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Words on Screen - Dreamworks Animation Skg - 4-28-2010
Jeffrey Katzenberg: I am very thrilled to announce yesterday that we are onto Dragons 2. I know that there are many, many, many people here who, uh, have been lighting candles wanting to go another round. This will be I think the fact you loved the characters in the film as much as you did, is why the movie is as good as it is. So we're all very excited and looking forward to more dragons.
Words on Screen - Dean DeBlois - Writer / Director
Dean DeBlois: Ok, well, here we are. Interesting spot in the history of the dragons franchise. Um, so it's my ambition to take some notions that were put in place in the first film and carry them through to the second film and develop them and answer some unanswered questions about Hiccup's life and the behavior of dragons. And then trace those forward into a conclusion that will be mind-blowingly traumatic and huge. So if I am going to jump into this I intend to do it with the whole script in mind, with the beginning and the end already in place, so that if we are doing the middle installment that it really does lead in an exciting almost cliffhanger sort of way into the third film. And that's the challenge. April 28, 2010, the adventure begins.
Words on Screen - 12-19-2010
DD: It is December 9th, 2010 and I have just finished the script, first draft. Ehh. My eyes are very blurry and I think I've mapped out just about everything that needs to be there, but uh, of course there is always change and a lot of the character arcs will be refined as will the moments, but it represents what I wanted to do. There it is, 110 pages.
Words on Screen - Norway - 4-23-2011
DD: I spend a lot of time thinking about the poles. I'm really attracted to the Arctic and Antarctic, and I read a lot of stories about adventure, real life self rescues like the Shackleton story. So when I was dreaming up ideas for the second installment my mind starting wandering to the North and what if Hiccup were to journey to the far deep Arctic. That's really where the meat of the adventure could take place. So the idea of taking a research trip to Norway had kind of been brought forward and I was really excited about that because I never had been to the majestic fjords and that incredible scenery Norway has to offer.
DD: Far deeper into the arctic lays a land called Svalbard. It's an archipelago. It's covered in ice and snow and polar bears. It's very remote and it's very magical and I was so curious to see what the light looked like there and what those landscapes looked like. Well, I carry a camcorder around with me everywhere and I try to record just about everything that happens on the movie. Part of the trip was for Roger Deakins, myself, James his wife, and one of our development executives, Gregg Taylor. We flew to Svalbard and spent a six day snow mobile safari just snapping photos and really taking in the breath of that place, and it absolutely found its way into the visuals of the movie.
Bonnie Arnold: But it ended up being an amazing, sort of bonding experience, just on the part of the team itself, and we had a lot of conversations creatively about the movie, not just what the movie would look like but, I think, what the movie would be creatively, and those were the people in that group that were really going to help him on a day to day basis to execute that vision. I think we used that, the feeling of just being connected because of that trip. We talked about it for the next three years after that, for the rest of the time we were working on the movie.
Pierre-Olivier Vincent: Those maybe ???, but they may have some island ???. Maybe they would come across an island having that kind of ice on it, ???.
DD: You mean the ice on the black sand beach?
POV: Yes.
DD: We’d actually put together about ten or fifteen boards that were just random photographs that either had an interesting mood or just some sort of beautiful light and atmosphere.
???: Yeah we’re in the skies, its beautiful
DD: But they began to establish kind of a color script for the film, that mood from moment to moment that were driven by the narrative were we wanted to be in terms of the colour pallet. And its a really nice way to kind of, begin to visualize the film in those early days.
Words on Screen - Vikings on the Backs of Dragons
Gerard Butler: This kid came along and told us a whole different way of tolerance, compassion and understanding and unity.
America Ferrera: Since Hiccup helped the people of Berk see that Dragons could be trained and could be friends with people, Berk has completely changed and now the dragons are integrated into everyday life of Berk and there like their pets but they’re also their partners in crime and it’s in the beginning of the film it’s one big happy family.
Jay Baruchel: If you live on Berk and don’t have a dragon your now in the minority, you know its, there’s Dragon racing and its just this beautiful testament to what Hiccup was a part of from the first one which is the bridging the gap and bringing the two of them together and so, dragons and humans on Berk in this movie live side by side, you couldn’t have one without the other.
Words on Screen - Life with Dragons
Simon Otto: We wanted at the same time the dragons to feel real and believable and tangible but we also wanted them to have a sense of humor. Like we needed to make them entertaining and be communicating something that the audience recognizes, that the way, you know, a stand-up comedian caricatures a politicians, you know. We wanted to caricature animals or different types of species.
