An Afternoon with Disney’s Big Hero 6
My report from the Guardian Masterclass that took place at the Curzon Soho Cinema on 18 January 2015
A few days ago I experienced something quite cool, that I wanted to share with you all. And I did, on Twitter (search for the hashtag #DisneyGMC). But sometimes 140 characters is not enough. And it’s at those times that you realise you have to write… an article! Now, writing an article sounds easy enough, and for many people it is. But my problem is, I put so much pressure on myself to write “serious” and “high-quality” stuff, that it actually stops me from writing anything at all.
So this is going to be a very casual, jokey, sarcastic, and quickly written (famous last words) article. No pressure, no expectations of it to actually make any sense. Just me recalling an experience that I had, a few days ago, like I already said in the previous paragraph.
Qu’est-ce que c’est Big Hero 6? What is Big Hero 6? Good question. Big Hero 6 is a new computer-animated film, made by Walt Disney Animation Studios (not Pixar Animation Studios) based on an obscure Marvel Comic first published in September 1998.
Apparently it was created by Duncan Rouleau and Steven Seagle. Now, I should point out, this is Steven Seagle we’re talking about, not Steven Seagal the intense actor and martial artist.
Assuming you like reading facts from Wikipedia, Big Hero 6 is the 54th film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, which started back in 1938 with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Much to my surprise though, Walt Disney didn’t actually direct any of them.
The beauty of digital cinema is that, because there aren’t expensive film reels to transport around the world anymore, films can be beamed as digital files to every cinema at the same time. Which explains why Big Hero 6 was released on 7 November 2014 in the United States, and comes out here in the United Kingdom on… 30 January 2015!!! Isn’t technology amazing?
Fortunately, on Sunday 4 January 2015 there was a special “early” preview screening of Big Hero 6 at several cinema chains here in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately though, I was out of the country at the time, busy clocking up my ride count on Ratatouille: The Adventure at Disneyland Paris. Bugger.
That was a negative and, not to quote Alan Partridge but, “right now I need two positives. One to cancel out the negative and another one, you know, just so I can have a positive”.
So, using Google’s self-proclaimed “pre-eminent search engine”, I tried to find another preview. And I did.
The Guardian (a newspaper here in the United Kingdom) do something called Guardian Masterclasses. And it turns out they were doing one called An Afternoon with Disney’s Big Hero 6, at which you could not only see the film early, but hear from the Directors and Producer of the film. Yes, real human beings, from Walt Disney Animation Studios, there in the cinema. That sounded genuinely interesting to me.
Date: Sunday 18 January 2015
Times: 2pm-6pm. Check-in begins 30 minutes before the start time.
Location: Curzon Soho Cinema, 99 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 5DY.
Price: ÂŁ39 (includes VAT, booking fee and refreshments)
Event capacity: 225
The blue Book now button on the page, was hard to resist clicking. So I clicked it. And that, right there, is how I ended up going to this event. So if you’re wondering how you too can get the opportunity to go to events like this, it’s pretty simple, you just use Google to find things and then you book them.
Arrival, 13:30
I’m not going to describe how to get to the Curzon Soho Cinema. That would be foolish. That would indicate a gross lack of focus on my behalf. But something that I am going to tell you is, on my lilliputian London Underground train, I faced someone who looked incredibly similar to former Blue Peter presenter Stuart Miles. In fact, he looked so much like Stuart Miles that he actually was Stuart Miles. Naturally I didn’t say anything at the time, because you have to respect celebrities’ desire to live a “normal” life. But now that some time has passed, I think it’s OK to talk about it. So what’s the link with Disney, you ask? Well, Stuart used to present Saturday Disney, a Saturday (obviously) Morning Kids TV show, from 1993 to 1994. Now you know.
Anyway, boom, I arrived at the cinema, bang on time! The Curzon Soho was originally built in 1912, when Walt Disney was just 11 years old. And speaking of 11, today it is one of 11 cinemas in the Curzon chain, and an acclaimed art house venue. Cool. And it may soon be demolished to make way for the Crossrail 2 development. Not so cool.
After the arduous process of using my arm to push the door to enter said cinema, I presented my home-printed ticket, checked in, got my name crossed off the list, and in return acquired a “the guardian masterclasses, Big Hero 6” sticker. We were instructed not to put the sticker on our coats, presumably to avoid superficial damage to our swanky fabrics, not because of more serious security reasons.
