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Pursuit of Happiness: The Making of Trolls

© DreamWorks Animations

© DreamWorks Animations

"Trolls" directing team Mike Mitchell and Walt Dohrn share their experiences working on the latest DreamWorks Animation feature...

A toy fad created by Danish woodcutter Thomas Dam appears on the big screen courtesy of DreamWorks Animation with the release of Trolls; the plastic dolls with the Don King frizzy hair have been transformed into CG animated characters under careful attention of director Mike Mitchell, and co-director Walt Dohrn, who previously collaborated together on a blockbuster franchise.

Trolls: Official Trailer

Shrek & Trolls

"In making the Shrek movies we learned a lot about what the audience wants, and the need to have these real characters with emotional resonance in order for the irreverent humor to work,” notes Walt Dohrn. "The birth place of the Trolls was Scandinavia, so our production designer Kendal Cronkhite-Shaindlin worked that into the design. The height of their popularity was the 1970s so we took a little of that too.”

The fantasy adventure revolves around an overly optimistic Troll, town leader Poppy (Anna Kendrick) partnering with the pessimistic survivalist Branch (Justin Timberlake) to rescue their friends from becoming dinner entrées of the miserly Bergens. "That first screening with the storyboards and all of us doing the voices took us about six months to get to it. We got such a great reaction that we spent the next two and a half years trying to contain that lightning in a bottle.”

Fuzzy Immersion

Breaking from the trend of photorealism, the focus was in producing a ‘fuzzy immersion' by constructing characters and environments made out of felts, wool, velvet, macramé and flocked materials. "We had our trolls as real gummy bears flocked in velvet, and wanted to use the technology to give it a handmade feel,” states Mike Mitchell. "The concept started off not as immersive but Kendal Cronkhite-Shaindlin took it further than I thought you ever could. It was her idea to make the fire out of hair and to have felt rocks.”

Trolls was the first project to use DreamWorks Animation's proprietary long hair simulation tool called Willow that provides the ability to style, simulate and preview within one application. "The character effects animators were able to manipulate the hair in a much more advanced way than we had done before,” explains Walt Dohrn. "The hair had to do so many things, like grow into stairs, change color and make specific shapes.” Mitchell laughs, "They can swing from it, like a monkey tail. The hair is their superpower!” A number of hair issues needed to be resolved. "In two of the most complicated scenes, DJ Suki's [Gwen Stefani] hair was hard to render, so we decided to make it more like dreadlock hair and The Fashion Twins [ICONA POP] which are conjoined by hair.”

Everything Glitters

Adding to complexity was extensive utilization of glitter, leading to the development of a GlitterFlakes shader which uses a 3D noise cloud sphere to produce a sense of randomness, as well as allow for the motion, shape and reflectivity to be controlled. "The producers were like, ‘Do we have to have this glitter. It's becoming difficult,'” recalls Mike Mitchell. "And we said, ‘The story doesn't make sense without the glitter!' To be fair it wasn't just exploding glitter. We covered naked troll characters, like walking disco balls. It's stunning what they did.”

The shiny element led to an unexpected discovery for the filmmaking duo. "It was funny because the computer didn't understand how to render glitter which was a big surprise to us,” reveals Walt Dohrn. "We thought, ‘You just do it.' Our joke is there's a room with guys with lab coats throwing glitter at each other and filming it. It wasn't that far from the truth!” A new style of animation needed to be created. "Walt and I always solve every question with story,” explains Mitchell. "We wanted to be snappy, funny and hyper with these little Trolls, but when the story gets emotional crank down the animation so they are moving more realistically.”

Shape Shifting

The body proportions of the Trolls did not allow for a traditional approach towards selecting camera angles. "Their heads were huge, the ears jutted way out, and the bodies so tiny, squat and stubby that the simplest over the shoulder shot became the hardest thing to get,” remarks Mike Mitchell who had to adjust to the unusual circumstances. "The animators struggled a little bit in the beginning with the design as well because the main thing of these characters is to hug every hour on the hour,” states Walt Dohrn. "It was a struggle for our head of layout Yong Duk Jhun because you have a grid system of how to shoot an emotional scene and the camera is only going to be such a distance.”

Mitchell adds, "But with the Trolls we kept forcing Yong to pull back because their heads would cover a whole frame.” Other modifications were made to visually compensate. "Shifting the head, stretching the arm, and bending the ears back made it seamless.” The camera did not need to be grounded in reality. "The technical team so wanted to make it as real as possible,” notes Dohrn. "However, we kept on encouraging them to cheat. They liked it in the end.”

