Interview Flushed Away Directors

Movies Online recently caught up with David Bowers and Sam Fell, the directing team and first-time feature helmers behind the computer-animated comedy "Flushed Away.” Blending Aardman’s trademark style and characterizations with DreamWorks state-of-the-art computer animation, the film reflects a unique new look for the art form.

In this new comedy set on and beneath the streets of London, Roddy St. James (Hugh Jackman) is a pampered pet mouse who thinks he’s got it made. But when a sewer rat named Sid (Shane Richie) comes spewing out of the sink and decides it’s his turn to enjoy the lap of luxury, Roddy schemes to rid himself of the pest by luring him into the loo for a dip in the ‘whirlpool.’ Roddy’s plan backfires when he inadvertently winds up being the one flushed away into the bustling world down below. Underground, Roddy discovers a vast metropolis, where he meets Rita (Kate Winslet), a street-wise rat who is on a mission of her own. If Roddy is going to get home, he and Rita will need to escape the clutches of the villainous Toad (Ian McKellen), who royally despises all rodents and has dispatched two hapless henchrats, Spike (Andy Serkis) and Whitey (Bill Nighy), as well as his cousin, the dreaded mercenary, Le Frog (Jean Reno), to see that Roddy and Rita are iced – literally.

After achieving success with the critically acclaimed box office hit "Chicken Run” and the Academy Award-winning "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit,” DreamWorks Animations and Aardman Features teamed up for the third time with "Flushed Away.”  For this film, the two studios took their collaboration to a new level: after being conceived at Aardman’s UK studio, "Flushed Away” became the company’s first computer-animated film and was produced entirely at DreamWorks’ animation studio in Glendale, California.

Director David Bowers believes the movie reflects the best of what each studio has to offer. "We have Aardman’s charm and rich sensibilities, and all the imagination and technological capabilities of DreamWorks. I don’t think the movie could have happened without either studio.”

According to director Sam Fell, Aardman had been looking to make a CG animated film for some time, and "Flushed Away” seemed to be the right project to make the jump. "We wanted to create a whole city, a whole world, and populate it with thousands of little rats walking around along canals instead of streets,” says Fell. "With water, crowds, big scope, many sets – it seemed like CGI could really help us make that happen.” Bowers agrees, "There just wouldn’t have been room in the studio to do it. And there wouldn’t have been enough plasticine or clay in the world to do it.”

Bowers and Fell are terrific animators and fabulous guys and we really appreciated their time. Here’s what they had to tell us:

Q: I wanted to ask you starting out about just the sense of the look through "Wallace and Gromit” and so much of the Aardman work has been in clay animation and it really felt like you’d bridged it beautifully.  There are some places you look at and you say, ‘I’m not sure if this is CG.’ I guess that was the intention. How easy was it to create that in the computer?

SF: It wasn’t too hard. It was a process and it took a while but we knew what Aardman films looked like from "Wallace and Gromit” and "Chicken Run” so we had a point of reference for ourselves and for the team here at DreamWorks where we made the film. Happily, the team here is an amazing team. They’re incredibly talented technicians and artists and they loved Wallace and Gromit and they were just keen to pull it off.

DB: If you look at the DreamWorks movies, they’re very diverse styles. Something like "Shrek,” "Madagascar,” and "Shark’s Tale,” they all seem very different so we didn’t doubt that they could match the Aardman style for a second.

SF: And we did early tests and one of the first things we did is we just got a warehouse over in Bristol, England. We filled it full of junk, old furniture, old trash and stuff and we built a piece of our world, a set of this stuff and painted it and lit it and set dressed it and got into all the detail of what the rats would have done and built that thing and shot it so we’d know how it would have worked if we’d done it at Aardman and then we took all that reference and that information and we brought it over here and the guys recreated that set in the computer and they created it perfectly. It was astonishing.

DB: It was incredible.

SF: You look at the two next to each other and you couldn’t tell the difference. So we knew very early on that it’s all going to be OK.

Q: Which set was this?

SF: It was a little piece. It was a pub and a clothes shop. It was like the three shops and a little bit of street.

DB: We didn’t do it with the intention of using it in the production but actually we did put it in the production because it was so lovely.

SF: It’s actually in the movie now.

SF: It was the CG version of the set we built in Bristol is in the movie so there’s some very humble pieces of old trash that we just found on the ground in Bristol and it arrived in this large blockbuster CGI feature film which is a kind of lovely irony.

Q: I love when you mention irony and, of course, Americans are often accused of not really understanding irony, but also the pun-a-minute sense of it. I love it…my sensibility…but I do wonder whether you had to Americanize or internationalize any of the story in order to keep it from being so British that only the English would understand.