Big Hero 6 Screening, 14:00
Two floors underground, seated among a mix of 225 animation fans, students and Rapunzel look-alikes, I sat and waited for the event to start. If I’d read the Welcome Pack PDF more carefully, I would’ve noticed that Chris Hewitt (the news editor for Empire Magazine) was going to be there to host/chair/introduce the event. But I didn’t read it carefully, I skimmed it, like milk. So it was a pleasant surprise when he (Chris) casually mounted the stage and delivered a humorous and knowledgable speech, occasionally referring to notes (not playing Candy Crush) on his iPhone.
The lights dimmed and, without a single advert or trailer, they showed us Feast (2014), a charming new 6-minute short film about a Boston Terrier that loves to eat. Now, I’m not going to say too much about Feast. I was so impressed with the look of it, and the technology behind it, that I forgot to pay full attention to the story. Whoops. You see, Feast was animated using the same Meander software as Paperman (2012). Meander offers the look and the expressiveness of traditional hand-drawn animation, but with the stability and dimensionality of CG. The thing that’s special about Feast is, it’s the first time Meander was used in colour.
Once Feast ended, we went straight into Big Hero 6. Much to my delight, we weren’t given any 3D glasses to wear. Yes, despite this being an official Disney event, the film was shown in 2D. Perhaps the 3D craze has finally worn off? I hope so.
Sat in my comfortable (although, actually quite tiny and so technically uncomfortable) seat, I forgot about reality for 102 minutes, as I was fully immersed in the world of San Fransokyo. Given how sensitive people are these days to spoilers, I’m not going to reveal anything about the story in this article, which makes things much easier for me because I can get away with writing less. Yay! But what I will say is, Big Hero 6 is an incredibly entertaining film. It’s so fast and so engaging that you will never think of reaching for your iPhone and checking Twitter, which is what I always end up doing.
Big Hero 6 is of course a Disney film, inspired by a Marvel comic. And, as I’m sure you’re aware, in the past seven years there has been an endless stream of live-action Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films. But in my opinion, with the exception of the three Iron Man films, Big Hero 6 is simply a better film than all of them. An animated film, “for kids”, that’s better than all those live-action films? Really? Yep, it’s true. Firstly, the pacing is incredibly sharp and refined, with no boring moments where you lose interest. And secondly, you actually care about the characters. Specifically with Hiro and Baymax, you care about their friendship and you care about what happens to them. For example, just watching this 26 second “Fist Bump” clip, you’ll probably care more about them than you do about Thor after a full 114 minutes of him relentlessly spinning his hammer.
Unlike Frozen (2013), Big Hero 6 is not a musical. In fact, if you look (below, not above) at this slide Andrew Stanton presented during his 2012 TED Talk, you’ll see Big Hero 6 has more in common with the “Pixar” column on the left, than the “Disney” column on the right. There are definitely no songs, no “I want” moments, no happy village and no love story in Big Hero 6. But there is a villain.
So there aren’t any moments in Big Hero 6 where the characters spontaneously burst into song. There’s no “Let It Go”. But there is music. The soundtrack was composed by Henry Jackman, who did a fantastic job on Wreck-It Ralph (2012) and returns here with a similar fusion of electronic and orchestral styles. For me, the best parts of all the Disney films, the parts where they really soar to a higher level, are when they combine beautiful visuals with beautiful music. Well in Big Hero 6, that moment is definitely when Hiro flies with Baymax for the first time. Again, I don’t want to say what specifically happens in the film, but it’s a gorgeous, soothing and exhilarating moment. Just take a listen to track 14.
Interval, 15:50
The film ended. Now, I just have to say, props to me for not crying. Big Hero 6 is rather emotional in parts, but like a true emotionless man, I didn’t shed a tear. I could’ve, I should’ve, but I handled it.
So, there was an interval, which was a good opportunity for us all to have a free refreshment from the bar and use the toilet. But, 225 people fighting for drinks didn’t sound like much fun to me, and 225 people all sharing a toilet sounded even worse! So I strategically waited until the very end of the interval to launch my attack. First I went to the toilet, then I ran upstairs to the bar, past a life-size inflatable Baymax, for a quick glass of ice cold orange juice. Too much information? Moving on!
Masterclass Presentation, 16:30
Eagerly back in my seat, like a sloth to a tree, the Masterclass Presentation began. In the aforementioned Welcome Pack PDF we were told that “the use of phones, laptops, tablets or any recording device will not be allowed during the screening”. If they hadn’t specifically said that, I would’ve recorded a Voice Memo of the whole thing on my iPhone, and I probably would’ve tweeted about it too. But, to avoid the risk of being suddenly ejected from the cinema, through the ceiling, as so often happens, I didn’t.