Song & Dance

"It took us a year to design Poppy from start to finish,” reveals Walt Dohrn. "She was so important because of being the main character. Just getting her exactly right, like the size of her teeth and how wide her pupils are.” Casting Anna Kendrick to provide the voice of the protagonist came in handy. "Anna was almost part of the design team by coming up with a voice,” states Mike Mitchell. "James Corden's character Biggie exploded once he started doing a voice.”

Video reference assisted with the animation process explains Dohrn. "They have a lipstick cam there as you record so the animators can study the way the actor behaves so it has an influence on how the character is developed.” There is not only dialogue but plenty of singing. "It was hard for Anna because she had to be acting while singing,” states Mitchell. "But the singing was similar to directing the acting because our songs furthered the story.”

Justin Timberlake, who voiced Branch, had the additional role of being the executive music producer. "Justin was involved with every actor who came in and we got to record lines with him and Anna together. And since Walt plays Cloud Guy and Smidge it was handy to have him in the room too. It's a rapport you're not always afforded in an animated film.”

True Colors

Sequence 1000 lasts under three minutes and showcases 27 different environments. "We were like, ‘They'll just be matte paintings.' But when you're dealing with 3D it's hard to cheat,” states Walt Dohrn. "It was one of those sequences we wanted for Cannes. Everywhere had these posters that said, ‘Yes we Cannes.'” Restrictions were placed on the color pallet.

"Since entire environments are on-screen for so quick, that was the one time where I personally wanted to contain color,” reveals Mike Mitchell. "Every location could only have two no more than three colors.” Colors are a big part of conveying the atmosphere and tone. "Because we knew these characters would be multi-colored, my concern was what happens with the background. How do we make sure that it's not just an explosion of color and your eye doesn't know where to go? It's not easy, but the lighters were helpful with that, along with us being really careful. We would do a color pallet of every environment before we built it.”

The color pallet was mapped out by Kendal Cronkhite-Shaindlin and Timothy Lamb who served as the art director. "Removing the colors was easier because it was story motivated.” The majority of the action takes place in Bergen Town. "It needed to be impressive but at the same time needed to have a layer of whimsy, entertainment and humor” remarks Dohrn. "Pulling a color pallet from the 1970s was where we found our solution. Those avocado greens.”

Sound Decisions

Academy Award-winner Ethan Van de Ryn supervised the sound design. "How does a velvet foot on top of a fiberground sound like?” asks Walt Dohrn. "Being accurate to that was great for all of the creatures we had.” Mike Mitchell observes, "They all make strange little noises. That was fun because Walt would often go in and do the creatures' voices. Then we would manipulate them. We did homages to David Lynch. Some stuff we always wanted to do with sound design.”

Dohrn continues, "It helped with the verisimilitude of the world. Then there was the score by Christophe Beck. It was another great challenge because we have all of these original and classic songs so we wanted the score to weave the music together. Christophe would do stuff like Hello being quoted in the orchestra when you see Bridgette appear again; he did little tricks like that.” The third act was problematic until Justin Timberlake intervened with the chart-topping Can't Stop the Feeling. "We could not find a song. Justin said, ‘I'll just write you a song.' We were like, ‘Yes. Please. Thank you.'”

Be Happy!

"The homage to Stanley Kubrick was neat,” notes Mike Mitchell. "There's a Shining reference in our film. Gristle, voiced by Christopher Mintz-Plasse, is on his big wheel and the camera is tracking him down the hallway. We had to cut that short but it's still there.” Walt Dohrn loves the moment where the roles of Branch and Poppy are reversed. "Mine for sure is the True Colors scene because it's so unusual. Trolls is big, psychedelic, funny and irrelevant but when this movie gets reduced to being so quiet and just these black and white images, you have to experience that in a theatre because people become collectively quiet. The seats aren't moving.”

Trolls excels in the world of stereoscopic. "I do hope that people see this in 3D by the way,” remarks Mitchell. "It makes a huge difference.” Happiness prevails. "The Internet is judgmental and dark so we were like wouldn't it be cool if we could start a trend where it's cool to be happy. A positive attitude is underrated. If the people working with us didn't have a positive attitude, they would have never pulled off the glitter, hair, and color. A positive attitude helped to get this film finished.”

Related links

Check out more videos for Trolls
The official site for Trolls

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