DB: It’s funny you should say that because we…for a while we worried about it because we didn’t want to make a film that appealed to a small audience. We wanted a film that felt…I think we’ve succeeded…we wanted a film that felt British but would appeal internationally. A lot of British things travel very well. Like the Harry Potter films I’d say felt very British, "Narnia” feels British, and "Lord of the Rings” films feel…you know, they’re sort of British in their way. But there was a time we got nervous and we started pulling back some of the things, some of the expressions, and it actually became a little less interesting so we put them all back.

SF: We put them back.

DB: We put them back. You know, things like someone saying ‘you plonker.’ You may not know what it means but it sounds funny. You understand the sense of it. Sid calls Roddy, ‘Hello, Roddy, you old cream cracker.’ You may not know what it means but it just sort of feels… (to Sam) I’m not sure what it means actually, do you?

SF: Probably something rude actually. You know, a little ornery.

DB: You don’t want to dig too deep. (laughter)

SF: I think just because of the story and the world we were going to create, I think we were always going to be a little bit sort of more contemporary. You know it’s set in a contemporary world. It’s set in a city, in London.

DB: It’s very cosmopolitan.

SF: Yeah, cosmopolitan, a very modern place.

DB: The Wallace and Gromit films are amazing but you can’t get away from the fact that they’re set in a very specific part of the north of England. Even though they’re modern day, they’re sort of slightly post war so they’re a little bit old fashioned in that way.

SF: Which gives it the sort of English feel that they have. I mean we love that stuff but we wanted to do our own version.

DB: We weren’t making a Wallace & Gromit. We were doing a modern film. More modern, I think.

Q: A lot of this movie takes place down in the sewer. How do you make the sewer look attractive?

SF: Well that’s a good question.

DB: We went down to take a look at it. We toured the sewers of London. But we were sort of hoping for a nice big company trip somewhere exotic and we ended up in the drains. (laughs) And to be honest, there wasn’t much there. We got our hazmat suits on and it was quite warm and a bit smelly and there wasn’t anything to look at.

SF: It’s kind of dark and damp and smelly.

DB: So we looked at it and we decided we’re going to make our world the exact opposite of this. We’re going to make it a little height. We’re going to make it beautiful. As Roddy is in the movie, we want to surprise the audience when they get down there and…

SF: It’s kind of a joke how wonderful it is really. We made sure there’s lots of daylight coming in so we have day and night and light and all of that and water about and lots of plants growing and so we kind of made it fantastic and romantic actually. That was kind of the point of the film that Roddy’s world in the beginning is very affluent but sterile and then he ends up down in this world which is quite effluent and very rich. (laughs)

Q: It’s so interesting how the water has so many different looks to it.

SF: Yeah. We couldn’t do that in stop frame really. The computer has brought that and we spent a lot of time developing it with the effects people here but we’ve chosen not to make it too flashy. We’ve chosen to keep the water kind of simple and go for a kind of painterly kind of look to it. We could have gotten a bit more carried away with the technology but we kept it back and that’s been one of the rules in taking the Aardman style into the computer and just retain the simplicity, that simple approach so we don’t get carried away with the technology.

SF: Well, there’s 30 days of shooting as well. I don’t think the animation is not really much quicker than in CG. I think the computer has just given us more scope, like a bigger canvas, but in terms of the process I think it has taken about the same amount of time really to make this film as it did "Wallace & Gromit.”

DB: It has. It has. It’s actually very, very… I mean stop frame animation looks time consuming when they’re moving it a frame at a time but when the animator has finished his shot, it’s done on a real set and it’s filmed with a real camera so when the animator finishes, the shot is done and you can project it the next day and it’s finished whereas with ours, when the animator is finished, it has to go through so many other departments.

SF: It’s a labor and also because we wanted to make sure that it felt hand made because we didn’t want free stuff from the computer because when you get something free from the computer, it often comes off as synthetic.

DB: From "Shrek,” the animator will animate the character’s head moving and the computer will figure out what the hair does, for example. But in stop frame animation or traditional 2-D animation, the animator does the hair themselves and there has to be perfections but it has its own creative reality that just feels better.

SF: Somebody had to think about it so…

DB: We made our animators think about everything.

SF: Yes.

Q: That would be like giving them something sort of clay-like rather than fur?

SF: Yeah, they had to animate.

DB: That’s the look we went for actually. We got the clay-like hair look. I think we sort of looked back at things like "Chicken Run” and the kind of hair that the farmers had. It’s sort of a graphic representation of what hair could be.

SF: So it’s not a realism thing. Although in terms of lighting and texturing it, we wanted it to be real and feel like really tactile because that’s a key, I think, to the Aardman look as well that you feel like you can take them home as puppets.

