RW

That happens so often with situation comedies and many comedic films, too. It has to be more organic.

One of the stumbling blocks and criticisms that previous features with numerous secondary characters and not a lot of time has encountered is that sometimes there are too many people to get to know in a short time. You’re dealing with a medium that doesn’t have the luxury of three hours, although with Miyazaki I would have thought the mythical 80 minute time limit on animated features would have been debunked, but go figure. Nevertheless, audiences don’t really get a chance to get to know a lot of characters in depth. Was there a stage at which you were addressing that concern?

SA

Absolutely. It was definitely something that myself and the story team were quick to respond to in the notes we would get. It’s very tempting to take a lot of these characters – especially when we get to act two and we have all these characters, we have the Robinsons and we have Carl the robot - to want to expand them and make them more important than they need to be in the context of the movie. In our mind we had taken the characters and divided them up into levels, if you will, into layers or tiers. The A level is Lewis, Wilbur and Bowler Hat Guy. They are the focus and the majority of our time needs to be spent on those stories. B Level is Mildred, who runs the orphanage, Carl the Robot, Grandpa, Franny, Wilbur’s Mom, and then pretty much every one else is C level. C level you get about one dimension of those characters. You get the surface – whatever the funny quirk about the family is, you get a little sense about who they are, personality and that’s about as far as you go. If you get any more of that then you start tipping the balance of the movie. There’s so many elements of this movie, so many characters, you have to keep all those plates spinning. If act two became the Carl the Robot show then we’d be doing a disservice to the main story, Lewis’s story and Bowler Hat Guy’s story, and we would be throwing the movie out of balance and it would tip the whole thing sending it spinning out of control. It’s very important to balance those out and stay focused on the main story. A lot of that was in casting, too.

RW

Are you talking about voice casting or animator casting?

SA

Voice casting. If you get a certain level of actor for a B level role then that character is going to start begging to want more screen time. So it was something we had to look at on all levels in all ways – to keep that balance, because the story is really the key. It’s called “Meet the Robinsons�? after all, this family is important but they’re in service to Lewis’s story. They’re the perfect family for Lewis, as a unit, and we did want to get to know some of them a little bit better than others, but they still had to sort of represent an idea in this movie for Lewis’s story.

RW

And among the other actors – the animators – whose work came along in ways that surprised you? Who were some of the folks who stepped up and got to that next level in the course of their work on this film?

SA

Well, the first name that comes to mind is Nik Ranieri doing Lewis. He’s a brilliant animator. The interesting thing is that he tends to do more comic characters. He’s never really done an emotional lead.

RW

No, he hasn’t.

SA

And in fact when we offered him Lewis he kind of thought “well you know I’m not sure.�? He even said “I don’t know. I’m not sure. This isn’t really what I do. I’d probably do better at the Bowler Hat Guy�?. But , the fact that it isn’t what he usually did was to me the reason that he should do it, because I wanted to see what someone like Nik, who is a brilliant animator, brilliant actor, really understands it all in both hand-drawn and computer, would do. I mean he’s really one of the people from the hand-drawn world who has taken to the computer really well.

RW

Oh, my God, he’s the poster child! Please!

SA

Yeah! I wanted to see what he would do with that. I wanted to see him do something different and have to use different parts of himself. And the subtlety that he gave to Lewis, the great little nuances and the believability that he brought to Lewis…wow!

RW

Oh I think he’s been aching to do this for a while, whether he let on or not. I think Nik is so profoundly gifted.

SA

That to me was really impressive to see someone like Nik, to see what he did with it. There was never any sense of Nik veering into the Hades territory, turning into a comic character. You never saw him go to what was easy or what he knew. He always stayed true to the character.

RW

That’s so great to hear.

SA

He would point in other people’s work “No, that’s too much like Wilbur�? or “I think that kind of behavior isn’t right for Lewis.�? He really stayed in character and he’s really great at that. He was really amazing with the crew and really amazing with his character. He was such a huge asset.

Of course I could go on for hours about so many other animators who did equally amazing work, but it’s just that Nik came to mind right off the bat.