SEND IN THE CLONES
INSIDER CATCHES UP WITH SUPERVISING DIRECTOR DAVE FILONI FOR THE LATEST ON THE UPCOMING STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS ANIMATED TV SERIES.
ADDITIONAL INTERVIEW: ABBIE BERNSTEIN
How does the forthcoming Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series tie in with the new movie?
The movie sets up major characters, like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, and, of course, the new character, Ahsoka. It was made to stand alone and introduce everybody to the universe we're showing in The Clone Wars on television. The series has small arcs that show you the war across a broad spectrum and in many episodes.
We know what eventually happens to Anakin Skywalker. We know what happens to Obi-Wan Kenobi. Well, some episodes don't even have them, and that's one thing that's really exciting about the series. We get to explore the galaxy in a bigger way.
When and how did you first discover Star Wars?
After Star Wars came out, there was a summer re-release because the movie did so well. Back then it was more common to do that, I guess. I remember not so much seeing the movie, because I was very young at the time, but I remember driving home from the theater. [I was] sitting in the back of my parents' car pretending my brother and I were Han and Luke, shooting the other cars as if they were TIE fighters. I remember that quite vividly, and then ever since then....
How young were you when you started drawing, and when did you realize that you had such a gift for it?
I started drawing really young. It was just something in my household that always happened. I was always interested in the arts, and I got really lucky. In first grade, I had a teacher who had an easel in the back of the classroom. When I finished my work, she'd let me go draw. I think that was a really key thing, that I was encouraged, so I just kept at it. Then, when it came time to figure out what I wanted to do, drawing seemed to be the thing—and animation. I loved music and I loved images, so putting the two together seemed like a great opportunity. Of course, I always loved Star Wars, but once I was in college, I thought, "Visual effects are really where I should be, because they don't do animation in Star Wars." Who knew?
What was the interview for the job of supervising director like?
I interviewed with producer Catherine Winder first, then Gail Currey, the general manager of Lucasfilm Animation.
I just had to explain who I was and some of my interests and what I thought about Star Wars. Then I had to fly up to the ranch and interview [with] George [Lucas]. That was like a whirlwind. He went through my portfolio really quickly. I thought, he's worked with some of the greatest artists in the entertainment industry, so my portfolio must not be that exciting. Revenge of the Sith was coming out in a month and a half, so I thought "I'll have a great story while I'm standing in line: I actually met George Lucas!" I had about a 20-minute conversation with him, and then that was it. About five minutes later, Gail and Catherine came out and told me he liked me and I had the job. Then I had to tell my wife that we were moving to San Francisco!
How long does it take to do an episode?
From start to finish, there's about a two-week period where we rough out the story with visuals and storyboards. Then we have a six-week period where we shoot it digitally with cameras. Every little set exists in a small 3-D world, and George has really taught me how to shoot it more like a live-action film than an animated movie. So it's a period of about two months before we get an episode from its roughest stage to preparing it to be animated. Then it takes about another two months to do the full animation itself.
Would it have been possible to make this series a few years ago?
Computer animation is constantly expanding and constantly changing, and you can really push the limits of what you want to do it with it. I come from a traditional 2-D animation background. For eight years in television animation I worked with just a pencil. Frankly, I never touched a computer. Working with George, we try to look at computers as yet another—although incredibly advanced—pencil. The number of soldiers you see in the episodes of The Clone Wars, and the types of battles that we can do—even since we started developing the series and doing these episodes—has definitely grown in scale. The technical side is something we are always working on because it helps the creative, artistic side.
How big is the team working on each episode?
When you get into all the modeling and rigging of each character, we have around 75 people working on it. On any one episode, I also have about four story artists and an episodic director to tell the story, and a fantastic editor who can handle it all.
Who's doing Yoda's voice? Frank Oz has such an iconic voice, that's tough to measure up to.
I agree completely. We have Tom Kane, another huge Star Wars fan, and I think he captures that kind of magic. There are several challenges for Tom. In one episode, Yoda does have a lot of dialogue. Speaking like that, with that much dialogue, is a real strain on poor Tom's voice, so it was a very interesting session!
And who's voicing Count Dooku?
We have Corey Burton doing Count Dooku in the series. He does a brilliant job of capturing that character.
What's the story potential in The Clone Wars? Does the conflict extend as long as the series runs?
That's the good thing about not just telling Anakin Skywalker's story. If we were doing that, we would be stuck on one single arc. I look at the episodes where we have him and Ahsoka, his student, and I know that there is an arc there, because something has to happen to her. We don't see her in Revenge of the Sith. We show the progression of the war. Because we can go left or right of that plot and deal with characters that we have never seen, there is a lot of material, so I can continue with the story. In fact, that's one of the things I have been amazed by. In Star Wars history, the Clone Wars take up a three-year period, but there are so many stories to tell. I've been amazed by what we didn't get to, just in the first season. [There are storylines] I would still like to get to, and characters we would still like to explore. So for me, the longer it goes, the more chance we all get to tell fascinating stories in that galaxy.
