Big Hero 6 has fast become one of the kids favorite movies…They absolutely love that we got the dvd already and have watched it more than I can count. While they love the characters and the movie as a whole, they don’t understand what went on behind the scenes to create such a great movie. I enjoy learning about all that and absolutely loved chatting with Directors Don Hall & Chris Williams.
Don Hall starts off with telling us about the idea behind the making of Big Hero 6…One thing directors are always asked is what are you passionate about, and Don’s answer..
I started thinking about it and as a kid, I loved Disney Animation. Uh, obviously you know, that’s what brought me here and I also loved Marvel Comics, it’s really where I learned to draw and tell stories. – Director Don Hall
I love that statement! I keep telling my kids, who also love Disney, Marvel & drawing, that they too someday can create a Disney animated film! Don pitched the Disney/Marvel animated film idea and it was an instant hit, he just had to find the perfect fit. After making list of ideas that he thought would be good, he came across a comic he had never read, Big Hero 6..
After researching it more, he thought the idea of Japanese Super Heros was pretty cool. It would make for a light-hearted film with fun characters. He then pitched this idea with several others and well…the rest is history.
Chris Williams really loved the idea too when Don first told him about it.
When he talked about this Main Character, who was gonna lose his Brother, was gonna be left with his — his Creation, this Surrogate older Brother, it was so powerful, and I thought Man, that’s great. And I really hope that will be that John would respond to and Greenlight.
While they were the first audience, and felt that the movie was good and would resonate with audiences, it wasn’t until they were able to sit in with an audience and listen to them laugh, gasp and cry, that they began to realize that it was resonating with people and they had done their job successfully…
It has to be funny, it has to be exciting, and you must have thrilling action scenes. But — but if it doesn’t have that core emotion, then — then you’ve failed.
They are both very proud of Baymax as a character & the dynamic between him and Hiro.
Baymax, as a Character, you know, that is something you can’t predict. That is, that a Character will, blow up that much…that a Character will just resonate like that with People and worldwide, you know. It’s just resounding. It’s — it’s pretty cool. Cause he’ll outlive all of us, you know, and to have contributed a Character like that to sort of the Disney Legacy is pretty cool. – Don Hall
You can definitely see the lineage from Baymax all the way back to Bambi and Dumbo and Pinocchio and these kind of Characters that have this purity and this sweetness to them. – Chris Williams
When molding Hiros character they brought in a clinical pathologist which was very important because it gave them new insight into specifically Teen loss, but it also reinforced that they were on the right track, and validated their approach on what they were doing. It helped that in the story room people were generously open about life experiences. Those vulnerabilities really helped with the film.
When it came to including Stan Lee in the film, like all Marvel movies do, they had honestly put it on the back burner..until they went to go see Guardians Of The Galaxy and noticed that everyone stayed during the credits to see the Howard the Duck scene…they both came in Monday morning a little panicked that they didn’t have that. Since they were already winding down, they had to ask for more money and find artists to get their vision done..
We had I think a Team of maybe 20 people. Um, and sworn to secrecy. We all had Code names. There was like, it was on its own Server, like so that people couldn’t snoop around and find it. And uh, we actually managed to pull that off. We actually managed to keep it a secret from the Crew until the Wrap Party. They didn’t know and it was awesome.
Q: Hero 6 is up for an Academy Award, for Best Feature Film…How has working on this been different from anything else you’ve ever worked on, to come to this point?
This movie is sort of the icing on the cake for Don, it reaches back to those childhood loves, and is a dream come true.
We have both worked at Disney Animation for about 20 years and I’ve worked on a lot of Movies and every story’s hard. You know, it’s just the way it is. If you’re gonna do something original, then it’s gonna be hard. This one I think we would agree was the most challenging story we’ve ever worked on. I think there’s a lot of disparate elements that we brought together and had to make sense together, and it was just really ambitious. I think the size of the — of the number of Characters, the size of the world, technically, it was incredibly challenging. But I think there was also a choice made form the very beginning that we were gonna attempt to reach a depth of emotion with this Film that was, gonna be, pretty deep. And we knew that — that was the bar we were aiming for, and — and we had to achieve that or again, we wouldn’t have done our jobs. And so I think that we — we managed it and again, it’s not process, it’s not Don and I and a Crew that works with us. We work with hundreds of really talented Artists who are so invested and they give everything they have, and they give years of their Creative lives to this one thing. And so we achieved it with them and I’m really proud of what ultimately came together. – Chris Williams
This movie is so fun, if you haven’t seen it, I highly suggest checking it out…and it was really fun hearing about how it came to be!
Pictured with Directors Don Hall & Chris Williams – ©Kayvon Esmaili
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