Randy Thom: I think of the Dragons as if they were actors as if they were, you know, playing characters and each dragon has its own set of emotions. And we always want them to sound like real creatures so I wind up doing a few of the vocalizations myself. With you know a snarl or growl or something that sounds a little like a tiger, but then go into the whimper or whatever it is that we need a human for.
SO: For every dragon we can mix and match certain types of animal behaviors. For example, the Gronckle is a mixture of a bulldog, helicopter and a bumblebee. So it sounds abstract but when you actually put those elements together you get a flavor of a character and that along with the design, you get a very recognizable piece of animation.
DD: Working with a production designers like POV means that you get somebody who’s thinking about the story as much as they are thinking about the design of the world. And in the case of the Bewilderbeast we had this idea that we were going to introduce the top of the chain. And this dragon instead of being a fire breathing, flying dragon it would actually be a water dragon that swallows back masses of water and then regurgitates with such extreme force that it tears apart its subject and freezes it mid-splash, leaving these really iconic, arresting images of ice spikes and devastating destruction. It was such a remarkable idea and such a strong visual that we pursued it to the full extent.
Words on Screen - Reshaping Berk
POV: In How to Train Your Dragon 1 we were introducing this village, Berk, where most of our characters are living and this village was at war with the dragons so the village is at peace, it's a dragon-friendly Viking community and the dragons being this kind of whimsical fantasy element in our story, we had to represent this as well in the architecture. So visually we are starting to explore a little bit of what the stables could look like. What I really like in ??? was there's still a lot of whimsical and there's still enough structure for you to understand, you know, that its maybe a bit more architectural but actually there is all kinds of dragons shapes and scale and everything that would go in this and when your ??? and your literally surrounded by those structures quite high so the dragons could jump out there or could just go out. Primarily made out of wood and big braces, the big metallic, you know, ??? to make it very solid.
DD: It also features the expanded blacksmith stall. It’s grown quite a bit since the first movie.
POV: It’s just the front part of the shop, the rest of the shop is as well filled with different elements.
DD: See he’s kind of like a big sleepy walrus that takes up all the space, but he’s supposed to keep the forge going. His dragon is really just complaining.
POV: We have all sorts of great accommodation for all the dragons. Stables, A feeding station, a grooming station and the dramatically huge bleachers in front of the village for the games, the dragons games. As you can see in the front of the village, right here, the bleachers for the game, they are looking out toward the village because the village is actually the field, the game field. So we decided to go back to the concept of having a maybe not really a lookout tower but something with a horn that could start the game , or just I mean-
DD: That could be the black sheep horn. So maybe when they say “release the black sheep” the guy just raises a flag, then that guy up there just blows the horn.
DD: We thought what better way to reintroduce the audience to the island of Berk and all of its updates but also reintroduce them to the characters now aged five years, then to have this kinetic, visceral obstacle-race of a game that flies you by all the new updates, that gives you an introduction to each character.
Words on Screen – Character Growth
DD: So one of the challenges in meeting Hiccup five years later, was to design him as a 20 year old and we didn’t want Hiccup to suddenly become this strapping heroic figure, even though he’s the hero of our story. So much of his charm lies in how kind of gangly, awkward and dorky he is. So it was important for us to retain to as much of that quality as possible, whilst still making him heroic in his own way
BA: Part of that was really literally, physically aging up the characters, and I think the whole team was very excited about that and wanted to pick up the challenge on that one.
T.J. Miller: And so to see them grow up a little bit, and how they’ve evolved and changed it makes it even more of a coming-of-age and it makes the trilogy really special.
BA: I was a big advocate, personally, of the whiskers, of him having facial hair.
BA: I like that
DD: And the moustache, the moustache is just-
BA: It reminds me of some actor
POV: A renaissance man
DD: It’s like he’s kind of making an attempt to
POV: ???
AF: Definitely, there’s definitely a difference, you can see the difference. They’re all just a little bit more confident in themselves, in their bodies, in their uniforms that they’ve chosen that are very unique to them, and it’ll be really exciting to see how that progresses in the future, but for now it feels very much like they are starting own themselves physically.
Tom Owens: Hiccup just simply thinks differently than everybody else. Even though they are all kind of in this place where they can enjoy themselves, he wants to explore the world, he’s out kind of mapping their known world and seeing how far it goes in every direction. He’s just curious, he’s a relentless, restless soul.
