Dr. Toon: A Peek Under the Hood

In this month's column, Dr. Toon sits down with the makers of Hoodwinked to talk about many an animator's dream — producing their own independent feature.
Posted In | Magazines: AnimationWorld | Columns: Dr. Toon

TE: You could say that film school started for some of us when we were kids! I would say there have been different stages of our development that I almost view as a film school. Cory was there a lot longer, but I spent five years in Oklahoma where they have a small film community. We call that our “film school” as far as the production side, working with crews and working in different aspects of the business.

Now, Cory has had experience with animation, working with Character Builders out of Columbus, Ohio. They were subcontracted for a lot of studio pictures. When we moved out to L.A., we got some representation and then worked with a few different producers over the years, just developing our material. We’ve had a very learn-by-doing existence. It was important to get a well-rounded education and then do the film thing as our extracurricular passion.

DT: I’m aware that you do have some animation experience. Katie, you worked in post-production at Disney.

KH: Right, and then moved to the development department.

DT: And Cory and Preston, you created the Wobots, who starred in a Christmas special last year.

CE: I created that, and Preston produced that with me. That was almost another animation class we took, in learning how to do that special.

DT: That was the film that caught the attention of your backer, Maurice Kanbar.

Preston Stutzman: Yes, correct.

KH: And Maurice was an early investor in Pixar, I’m not sure to what extent, but he dabbles in a variety of things. He’s an inventor, he holds a number of patents, and he’s always had a film interest. These guys went and pitched a number of original ideas, but he was just set on wanting to do something animated. He saw the potential when he saw Wobots, saw that there was some experience there, and he gave them the challenge to come up with something clever.

DT: Still, it’s a very big leap to making a full-length, major animated feature like Hoodwinked. Was it somewhat intimidating to take on a project of that size?

TE: I don’t think we really knew what size it was until we were halfway through! (All laugh). It started out so small, and then it kept growing.

PS: Yeah, when Hoodwinked first started it was just basically twice as long as Wobots in length. Wobots was 45 minutes, so we were just going to do 90 minutes. It was going to be at the same level of animation. And the voice talent would be at the same level of Wobots, with maybe a couple of SAG actors, but mostly people we know that have funny voices.

KH: There was the thought that it was probably going to go direct to DVD.

TE: It took me about six months to realize how big this thing might turn into. Our producer, Sue Bea Montgomery, kept one-upping it, going back and asking for more money. It took me a few months to catch on, like, “Whoa, wait, this is a full time job now? What are we doing?” This isn’t a road trip to New Jersey, we’re going to Fiji!

CE: On a fishing boat! Whoops! Did we pack enough?

KH: To Cory and Todd’s credit, the first draft they wrote was read by the producers, who said, “Wow, this is really good. This isn’t just fulfilling their financier’s request, this is a really fun story that could be highly marketable.” Later, Tony Leech, the third writer came on, and helped to finish the writing process.

PS: After some of the actors came on early, we started to think, “Who else can we get? Who else can we get?” That expanded the project, too.

KH: It was exciting to see that you could get some great talent just by them enjoying the script and being open to doing the film.

PS: Material actually gets you talent. That’s what gets you a cast, above money sometimes.

DT: Another amazing thing about Hoodwinked is the fact that it was made on a budget of less than $20 million, roughly one-tenth of what it cost to make a film like Chicken Little. What was the most difficult part of having to make an Oscar-eligible film on that small a budget?

PS: Compromising.

CE: Giving up the things that you really didn’t want to have to give up.







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