by R.C. Samo
Editor-in-Chief
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Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 releases on Blu-Ray and DVD combo backs today and Co-Director, Cody Cameron was nice enough to sit with us at Sony Pictures Animation to discuss the animated feature.
FanboyNation (FBN): In comparison to the first one, how did you make it differ enough to be its own stand alone movie?
Cody Cameron (CC): Thanks for saying that, by-the-way. Definitely, we wanted to continue the story and both, Kris Pearn (co-director) and myself worked on the first one in the story department and there was a lot of stuff that we had boarded for the first film that didn’t make it in because of time and because of story shifts. It was great to come back and kind of reheat some of those leftovers — sorry for the puns — living in a world for three years making puns, it’s hard not to.
What was really fun was to get to advance the idea of sentient food and what kind of creatures we could create with that, while trying to stay true to the characters and what was set up by Chris (Christopher Miller) and Phil (Lord) in the first film and continue that tone and that style but it was great to kind of blow up the world and make this giant garden out of the island and come up with the really bizarre kind of food creatures.
FBN: About the four shorts that are put into the DVD, how long were they made after the original movie?
CC: They were actually made about a year and a half to two years after we were in development on this film. So, actually, the second film was in development in being made and animated before Dave (David Feiss) started on his mini-movies.
FBN: Do you have the actors under contract to do any additional voice over?
CC: I’m not sure how the deals work with the actors, but we did tack on those sessions at the end of our sessions for the movies. So we’d go to record Bill Hader in New York; usually I would fly out, Kris would stay here but as soon as we were done recording things for the movie, then Dave Feiss the director of the shorts would come in and work with the actors. In some cases, same with the mini-movies as the feature film, there was certain instances where we were moving so quickly we had to animate something then ADR (Automated Dialog Replacement) it afterwards and so I think, a lot of the shorts were an ADR situation where the animation was done and the actors were going in after the fact.
FBN: Now you had Terry Crews replace Mr. T from the first one. Which great ADR by the way, it took awhile to figure out that it wasn’t exactly T.
CC: We were, obviously a little sad that Mr. T couldn’t return but what was great was Terry Crews’ kids were fans of the first film and he had actually gone to the premier for the first film and when he told his kids he was going to get the job they were like, ‘Don’t mess it up, dad!’ What was great I asked him to be Earl but not to do a Mr. T impersonation. I don’t know if I’m just so used to hearing Terry Crews but honestly it sounds like the same character to me. I thought he did a great job.
FBN: Did you find any problems with ADR versus having recorded first then animating?
A hand carved Watermelephant
CC: Well, with ADR it’s always tricky because now the actor is locked into a certain timing and it’s always better if they can perform first and the animation be done to their performance. We didn’t do ADR everytime, we did try to record them first, but especially towards the end of production, like the last three/four months there were cases where we had to animate and because of actors’ schedules you’re trying to get people and once that train was rolling, we would try to pick certain scenes like this one is one line here, one line there, let’s go ahead and animate those and if it was a longer paragraph we’d try to hold off so that we could let the actors do the performance. I don’t want to make it sound like it was an all ADR film, we did start out with recording the actors.
FBN: How was it for them to make the transition from traditional voice over to ADR?
CC: They were surprisingly really good at it. It’s really fun to see them watching it and then trying to match the timing of the character. I believe Anna, Terry and Bill all had to do ADR. Also, Benjamin Bratt was really good in it as well.
FBN: The obvious question, is there a part three on the horizon?
CC: Don’t know, if everyone goes and buys this on Blu-Ray then there might be (chuckles).
FBN: Where there any foodimals that got cut that you would have wanted to see?
CC: Yeah, there was one that Kris Pearn mentions all the time was the Cuminbeing it was a ghostly kind of dust figure and that one was maybe a little too bizarre and then there was a Tyrannos’moresmess that ended up as a 2D element in the coda but we had a scene in the film where they are making their way to the big rock candy mountain, they were on a crème brûlée glacier and got attacked by a giant T-Rex made out of a s’more. It had a gram-cracker mouth breathed fire and crusted the crème brûlée and had a body made out of marshmallows. That one would have been a really fun monster but the moment changed in the film and we realized we didn’t need that really big T-Rex moment when we already had the Cheespider and the Tacodile.
FBN: When you’re going through and directing animation, are you involved with the story boarding and everything from the very beginning?
CC: Yeah. In development we start with the outline, working with the writers — we’re taking it from the inception all the way to the mix (sound mixing). It really is long hours, it might sound gratuitous to say I’m on a six month vacation but after four months, I still haven’t totally recharged. It’s fun, it’s worth the hard work, but it is definitely a long process. I had a full head of hair before this production started.
FBN: Personally, what’s your favorite character in Cloudy 2?
CC: You know, it’s probably the pickles because that was the first thing I started with and even going back to the first film…I don’t know if you remember when Flint went into meatball to confront his machine, there was a much longer scene that Chris and Phil had written where the food formed a giant face to protect the machine and I had story boarded something where pickles fell out of the walls of the meatball and started hopping forward to form this head and I just got obsessed about those hopping pickles, so when we had a chance to come and do this one, I said, ‘I want to do pickles,’ and Kris said, ‘Well, I want to do strawberry ewoks,’ and so strawberries and pickles, we’ll start there.
FBN: It must have been fun to come up with some of the puns.
CC: Oh yeah, but it’s funny to see the reasons. Some people love them and some people hate them. I don’t know if there is anyone from the New York Times here, but there was one reviewer who hated the puns so bad that he gave away the ending before the film came out. I guess some people really hate food puns (chuckling).
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 releases on Blu-Ray and DVD Combo Packs to day, January 28, 2014.