JB: I don’t want to say ahead of this time, but he maybe doesn’t make a ton of sense in the world he was born into, but has found a way to make it his own.
DD: All designed for exploration, because that’s his thing now. Like, if he could just get away from it all ???
JB: Yeah sure. Oh that’s so cool, that’s a cool helmet.
JB: Hiccup always tinkers and builds stuff, and so he’s kind of souped-up his peg leg a bit.
DD: So he has an ice pick foot, he’s got a riding foot and then he’s got a general-purpose foot.
JB: Oh, very cool
DD: And then other things. He’s got a ring here that he pulls that deploys a fin up the back, and that stabilises the flight
JB: Man, so much cool stuff.
POV: We gave him a very sophisticated outfit, flying outfit, and he has designed something very unique to perfect the art of flying.
DD: It’s sort of based on Hiccup being the blacksmith’s apprentice, so he’s good with his hands and he has sort of an advanced design sense, and he’s been out there pushing the limits with Toothless. So, the idea that early aerodynamics would come as a factor in designing this flight suit, that carries everything he needs to map out the world whilst he’s out there, pushing the boundaries.
JB: Blast. BOOM! AWWWesome. Catch, that’s, that is wonderful, that is… man, yeah! Yeah!
Words on Screen – Valka
DD (on the phone): Hello Kate. Oh, no problem at all, is it a fine time now? Okay great. Well this is very exciting for us, we’re looking forward to spending some time with you next week. Oh of course, I wrote the part for you, so it would’ve been disappointing had you been too busy to do it. Anyone else would’ve been a compromise.
Cate Blanchett: It really is the best entry, I think a character has ever had in cinema history. You know, masked and mysterious and you don’t know whether she’s a force of good or a force of evil. Utterly enigmatic, she rises out of the clouds and sort of terrifies and bewitches Hiccup, and then he is as surprised, I think, as the audience will be, that in fact this masked, mysterious, half-dragon person, half-human is in fact his mother.
DD: Valka is a complicated character, in that she is both a mother and a wife, but she was stolen away from those definitions and she had to take on this new one, living in a dragon colony up in the artic. She’s been cut off from humans for 20 years, so re-meeting her son and realising that all this time that he was just like her, and she had passed down some sort of genetic dragon-whispering ability is both fascinating and heart-warming to her but also filled with regret and remorse, because she had decided for herself back then that she was cut of a different cloth and she didn’t fit in and there was no place for her on Berk, but all this time later she realised that her son was not only just like her but he managed to transform Berk.
DD: And then when she sees Stoick, he just walks up to her wordlessly and places his hand upon her face and just snuffs all of her ??? and turns it into the most romantic moment in the movie.
Words on Screen – Creating Realities & Grandeur
POV: We were trying to be a lot more realistic, a lot more naturalistic, so of course it implies that we had to add a ??? lot of details on those characters, not only details on their outfit, but also were the skin, the eyes, the hair and make sure that all those would give to the public a sense of credibility, something incredibly believable.
???: Cloudjumper has a really cool way he breathes fire, it’s almost a tornado.
POV: I started to just get-
DD: Oh wow, yeah yeah. That’s a great shape to be on land, like it’s a very very different from the Red Death.
Oliver “Olee” Finkelde: So what Joe’s doing right now, he’s trying to sync the hair motion with the wing motion.
DD: Well that’s very subtle work, that’s, I love that you guys think about it.
OF: Well, it’s these little things that, you know, tweak them and they make a lot of difference. Joe also set up Hiccup’s hair so that all the hair you see in the movie is pretty much just set up.
POV: Stoick’s dragon is based on a rhino and a scarab, and we were really playing with this idea of having iridescent material.
DD: This mask is ???
CB: Part of the challenge and the pleasure is that the world is being created in parallel to the way that the characters are coming to life with the voice. Every time I would sit down, to do another session and this happened over several years, is that they’d first of all show me where the animation was at, where the drawings were at and what they hoped to do. So you knew what you were, you know, you were entering into the world through the voice, so you realised how much or how little you needed to add to that.
Bill Damaschke: So I think, you got just, nice, general, good feeling of a mother and son coming back together, but I actually think that if we’re trying to make that, into that moment ??? so much to make that so emotional, then it may or may not be the right goal I think. I think the right goal should be the whole journey, that we’re going to go on with these two characters, and really the thing that we set up - we set up so beautifully at the beginning - is “I don’t know who I am, but I know there’s something out there for me”
BA: They don’t have a longing for each other, cause they don’t even know each other exists.