Q: Do you try to stay away from fur textures as much as possible?

SF: Yeah. There’s this little Teddy Bear in the Toad’s rug collection.

DB: The Toad has a tiger skin rug that someone’s cat. (laughs)

SF: Yeah, but we definitely tried to avoid that.

Q: That’s something that people have been amazed at, that fur, but then after a while it just…

SF: If you need it, then it’s a good thing but I mean we didn’t want to be tempted into a lot of that stuff, in all departments, you know. Like the camera’s another place where we didn’t really want to do lots of super flashy, complex CGI camera moves. Actually we wanted quite an elegant camera style that was kind of discrete and just allowed the acting to come through and allowed the comedy to come through. We didn’t want to be too flashy with that either.

DB: That’s true with the character design as well. Instead of putting fur on them, for example, the Aardman [way], we kept the kind of character designs we have. They’re like a blank canvas and the acting has to be very pure because you’re working with such simple elements and you can be subtle and you don’t rely on extra stuff to help get you through it. You’ve just got to be good.

Q: Speaking of the acting, your voice cast I think was an interesting mix of people who have done animation voices before like Kate Winslet has. But then I don’t know that Ian McKellan has. He was just…talk about over the top…over the top wasn’t high enough. (laughter)

SF: He was fantastic.

DB: He was wonderful. We’d give him the silliest lines and he was more than game just to … He’d give us twenty different, beautiful, beautiful versions of everything. Twenty, thirty, forty.

SF: And he’s done all the great roles. He’s done all the Shakespearean roles and his craft is so well honed. He’s just the most incredible…

DB: He’s a very happy type of fellow. He’s very silly.

SF: Yeah, (imitating McKellan), ‘Pardon me, my fly is undone.’ And he‘s happy to do it.

SF: We’ve adjusted it back and forth over the last three years. A lot of it’s come from just trying to make each other laugh actually.

DB: We spent an awful lot of time trying to make each other laugh.

SF: That’s what gets you through the three, four, five years of it, you know, is to make it enjoyable and we like hi brow humor but we also like silly kid’s humor as well.

DB: We’ve gone from the kid’s humor, slightly silly potty humor, right up to cockroaches reading Kafka in French. (laughter)

Q: What about your Greek chorus of the slugs? And the choice of music too? There’s this great 50’s, 60’s montage.

DB: We just wanted it to be fun really. A couple of the songs in the movie were written for the movie. Some were just songs we loved. We thought it’d be funny to have the slugs do.

SF: It’s good to get really good vocals, the a cappella stuff and the 50s, 60s stuff. We ended up picking a lot of that because it’s got all these different vocal lines.

Q: Why is this a particularly good time for animation?  We’ve had this amazing volume of animated features. It’s just that this is the 17th or 18th animated feature release this year.

SF: I can’t keep up with it.

DB: No, I can’t keep up with it.

Q: Did it just suddenly come of age? What is happening?

DB: I suspect it’s a lot of people wanting to get into animation after "Shrek II” made so much money. There’ve been a lot of movies that have been pretty good this year. I mean some movies maybe haven’t been quite as good sort of the bulking up those numbers so I think there’s still in terms of major releases maybe five or six.

SF: I think people have seen probably through "Shrek” and "Toy Story” that you can make a film that works on lots of levels and that you can actually entertain such a big general audience…

DB: True.

SF: …that will appeal across that band and I think that’s become the modern age of animated movies. They’re now not just for kids and not just cartoons.

Q: The thing about "Shrek” is it’s not just the Saturday afternoon take-your-kids-to-the-movie but it was the Friday night date movie. I was at screenings where it was all adults.

SF: So that’s the modern age.

Q: Was that something you were trying to go for?

SF: I think just naturally…

DB: We can’t help it. I think we make the movie for ourselves.

SF: The boundaries have been pushed by those films and that’s good. It means we can go there and … It feels like perhaps there may be a peak and some people might fall away. They might not make as much money as they wanted to make or they might find the market a bit crowded or something.

DB: I think it sort of happened after "Lion King,” didn’t it, that a lot of people got into TV (?) animation and then a lot of people make one movie and then maybe didn’t make so many others.

Q: But I wonder if there’s something going on now with the availability.  You know, a high school kid with a G5 or an Intel or Mac and some reasonably inexpensive software has a lot of power at his disposal.

DB: It’s fantastic. (to Sam) I’m sure it was the same for you when I started. It was with a Super 8 camera and some modeling clay and it was fantastically expensive and I couldn’t possibly have from where I was…. in the north of England I couldn’t possibly have afforded to get all the animation equipment with the cells and the paints to do my own stuff and had to wait until I was working professionally before I could even try that. But now, you’re right, anyone with a family computer, not even a particularly powerful computer, not even particularly new software, can start to get the grips with animation.

