Interview with The Croods Directors: Chris Sanders and Kirk DeMicco

After attending a screening of the movie The Croods with my family, Tapanga and I were given the chance to interview the Directors: Chris Sanders and Kirk DeMicco. First, we sat through a presentation given by Chris and Kirk about how the movie was made.  They shows us all the different animals that were created for the movie and how the process took literally years.  Out of 39 animals drawn and named only 21 made the final cut.  However there is a new game coming out by the creators of Angry Birds that will feature every single animated character originally created for The Croods along with new additions.

Q: Where did you come up with all the names of the characters such as: Grug and Eep?

A: Originally The Croods started off as a story about two villages – with one village being called Croods.  Once we broke the movie down to be only about one family we kept the title as their last name.  Then we started making funny cavemen sounds to come up what we envisioned the characters would call one another.  That’s how we came up with Grug, Eep, Thunk and Ugga.

Q: In many animated movies the characters resemble the actors that provide the voice.  How did you work that angle?

A: We did actually pay attention while the actors/actresses were in the studio recording their lines.  Sometimes Emma Stone would make a serious face even when giving a funny line or she had unique facial expressions at times that we tried to capture when drawing Eep.  This is how we were able to make all the characters in the movie have their own individual personalities and seem more lifelike.

Q: What is the difference for you between directing a live movie and an animated one?

A: The main difference I experienced was I repeated myself more.  With a live recording of a movie everyone is together filming for the most part at the same time.  So I gave the main directions once.  With an animated film we had to meet with the special effects crew, the sound crew, the actors/actresses that recorded the voices for each character and so on.

Q: In the movie, Guy refers to the Croods as ‘cavies’.  Since he considers them cavemen, what does that make him?

A: Guy is what we view as the first man.  He is like a nomad, if his family was still alive they would all live in mud huts instead of caves.

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The Croods opens in theaters March 22nd.