BD: And the audience isn’t, I don’t think-
BA: Right, they think they’re going to grow to love each other more by the end of the movie.
BD: Any parents with young kids, it’s always good because that’s always a good emotion, but it’s not a true character-story emotion that we’re building towards earning in the moment of the re-uniting. It’s a much bigger play, I think.
Gregg Taylor: Yeah yeah, no you’re right. Yeah we’re actually, we’re actually in it with them because we’re experiencing the surprise of it, not the emotion of it, yeah that’s good.
CB: The absolute liberating freedom, I mean if I could do half the things that she did, you know, diving off dragons, and jumping from wing to head and balancing on a tooth and then falling through the air. It was, I mean, it was wild and exhilarating.
JB: He’s constructed, what is my favourite thing in the new movie, which is this really wicked flying suit, so he can actually not just ride Toothless but can fly side-by-side with him, which is pretty special.
Cressida Cowell: Because Vikings believed that dragons really existed, I imagined that dragons lived in the caves, and I used to play in them and imagine what it would be like to be like a Viking.
CC: And caves, I would explore the caves, and it was the sort of wild and ??? and extraordinary place where you thought that dragons really might exist. So the inspiration for the books came from true life.
Words on Screen – Meet Drago
Djimon Hounsou: This is the great dragon master
DH: ARGHHHHHHHHHh! AHHHH! URGH!
DD: Drago is all about force. And so all of his war machines, his ships, his own design is meant to be very very forceful. He doesn’t take the time to get to know anyone, he’s not going to look at a creature with compassion, he will simply bend it to his will and force it become a beast of burden.
Joong Choi: And then also we want hair simulations like this in ??? we have a real in-hair system. we also want his dreadlocks and also those little red hairs and eyebrows, and those nice secondary hairs to, and then once we go through all of those process we get something like this, this is a big version of the same shot and this came out really real looking.
DD: And so in the design of Drago himself, we actually gave him both an exotic look because we wanted him to seem like he’s not of the Nordic region – he came from a long distance for this goal - but also very unspecific and so he has a predator-like profile, almost like a beak-like nose and cold dark eyes and then this massive body that is actually covering up the loss of a limb. I think the idea is that Drago wants to appear invincible even to his own men, so its something that he’s covered up his whole life rather than accommodate and celebrate.
DD: Well I think one of the most heartening things for me, was the reception of the first movie and in particular the loss of Hiccup’s leg. It kind of set a new tone, here at the studio and also did something which is rarely done in animation where we defied conventional wisdom and did something that felt right for the story and we were rewarded for it, the audience really connected with that, it added much more credibility to Hiccup’s sacrifice and bravery to have sustained an injury as opposed to walking away from it unscathed. So it allowed us to actually try a few things in this movie that we might have veered away from in the past.
Words on Screen – Lost & Found
JB: Toothless is Hiccup’s best friend, this is not to take away from any of the humans in his life, but they have a symbiotic relationship, they need each other, they’re both kind of odd birds, outcasts, and they had some work done. Yeah, there’s no Hiccup without Toothless.
BA: They know each other better, but they’re still discovering things about each other, and I think if anything the story, at the heart of it, is how Toothless and Hiccup discover even more about each other over the course of this new journey that they take together.
Words on Screen – Heartbeat of the Story
DD: Well one of the great challenges, and probably one of the scenes I’m most proud of in the film is the scene where Toothless is forced to blast at Hiccup and instead Stoick dives in the way to take the blast.
Words on Screen – Story Retreat 10-17-2011
DD: Kind of the most interesting story to tell is: how do you take these two best friends and then have them wrenched apart, and not only separated but turned into enemies, so that when they overcome that they actually are stronger than ever and it gives us some melodrama, and for that reason I love it, because it is very much the heartbeat of this whole grand story we’re telling in three instalments.
DD: Had to be very very carefully arranged, so that the audience could forgive Toothless, could understand that Toothelss had really no part in doing this, that he was being controlled remotely.