Instead, I resorted to using a notepad and pen; a harsh reminder that I have almost completely forgotten how to write by hand. Over the course of the next 100 minutes, I frantically scribbled away, generating 10 pages worth of notes, which sounds incredibly impressive, until you realise I was writing on a teeny tiny A6 notepad. Fortunately they (The Guardian) were filming the event for “promotional purposes”, so no doubt a video of it will soon be online.
Alas, Chris Williams (one of the film’s two directors) was ill and was back in California, being “pumped full of antibiotics”. So, rather than seeing “three of Disney Animation Studio’s leading talents” we actually saw two. And those two men were:
They were both great public speakers, and took it in turns to talk, accompanied by slides and video clips. When they spoke, you immediately got a sense of how confident, knowledgeable, genuine and passionate they were about the film and the entire animation process. They hadn’t written a script. They didn’t need to, because they knew their subject so well. They were/are true masters.
Rather than attempting to transcribe their entire Masterclass presentation, what I’m going to do now is fire off some of the facts and trivia I managed to capture on my notepad. So, in chronological order…
When coming up with ideas for a new film, John Lasseter (Chief Creative Officer at WDAS) has the directors go away, look at their passions, and find stories that speak to them. What are they passionate about, as individuals? For Don, that answer was Marvel Comics, and Disney. He was excited about doing a mashup of the two. Having previously directed Winnie the Pooh (2011), he created an amusing piece of concept art, which showed the six main characters dressed up as Marvel Superheroes.
The directors at Walt Disney Animation Studios are asked to pitch three ideas that they are really passionate about. Not just one idea, three. Obviously Don couldn’t tell us what his other two ideas were, for confidentially reasons. But his Big Hero 6 idea, inspired by an obscure Marvel Comic he found, full of Japanese pop culture and fun characters, was the one that John Lasseter ultimately picked.
Marvel told Disney not to worry about setting their Big Hero 6 film within the Marvel Universe, but instead to make Big Hero 6 their own.
San Fransokyo, the futuristic setting of the film, is a mashup of San Francisco and Tokyo. It was a jokey name at first, that they weren’t seriously considering using, but it stuck.
To give San Fransokyo an authentic look, they travelled to both San Francisco and Tokyo, doing intense 13-hour day research trips. They discovered that Tokyo, while visually dense, is actually remarkably ordered, not cluttered. The Japanese press later said that Big Hero 6 is one of the most authentic Japanese films ever made, noticing the yellow and blue milk crates that Disney had populated the streets of San Fransokyo with.
We were shown some gorgeous concept art by Scott Watanabe, which illustrated the progression of a real building in San Francisco (The Corner Store), into the San Fransokyo version (Lucky Cat Café aka Hiro’s house) seen in the film.
Disney wanted Baymax to be a nanny-like, huggable robot, very different from anything seen before. So they visited many Universities, looking for new technologies to inspire his design. At Carnegie Mellon University they found their answer, where researchers were developing inflatable, balloon-like “soft robotics”.
For the design of Baymax’s face, Don didn’t want to make it too human, to avoid entering the uncanny valley and having him (Baymax, not Don) look super creepy. Instead, he wanted Baymax’s face to be really simple. He found his answer on a trip to a Japanese temple, where the slits in a temple bell inspired Baymax’s iconic eyes.
For Baymax’s walk, the animators created three different walk cycles, based on: a toddler, a toddler with a full diaper, and a baby penguin. They ended up choosing baby penguin.
We were shown a time-lapse video of the Story Room, a windowless conference room where the Directors, Producer, Writers and Heads of Story sit around a large table and discuss every idea at length. In order to ultimately tell a great story, they have to be brutally honest with each other about their ideas. The “refrigerator drawing syndrome” is avoided. Honesty is the price of admission into the Story Room. The best ideas come from dissenting opinions, strong opinions.
Storyboarding essentially becomes story re-boarding. The storyboards are changed and redone again and again, with the thinking, “this is good, but how can we make it better?”.
Don outlined four things that a Director at Walt Disney Animation Studios has to be:
- Adaptable. Directors have to not only guide the people in the room, but step back and read the people in the room.
- Encouraging. Directors have to respect the artists.
- Resilient. Films take a very long time to make.
- Outgoing. Directors are up in front of people all the time, so they have to be able to talk.
Producer Roy came back to the stage, offering the advice that, “if you want to be an animator, you have to observe”. He then went on to talk about three of Big Hero 6's major technical advances:
- City Construction. San Fransokyo uses the topography of San Francisco, taken from actual terrain maps, but exaggerates it for a more dynamic look. Laid on top of that terrain are an unprecedented number of 3D models: 83,000 buildings, 100,000 vehicles and 250,000 trees!