SF: I’m sure in the end the basics of good filmmaking need to apply before any of that technology kicks in.

DB: There’s no software for the story and characters.

SF: Good story.

DB: The jokes. If there’s a hope, we’ve been together… (laughter)

SF: I remember going to see Ray Harryhausen when I was a kid. Just the magic of our stuff, especially 3-D and stop frame animation. I always thought that was amazing. My first films were just Super 8, just shooting things moving not even with a story particularly. It was just the magic. It just completely grabbed me.

DB: I was brought up on Disney movies and just always loved and still do love the classics and ended up falling into animation working on "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” and just enjoying it and never leaving.

Q: What do you see yourselves doing next?

SF: Uh, resting, probably. (laughter) No, as little as possible in truth because it’s such a big cycle to be on something like this from the beginning to end is going over five years and that’s a huge cycle to go through and to contemplate doing it again is difficult. It’s like building the pyramids or climbing Mt. Everest. You don’t rush back up there if you’ve done it once.

DB: It does take a long time to get a project off the ground as well and pre-production on all of these movies takes years.

SF: I think just go back into development and probably look at two, three or four things going and see which one rises.

Q: Is there one thing you’ve always wanted to do?  Something you’ve always thought about doing but haven’t done at this point?

DB: I think in animation "Flushed Away” kicks most of the boxes, at least for me. (laughter)

SF: I’m afraid so. This may be all done by now.

DB: It’s got comedy. It’s got humor, action, I must admit.

SF: We made the film we wanted to see.

DB: We did actually. I think it’ll take awhile to work out what the next one is actually.

Q: Could you come back a little to the Aardman sensibility? I don’t know if there’s a mission statement up on the wall of Peter Lord’s office wall. How do you define that?

SF: Well, I think simplicity is one part of it and focusing on good character and good story is actually at the center of it and so anything that is extraneous to that pure thing is either a) not necessary or b) can be played with and made fun of. So I think when you consider that they started with more of the little plasticine man on the kitchen table with their little 16mm camera and they made films that way and it was all about good acting and a nice clean, cleanly delivered story. So I think that’s part of it and then the other thing is just not taking yourself seriously and being silly.

DB: I think Aardman is just one more step in sort of the great British comedy tradition frankly. I think you sort of have the Ealing Studios, you have Monty Python, you have others, but you definitely have Aardman. They’re in there as part of this little comedy royalty of Britain. They stand aside. You can recognize Aardman stuff immediately.  It’s special.

SF: I think everyone at DreamWorks got it as well. We knew we could technically execute the Aardman style but we didn’t know whether the spirit of Aardman would come through and it’s quite an abstract thing. But everyone here got it. And they were really glad to be working on something that had that view, that could send itself up and have fun with it.

DB: I think people are happy just to work on one big ensemble comedy piece that didn’t take itself too seriously. Too silly.

SF: That’s the truth.

DB: I mean you’re right. I agree with you. It’s that as well.

"Flushed Away” opens in theaters on November 3rd. I invite you to read my Review of the film. Don't miss my Interview with versatile actor Andy Serkis, who voices the character of Spike in the film. Be sure to also not miss the Many Flushed Away Clips & Videos we have posted.From Dreamworks Animation and Aardman Features, the teams behind the worldwide hit "Wallace & Gromit - The Curse of the Were-Rabbit", comes the computer-animated comedy "Flushed Away". Blending Aardman's trademark style and characterizations with DreamWorks' state-of-the-art computer animation, "Flushed Away" is a madcap comedy set on and beneath the streets of London.

Roddy is a decidedly upper-crust "society mouse" who lives the life of a beloved pet in a posh Kensington flat. When a sewer rat named Syd comes spewing out of the sink and decides he's hit the jackpot, Roddy schemes to rid himself of the pest by luring him into the "whirlpool." Syd may be an ignorant slob, but he's no fool, so it is Roddy who winds up being flushed away into the bustling sewer world of Ratropolis. There Roddy meets Rita, an enterprising scavenger who works the sewers in her faithful boat, the Jammy Dodger. Roddy immediately wants out, or rather, up; Rita wants to be paid for her trouble; and, speaking of trouble, the villainous Toad—who royally despises all rodents equally, making no distinction between mice and rats—wants them iced…literally. The Toad dispatches his two hapless hench-rats, Spike and Whitey, to get the job done. When they fail, the Toad has no choice but to send to France for his cousin—that dreaded mercenary, Le Frog.