DD: So, my gut tells me that it’s the right thing for the movie. I was really heartened when Steven Spielberg defended it, he said that it was different and it was bold, and he liked it for those reasons. He also thought because we’re giving Hiccup a strong mother she becomes the safety net, so that he could stand to lose the father. So I’m really curious, I’m nervous and curious, in the same way that I was nervous and curious about the audiences’ reaction to Hiccup losing his leg in the first movie, and I feel like the surprise and the emotional weight of that moment is something we’re going for here, and for me that’s what the test screening is all about. But that’s what’s happening.
BA: Oh my gosh we have our first preview today, friends and family. It’s a hundred people and-
DD: Pretty early to be doing it.
BA: Oh my gosh.
DD: Nervous and excited?
BA: We’re going to be watching faces and doing all kind of fun things.
DD: John, how are you feeling?
John K. Carr: Excited.
DD: Yeah
John Carr: Yeah
DD: Nervous?
John Carr: No.
DD: Not in the least.
DD: How are you feeling about this?
Jeffrey Katzenberg: I’m feeling so good it hurts.
DD: Are you nervous about showing a movie this early?
JK: Never, it’s late for me. Wish we were doing it six months ago!
Words on Screen – First Test Screening 6-1-2013
Preview Audience: Yeah!
Presenter: Alright, you’re the first audience. Tell me, what did you like about How to Train Your Dragon 2?
Audience Member 1: Um, I liked when Hiccup finds his mother.
P: Oh you did? How many of you guys – show your hands – liked when Hiccup finds his mother? Oh wow everybody, and I heard a dad say it’s his favourite part.
Bill Damaschke: So the emotional relationships are starting to, are working, they’re starting to become things that I’m invested in and sort of therefore, a few months ago, she never could really buy into that connection with her son, now she actually is investing in those relationships in that part of the movie, in a way that I think is satisfying.
P: Okay, you know I haven’t heard from parents. What do you guys like about the movie? Umm, Dad?
Audience Member 2: It had a really good story, it really, it did a great job of balancing the action and emotion and surprising twists.
P: Does the movie have a message?
Preview Audience: Yes
P: So you tell me, what do you think the message is?
Audience Member 3: Friendship is the strongest bond
P: Friendship is the strongest bond
Audience Member 4: I liked Hiccup’s dad because he like, he’s trying to do what’s right for Hiccup but then he’s wrong, then Hiccup’s right, and then basically he risked his life for Hiccup.
P: Look at all that!
DD: And it had to be handled with a really delicate touch, and I think, I think we managed to pull it off. I mean, people’s hearts break for Toothless when he’s being shooed away by Hiccup and then consequently, they break for Hiccup when you realise that he’s just chased off his best friend in this mess of emotion. So, I think you’re just waiting for these two to get back together. So I’m really proud of that one.
Words on Screen – Mapping a Scene…with a rubber ball
Crew: ahhahahahahaha. Ahahahaha. ahhahahahah
DD: That was awesome! Beautiful
Crew: Bravo David!
Panel Host: Kit Harrington!
Comicon Audience: [applause]
Words on Screen – Comicon 2013
Kit Harrington: First, cause it is an interesting character change, but first he was really bad at coming back
DD: Yeah
KH: He just sort of like, get into an argument and then he’d just lose, he didn’t know how to- he was just not good, he wasn’t very smart
DD: Yeah, very physically capable, but when it came to verbal battle he failed miserably.
Words on Screen – Eret, Son of Eret
Tom Owens: Eret is this very self-assured guy that he thinks of himself as the most knowledgeable guy about dragons around.
DD: An interesting character in that he’s introduced as a threat. They have been successfully trapping dragons for Drago for some time, but Eret has kind of a misplaced loyalty in a way, there’s more substance than you first allot him when you meet him.
TO: He thinks that he knows more than anybody, but of course he has- he doesn’t have any inkling of how deep a connection to dragons can go. Sort of falling in with Hiccup and the other teens in the film, he gets to see first-hand just how attached they are to their dragon and then he has a change of heart, and winds up becoming very close to the dragons as well.
BA: He’s really turned out to be a great character. Dean had a real vision for what Eret would be, but I think it was a combination of Kit Harrington’s voice and the animator, Dave Torres
DD: And we wanted to keep his arms exposed, because that’s what Ruffnut is taken with when she first sees him, and she makes comments
Words on Screen – The Search for Truth
AF: What you’re searching for isn’t out there Hiccup, it’s in here. Maybe you just don’t see it yet.
AF: They’re both incredibly independent spirits in their own rights, but are incredibly supportive of one another, and Astrid is Hiccup’s number one defender and champion but also her own leader in her own right.