- Crowds. To avoid having “rubberstamped” characters in crowd scenes, character rigging supervisor John Kahwaty developed a new piece of software called Denizen. To populate San Fransokyo, Denizen generated 700 extras, each with a different look. And if you look closely, you’ll spot a digital version of Roy in the film, twice.
- Hyperion. Hyperion is a proprietary ray-trace system, a beta renderer, built from the ground up and used for the first time on Big Hero 6 and Feast. It allows the film to be lit using Indirect Lighting, whereby the way light naturally bounces off objects is automated calculated, resulting in more realistic environments.
Q&A, 17:30
So that was the end of the Masterclass Presentation. Next, six painfully bright floodlights lit up the audience, as the film crew turned their cameras on us for the Q&A session. Three director’s chairs were brought onto the stage, for Chris, Roy and Don to sit on, each with their own bottle of mineral water.
Now, I can’t remember all of the questions, and I certainly can’t remember all of the answers either. But I made three pages worth of notes, so I’m going to share with you a few of the things they said.
Most animated films are made in the space of 5 years, but Big Hero 6 was made in just 3½! Even more surprising, it was animated in just 8 months. They were wrestling with the story up until January 2014, and the film wrapped production on 11 August 2014! The final year of production was super hard. They were working 13 to 14 hour days, for 6 days a week, to get it finished.
Audiences going to Marvel films stay in their seats, all the way through the end credits, for the post-credits scene. It’s something they expect. The problem was, Big Hero 6 didn’t have a post-credits scene. So, very late on in production, a small crew of 25 people secretly made one, unveiling it to the rest of the crew, as a surprise at the film’s wrap party.
When asked if Disney would ever return to traditional hand-drawn animation, Roy and Don said that Walt Disney Animation Studios is a “director driven studio”. If a good concept for a hand-drawn film came in, it could definitely get made. But, it would it need to be a “really fresh approach” to hand-drawn animation, something that audiences hadn’t seen before.
Conclusion
I don’t know about you, but personally I like to start my conclusions, not only with a heading stating “conclusion”, but by actually acknowledging that heading and writing about it.
One of Baymax’s lines in the film is, “on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your pain?”. So, let’s use that. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would I rate this film? Personally I would give it a 9. It’s not my favourite Disney film ever, perhaps because I’ve only seen it once, perhaps because it’s not a musical. But, it is incredibly well done. Yes, Big Hero 6 is ridiculously high-quality family entertainment. To quote Don, “it’s got a lot of humour, it’s got killer action sequences, but the most important thing is that the film is emotional”.
Walt Disney Animation Studios is on a winning streak at the moment. Their last seven films have all scored 85% or higher on the film review site Rotten Tomatoes:
- Big Hero 6 (2014) 89%
- Frozen (2013) 89%
- Wreck-It Ralph (2012) 86%
- Winnie the Pooh (2011) 90%
- Tangled (2010) 90%
- The Princess and the Frog (2009) 85%
- Bolt (2008) 88%
Meanwhile, Pixar Animation Studios has been putting out terrible films like Cars 2 (2011) which got 39%, and Monsters University (2013) which surprisingly got 78%, but was still terrible. So it makes you think, does Disney still need Pixar? Disney are certainly making better films than Pixar at the moment.
So what was my favourite thing about Big Hero 6? I think my favourite thing was the relationship between Hiro and Baymax; the story of a boy who falls in love with his robot. Their relationship reminded me of some of my other favourite films, such as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), and The Iron Giant (1999). Personally I would’ve preferred to have spent more time with them, and less time with Hiro’s four superhero friends, which I found a bit predictable and annoying, but that’s just me.
Anyway, to wrap up this “quickly written” 3814-word article, I’m going to leave you with a long 2 minute clip from the film. If you want to avoid spoilers, then definitely don’t watch it. But it’s a great clip, it’s very funny, and it really gives you a true feel of what Big Hero 6 is all about.
Oh, and one last thing. @Priyancake, who kindly allowed me to use her photo of the Q&A session, had this to say about the event:
It was a privilege to be able to delve into the minds of Producer Roy and Director Don during the Q&A. Especially being sat right up front and have them directly respond to one of my week-long prepared questions.
It was a truly gratifying experience and although Chris Williams was unable to attend, the guys did a marvellous job at entertaining their audience and providing genuine insight into the world of Disney feature animation.
