
and it was also fun to be able to hang out with a big group of talented people,
like talented filmmakers and problem solvers and artists.
- It was... - Very creative.
- Super creative. It was an honour. - Really collaborative group, too.
Enthusiastic people.
We had great leaders, too.
A lot of people in their jobs for the first time in a leading position
- did a fantastic job. - They did.
And we all got to learn about 3-D.
Which I really think enhanced the level of storytelling.
It did. We tried to use it as a storytelling device,
rather than a roller coaster ride gimmick.
It was a different way to think about our shots,
and Yong Duk Jhun did an amazing job.
He did. Really helped us through all that 3-D,
and Phil McNally, Captain 3D, is very helpful to have around.
I love his shoes.
- Rumpel's or Captain 3D's? - Both.
Both, yeah, they both have great shoes.
It's extraordinary effort by everybody.
Yeah. Hope we didn't forget anybody.
- I know we did. - So many people.
So if we forgot you, you know we love you.
That just made it worse.
- Thanks for watching. - Thank you, guys.