Gerard Butler: There’re such great words for Stoick: he’s burly, he’s brawny, he’s hairy, he’s a mountain of a man. His campaigns and conquests are the stuff of legend in the Viking world, you know, what he’s done. And you feel that, the second you see him, here’s somebody to be reckoned with.
Craig Ferguson: I actually like acting in animated films, because you can really go inside your own head, you’re not distracted by the lights or the cameras or the other people or the grip eating a sandwich or anything like that. You’re really in the world, you can close your eyes and be in the world.
CF: “…Sing your name with love and fury, so that…rise from the depths of Valhalla… and if they…rightful place at the table of kings. For a great man has fallen. A warrior. A chieftain. A father. A friend.” Okay.
DD: I think it’s our aesthetic style to try to play the acting as honest as we can, and so there’s a lot of observation that goes into the human acting in particular. Take Hiccup as an example, the way he’s performing those lines in the funeral is about as authentic as you can really get. I mean for the moment, you stop thinking you’re watching an animated film and it just feels like a really good actor performing a beautiful scene.
Hiccup: I always was so afraid of becoming my Dad. I’m not the chief he wanted me to be, and I’m not the peacekeeper I thought I was. I… don’t know…
DD: And I think that’s all credited to the incredible animators that we have, and their attention to detail and their search for truth in their work.
GB: You are taking an audience into that world, like they’ve never had an opportunity before - they’re really there.
POV: Oh! That’s great!
DD: Oh my god. Great scale! Thank you again, you’re amazing. I’m so glad you were able to kiss the character with your special touch, because it’s- he’s so memorable and everybody notices it.
???: Oh, you’re too nice.
DD: Can you play your last shot on the screen?
Kristof Serrand: Yeah, sure. It took forever!
???: Ahaha
KS: “Will you be my wife”. Haha.
Cressida Cowell: If you’re not making yourself laugh or making yourself cry, how are you going to move other people?
Words on Screen – Focused Action
DD: Well we definitely have some big action scenes, but they’re driven by the characters and I think that’s what makes them work in the context of the movie. It’s the fact that you can really follow the hero through the story and you can jump from a quiet moment into a chaotic moment, but always feel like you know what Hiccup is thinking, and what he’s after, and who he’s seeking out and what determination he has. That’s what makes the scenes play, I think, as well as they do.
Dave Walvoord: The battle was epic. And we don’t typically do that kind of thing in animation.
Gil Zimmerman: This is action ??? geometry to use in effects to create the clouds, so we can really control the composition is.
GZ: So two years from now we may actually have this on film
GB: A chief protects his own
DW: This one had some really big battle sequences, that just like with the characters, aged up five years and changed, we really brought everything, we brought the whole world up.
Words on Screen – The Wonder, The Melody & The Sentiment
DD: We have something different with this movie and it was there in the first one as well, which is in place of a laugh every minute, we have wonder, and to me, and for the movies that I loved growing up and that I still love today, wonder is more important. It’s fun while you’re laughing there the movie theatre, but you don’t necessarily remember it when you leave, but movies that are filled with wonder tend to live with you for a long time, and it certainly do with me.
DD: So John Powell wrote one of the best scores I’ve ever heard for Dragon 1 and I was so excited to work with him again on this second instalment, but he too had the same very daunting challenge of building upon that and strangely he managed to do it, I don’t know how he did, but I think the score for Dragon 2 is the best score he’s ever done. It takes melodies that we know and love from the first film and it’s complimented with obviously new melodies to support Valka, and to support Hiccup’s coming of age and the idea of an alpha. The mix of them has such a great sophistication to it, I don’t know how he does it but he’s just a magician of a composer.
DD: Jonsi who is a- he’s an incredibly talented musician, songwriter and in particular he was writing that really sort of thematic and wonderful piece that introduces Hiccup flying with Toothless at the beginning of the film, and it’s called ‘Where No One Goes’, and he had just been putting together a demo when I went by to visit him and in the moment he just stood up and started singing where the lyrics would go, and the whole thing just transformed and was happening right in front of my eyes and I was just dying, because I thought ‘why didn’t I bring the camera?’, he probably would’ve shut down and he wouldn’t want- he wouldn’t have want to be recorded but it was just one of those moments I wish I happened to.
John Powell: Well
DD: It was not, she hasn’t been moved by any of it.