Do you feel in any way constrained by the events from the films that you have to work around?
Not at all, actually. One of the [great] things is really exploring those events. We know Yoda is powerful, but how does that power develop? How does he use it? In one episode, I really wanted him to be evasive about the ways that the troops are destroyed. So he's not the one outright attacking most of the time. We get to go into more detail that you just couldn't do in the live- action films, because they're mainly focused on Anakin.
I am acutely aware of what happens in Attack of the Clones and what happens in Revenge of the Sith, and I know that any time I go near one of the principal characters, like Obi-Wan or Anakin or Padmé, that we have to pay very careful attention that the story is going to hook up. For the most part, it's just having a lot of fun and talking to George [Lucas] about what the Jedi were really like.
Can the show run indefinitely, or is it 22 episodes and out?
Well, it won't be 22 episodes and out for me; we're already working on the second season. I'm very happy working at Lucasfilm. As long as George lets us keep making more, I'll do it. I definitely have an arc and a timeline for what I'd like to see happen, and it's really just a question of, how do I make that work as we get to do more?
Are the episodes all action-packed?
We have many different kinds of episodes. I love the action, but you can't have clones blasting battle droids in every single episode, so we have to explore other kinds of things and tell different kinds of stories that are different for the Star Wars universe. I think that's one of the strengths of it. There are all kinds of episodes for all kinds of fans, and [stories for] everyday [non-fan] people who tune in to watch Star Wars.
So what other kinds of episodes are there?
There are some that are more philosophical, and some where Padmé is in the Senate and we deal with a little bit of the politics. We can get a little more into personal stories about some of the characters that don't just involve shoot-'em-ups. I think that's what's got a lot of people so engaged. Everyone knows that in The Empire Strikes Back when Leia says, "I love you," Han Solo says, "I know." That's one of my favorite parts. Forget all the snow-walkers and snow-speeders and all that stuff. They're great, but fans really love the emotion.
How much pressure is there to grab the fan base?
The tremendous pressure is in getting this out there. I have tremendous respect for the material, and for the fans. I'm a fan and I try to make the things I like and I think other fans would like, but you always have to know that you can't please everybody all the time. We try to tell stories and tales that we think are interesting. I take it seriously, but I have fun with it, too. Ultimately, George is the audience and he likes it, so when you please the guy who created that universe, I think that's a pretty good measure.
Is that sense of humor, like the droids complaining about their programing, going to continue in the series?
The droids in particular are really fun for me, because they're immortal, let's face it. I use it as a motif that they're from a time in the galaxy when it wasn't so violent and the Jedi really had more control. You see two different types of droids in the episodes: the regular battle droids, and then super battle droids, which are tougher. As the war progresses, the droids get more menacing, as technology gets more evil in war. When the clones come around and shoot the Jedi in Episode III, you almost think that maybe those goofy little battle droids weren't so bad after all.
So humor is very important?
In Star Wars, especially. "Get this walking carpet out of my way," Princess Leia says. You can't forget the humor. Han Solo shooting at stormtroopers and running after them, and them turning around and running after him. To me, that's what makes it work. George really drove that home to me. You can't forget to have fun with this, make it funny and make it engaging. It's not just about blowing things up and shooting [things]. You can't take it so seriously that you forget to have fun.
Are you concerned that audiences might not want to root for the clone troopers after Revenge of the Sith?
I'm not really concerned about that because we've tried to give the clones more individual personalities. I think that's important to get across to the audience and to kids. That really begs the question, later on, about their betrayal of the Jedi and how that all goes down. So while we see it from one aspect in one movie, we might in the end, get to look at that event in a different way, from a different point of view, as Obi-Wan would say.
Tell us about Asajj Ventress.
Ventress is a disciple of Count Dooku. She is, of course, a villain. She fits into the structure of the Sith. Darth Sidious/Senator Palpatine is the main bad guy and he has his apprentice, Count Dooku. The one thing George talks about with evil being consumed by power is that when you are the apprentice, you always want to usurp the guy that's over you. So Ventress is Dooku's way of trying to attempt that at first. He's training her in the dark side and she's getting more powerful. One of the things I wanted to do with Ventress in the series was make her more intelligent, more deceptive, but also kind of sensuous. She's forbidden fruit and is around the Jedi, who are supposed to be very hands-off and not get involved with the more lustful aspects of life. That's why she's a bit sensuous, like a serpent. Again, [that's] another fun dynamic in this series.
Count Dooku is Palpatine's apprentice and there are only supposed to be two Sith at any one time. So how can Dooku have an apprentice in Ventress?
