ComingSoon Senior Editor Spencer Legacy interviewed Atsuko Ishizuka about directing Goodbye, Don Glees! and the difficulties that include animating waterfalls.
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“Teen misfits Roma, Toto, and Drop call themselves the ‘Don Glees,’ an informal name for their backyard adventures,” says the official synopsis. “One day, when the trio gets blamed for a nearby forest fire, they set off into the woods to prove their innocence. As disaster strikes their expedition, tensions flare between the friends as they realize that growing up has taken them on wildly different paths in life.”
Spencer Legacy: The movie has a dream-like high quality at occasions. What impressed you to embed that feeling in Goodbye, Don Glees?
Atsuko Ishizuka: The “existence” of Drop was the key phrase. He is a boy who got here from a world that’s distant and by no means seen. I imagined, for boys like Roma who’ve all the time thought the small countryside world the place they stay was the one world, Drop will need to have appeared as if he’s a dream or an phantasm.
Which character do you relate to probably the most?
I depicted the characters’ feelings by actually making an attempt to change into every considered one of them, and subsequently I can relate to all of them. But I feel Toto is probably the most just like me in the case of character. He is severe and hardworking and struggling by making an attempt to be the great child that individuals need him to be. But he doesn’t consider himself to be that good child. The individuals who battle between expectations from others and one’s self may have the ability to perceive him.
What made you select to create a narrative about boys rising up relatively than women rising up?
When writing a narrative about younger youngsters rising up, gender isn’t actually a difficulty. What was extra essential for this was the way in which during which kids and adults are totally different: their age. The characters occurred to be women in my earlier work, A Place Further than the Universe, so I questioned, “what if it’s boys this time?” That’s the start line. I additionally had an thought about setting the broad world and all the potentialities because the themes of the story, and so boys who change strongly by means of the journey and construct up their pleasure had been congruent with my thought of the movie.
How did your previous work put together you to helm an unique characteristic movie for the primary time?
As I discussed earlier than, the expertise of directing the unique TV collection A Place Further than the Universe was very useful. Creating one thing from scratch is basically tough, and it was a extremely robust course of. Nobody knew what to do with the intention to get it to come back collectively, and we didn’t even know what it was that we didn’t know. This time [on this film], I questioned how I bought by means of the issues whereas creating the earlier collection and the way the scriptwriter had written the plot, so I truly consulted with my earlier workers and tackled the identical issues over as soon as once more.
Was there a very tough sequence to create?
For the final scene’s waterfall, we had been doing check after check up till the final minute. Since animation is made with many footage, this can be very tough to specific any sort of actual trying water, particularly an infinite however detailed waterfall that basically highlights the motion of the water. Nowadays, CGI is usually used, however mixing CGI with drawn footage is hard; the CGI turns into apparent. I needed to maintain the attractiveness of the gorgeous background image whereas exhibiting a powerful large waterfall that may’t be expressed solely by drawn footage. The taking pictures workers and I sat in entrance of the pc late many nights and tried to determine a option to create reasonable and luxurious surroundings, but in addition the “hand-drawn pictures with eye-catching visuals” that we aimed for.
What message do you hope viewers take away from the movie?
I’d be actually completely satisfied if the viewers feels the world is greater than we expect and that we ourselves are additionally greater than we expect. I additionally need the viewers to expertise that altering views might be enjoyable and fascinating. When views change, what we see begins to look totally different. I needed the viewers to have that have, and so I created this movie in order that the second time watching is extra fascinating than the primary time.
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