???: You’re going to have to work a lot harder for her then
[inaudible conversation]
Words on Screen – This Time, I Was Rolling
Jonsi: [humming]
DD: It is Thursday, January 17th 2013 and I’m about to go pick up Jonsi, the front man of Sigur Ros and drive him over to John Powell’s studio where they are going to playback the very first melody for a very important tune in the movie and, so it’s a very cool moment.
[soundtrack playing]
DD: They spent a day just jamming together and coming up with a melody they both like, so let’s see how it goes.
JP: So it just brightens the whole room a little
DD: Yeah
JP: So with the tempo and the harmony, we can kind of bring out the darkness
DD: Yeah, wow.
John Powell’s Dogs: [barking]
DD: The dogs agree
JP: Yeah
BA: To me, the Valka and Stoick animation, that moment is just, you’re just in it, it’s so believable, it’s so emotional but I think more importantly is Hiccup’s reactions. I think in that scene, if you watch Hiccup you’re just feeling for him. You know how to feel, it’s just, he’s just overwhelmed by the fact that he’s seeing his mom and dad together, in that way for the first time in his life, really, super special, super amazing job by the animators.
GB: [singing] “I’d swim and sail, the savage seas. With-“
JP: After the scene has happened, you feel the love. At the time you’re just kind of giggling and laughing and finding it very charming-
DD: Yeah
JP: -that’s how it should be. It’s later on really, you get that real feeling of, the sentiment.
DD: That’s right
Words on Screen – Bold Storytelling
DD: So I think one of the biggest ambitions was to be bold with the relationship with Hiccup and Toothless, because that relationship is so crucial to the whole trilogy, to break them apart.
DD: For Toothless to be lost to Drago and the dominance of the Alpha and forced to carry out its will, just takes it to such a broken extreme, so the moment in which Toothless and Hiccup come face to face, flapping in the sky above Berk is one moment I think we are emotionally teed up for as the audience, because we know that Hiccup has it in him to break through this hypnosis that Toothless is currently under, and so with every word, every certain well chosen look and the touch we’ve got such belief in what’s about to transpire so when we see those defences being broken down and Toothless coming out of that hypnotic trance, and it’s like such an exhilarating moment I think, such a heart-warming moment to, really kind of brings out a good cheer.
Words on Screen – Ready for the World 5-2-2014
DD: Ah, okay so, it’s just about midnight on Friday May 2nd 2014, and we have just completed the sound mix for How To Train Your Dragon 2. The picture was completed in L.A. today, so that makes the movie done. That’s it, it’s finished. It’s ready for the world and it’s been quite the adventure.
DD: I’m here in my little apartment on Skywalker ranch, and earlier today we showed the film to some of our friends and you know what? It was moving, and enthralling, and parts of the movie made them cry, which is probably the only instance in which I’m happy when my friends are crying, but I hope it’s an indication for how it actually plays for the rest of the world, and just very eager to see how it’s received. I am very very proud of it, and I think it came together beautifully, such taleneted teams have worked on this movie, and I’m in such awe of them. Signing out.
???: It is our final animation daily!
Crew: Yay! [applause]
???: So we have the whole team here.
???: ???, you’re an angel-
DD: And Tyler, and Elmer, we’ll be able to celebrate with you in-person soon.
???: Thanks for always remembering to turn and look at us!
Crew: Hahhaha. [applause]
DD: Well you guys know how much I love you and how inspiring it is for me to just be around talent, and the energy, and the optimism, and the creativity it’s just, it’s just incredible and you guys have just completely elevated the medium I think. Can’t wait for the world to see it. It’s going to be- it’s going to be pretty incredible I think.
JB: Well it’s incredible, it’s one of the best things that ever happened to me. To be involved in a movie that means as much as How To Train Your Dragon does to people, you know, I could retire tomorrow cause I was apart of it. And I just know, the things that I liked when I was a child, books, movies whatever and- you don’t like anything more than when you like it as a child, and so I know that I had at least something to do with a movie that has impacted on kids the way that this one did, so it’s like-. Yeah, I’m a very lucky man.
CB: I did find the film exhilarating and uplifting, and it’s a riot of- it’s such a rollicking adventure and all of those characters who were obviously much younger in the first film, they’re wild and unruly but they believe in something, and I think they take you on a journey of saying “we actually do believe that a peaceful world can be created, and we’re going to set about achieving it and we’re going to bring our parents along.”
Words on Screen – Where No One Goes: The Making of How To Train Your Dragon 2