I don't want to reveal all to you, but one of the things that's important with Ventress is how capable she is. But how much is she being used by Sidious? How much does he know about her? Remember, Vader tried to seduce his own son into overthrowing the Emperor. It actually is a matter of what that "rule of two" is all about. Ventress does play into that.
Is Ben Burtt involved at all, or are you working from the Skywalker Sound library?
Ben Burtt's not involved directly, but I think his greatest contribution, besides designing the whole world of Star Wars sound, is Matt Wood. Matt worked with Ben on all of the Star Wars prequels. Matt was very much his understudy, so I have that legacy continuing with Matt. Matt has a great team at Skywalker Sound, and they've actually made hundreds of new sounds for this series. We have all the classic sounds, but we also see people and
ships doing things we've never seen them do before, so we had to invent all those new sounds.
How did you realize the human characters in CG?
That was a huge challenge. Some of the 3-D model makers and "riggers" who worked on the prequels usually deal in photorealism. For the movies, they had to create digital characters that were going to walk around with Ewan McGregor and be convincing. I knew going in that we weren't going to be able to do that for this series, and we wanted the series to be different from a live-action feature.
When I draw a simple smiley face, it's a circle with an arc and two dots. Every child and adult knows that that's "happy." You can feel that kind of genuine happiness come out of that simple drawing, and yet we've all seen examples in the digital world where something is so photo-real down to skin cells and hair and yet there's something [off] about it. We don't believe it's happy.
So, in this series, I wanted to try and attack human characters like I used to in drawing, and stylize the face a little bit more. If you look at Anakin he has certain edges and lines in his face. They might be unnaturally straight or unnaturally curved, but then that plays into the lighting of it. We actually light far more dramatically to get edges or shadows. I'm really happy with the results our crew has come up with.
Can you describe the difference between the previous Clone Wars animated micro-series and this one, in terms of look and story?
In the previous Clone Wars, the design of those characters was so extreme. The staging of it was very pushed, [with] the exaggerated use of the Force. It all fits into that drawn, 2-D world. It's magnificent, in that respect. That was something we were also attacking here, like the hard lines on Ahsoka that you see. I wanted to bring in a little aspect of that because the fans have a love of that cartoon, even though they were short and mainly action- based. We looked at that and at the live-action [movies] and shot for [something in] the middle. Look at Count Dooku's face in that show, it's almost a triangle. Anakin's is almost a box, and yet you never question the reality of that. You just believe in the characters. It was good inspiration for what we were going to do.
What are the challenges of doingthis show in high definition?
I wanted it to look like a painting,that's why I got involved with it.There's a textured, hand-paintedstyle on every character. I havetexture artists that literally paintevery single character right down totheir eyeball because I wanted thathuman touch on everything, [even]the backgrounds. I'm interested inthat hand-painted, human touch.
What are the animation offices likeat Lucasfilm? Is it chaotic or veryorderly? Does George drop by?
Well, it's a very creativeatmosphere. We work at Big RockRanch, which is a couple of milesaway from Skywalker Ranch. We'rein the hills of Marin County. If you knowthe planet Naboo, where Padmé wasfrom, it looks like we're living there.Our place is on a lake and it'sabsolutely beautiful.We have afantastic crew.Trying to makethis show fortelevision is [an] immense [challenge], but everybody has a great attitude about it. They all love Star Wars. A lot of people I work with grew up with Star Wars. They have a love of that mythology. It's great to work with a team of people like that, and we have a great time. It is very hard work. It gets very intense, but when you're trying to push something artistically and make it the most it can be, I think you have to do that. George is there, and he's really engaged in what we are doing. We have the guy who created the Star Wars universe excited and interested about what we are doing in that universe. So we couldn't be happier about that, either.
Is George Lucas involved on a day-to-day basis, or does he look at the episodes and then comment on them?
Well, he comes up with story ideas and presents them, and then we form the script, and it's really like a series of check-ins that we have with him, sometimes pretty often. He's a really busy guy, so I'm very happy when we get his time. He's always available to me in [the] editorial [stage].
I come up with ideas and George comes to me with ideas and says, "I'd like to tell this kind of story." We'll collaborate on it. He's very involved in that part of the process. I've been a student of his—not just filmmaking, but of Star Wars—for years. It's been really important to get inside his mind and see how he thinks this universe should work, so that a lot of the judgments, and decisions I make are based on what I think he would say is best for his characters and for the universe. But I always have his ear. I think he's having a lot of fun working with us on this.
Why is Star Wars still so popular?
I think in some cases it's the fact that everyone can identify with the characters. My grandmother would know who Obi-Wan Kenobi is, and Luke Skywalker, and that is really unique. Han Solo always felt like a guy who lived down the street. I think it's that "relatability," even though it's this incredibly imagined universe, it's that relatability that's behind the success of Star Wars. It just keeps on going!
