"Hi." "Welcome to Surf's Up." "Audio commentary." "I will be your guide through this wonderful presentation of Surf's Up." "I'm Chris Buck, one of the directors." "Ash Brannon, another director." "And I'm Chris Jenkins and I make the coffee." "And it's good coffee too." "Not that crystal stuff." "And he's the producer, okay, here we go." "Hey, look at that logo, guys." "We came up with the logo just for Surf's Up." "Here we are." "Okay." "Interesting thing about this one was that this was the last scene created and the first scene in the movie." "But the movie originally started with the sequences coming up which was what we call the legend sequence, right?" "And, Ash, you boarded the whole bit..." "The sort of history of surfing." " Yeah." " We thought that we needed Cody." "Cody to introduce it and get to know Cody a little bit more before..." "Yeah, it was originally a disembodied voice." "You didn't know who it was." "Okay, everybody wants to know why a documentary, right, guys?" "Why do an animated documentary?" "Lots of reasons." "First of all, surf videos are actually made that way." "And we thought it would be cool to do the subject of Surf's Up as a surf documentary." "Well, there was originally a storyline, right?" "When Chris Jenkins was on this about four and a half years ago." "It was 48 years ago, actually." "It was a comedy based on Romeo and Juliet." "Yes, it was, Ash Brannon." "Thank you." "And they were racing cars and they were wearing clothes and all that, right?" "Yeah, and they were dressed as policemen and they were falling off cliffs and dying and..." " Isn't really a comedy." " Okay." " And how did it become this, Chris?" " It became this..." "It became this when, you know I'm kind of looking at the idea of doing a surf movie." "And looking at the prevalence for surf docs movies to be done as documentaries." "Or for the whole reality TV thing to be realized in animation." " Did that make sense?" " Yeah, kind of." "In a Welsh kind of way." "And the storyline was designed to work as a documentary." "We had to imagine that there was a kid we heard about who's up and coming." "We decided to send a crew down there and follow him as he went to his first contest." "And then follow him." "Yeah, and be able to just put a camera..." "Not a camera." "What do they call the things where you...?" " Like a microphone." " Microphone, yeah." "Like that thing in front of you right now." "But it's interesting, we had rules." "Like, we never saw the documentarians." "We never..." "No, people really wanted to know who the documentarians are." " What species." " Yeah." "And we felt that if we did that then we would really be winking at the audience in a particular way, you know?" "It would be more..." "I suppose, more mockumentary in that way than we wanted it to be." "And the thing, I think, that fascinated me was that we could get inside an animated character's head." "Via the interviews, you can find out what these guys were thinking and what they just thought about the scene that we just shot." "I don't know." "It's something that we'd never done before in other animated movies." "There was a lot of things going on, the idea that in this day and age everybody seems to have an opinion or reaction to a camera being put in their face and they have an opinion about something." "Maybe they're hiding things." "Maybe they wanna use it as a confessional." "And it just felt it was the right time to take an animated feature..." "And it just felt it was the right time to take an animated feature and really follow the inner life of these characters on the screen." "Well, people are fascinated by the documentary and reality TV." "I mean, I know that's what we watch at home." "There's so many of those shows who love it." "I mean, a lot of times, it's what, you know it's what the camera catches that they weren't supposed to catch that everybody loves." "Or the thing that somebody said that, you know they didn't really mean to say this or whatever but it's very telling." "The-camera-doesn't-lie kind of thing, so..." " We planned in a kind of spontaneity." " It's fun." "Planned spontaneity." "Planned these things, like the camera would stay on a character after they'd finished saying what they were gonna say." "And their reaction, then, after their last sentence was more telling than what they were trained to tell you." "And it wasn't easy the whole way through." "There are a lot of rules we set up for ourselves." "And it was tough between the camera work where the camera could be." "The type of questions that we would ask these guys." "When the character's aware of the camera or not." "These are rules, set of rules that we had." "Once in a while, we'd break them." "And we can talk about those as we go through this but..." "It's kind of the whole documentary thing." "Remember, we had lots of talk about, you know where the camera crew is coming from and how did they get there." "All the kinds of things that quite honestly in the end..." " Nobody thinks about." " Yeah." "He can't help it." "That's just the way he is." "It was important when we started the movie we knew it was a surf movie, but the surfing is really a metaphor." "And we didn't want the film just to be about surfing per se." "And we came across an article by some guys named the Malloy brothers." "They said something interesting." "They said, "A lot of surf movies don't get it right." "They think it's all about just riding the waves." "And it's really about life and the way you live it."" "And we just really fell in love with that concept." "Being one with the wave and with life..." "And that's how we, you know, faced the production every day." "We came in to have a good time every day." " Not gonna touch you." " Do you see this?" " Don't." "Please?" " I'm not." "Well, now, Shiverpool's kind of inspired by an Errol Morris film he did one about a town in Florida where nothing happens." "This is where, again, we play with..." "This whole sequence we play with the whole documentary feel." "Like you're saying, that's an Errol Morris film." "The cutting that we did, we kept moving things around." "And then the interviews." "Yeah, our editor Ivan Bilancio kind of took all these moments..." "Yeah, our editor Ivan Bilancio kind of took all these moments as if he had coverage." "And just found an entertaining way to intercut them." "Kind of a proof of concept, this whole sequence, in a way." "Right, I remember this is one of the first ones." "And it was really interesting how when Errol came in to take a look at the stuff and we were calling it a mockumentary he said, "It's not a mockumentary." "It's a documentary."" " Right." " Because we don't nod to the camera." "Right." "Yeah, that was important to us, to keep the tongue out of the cheek." "And have these characters believe who they were." "And you get the humor out of the seriousness of that." "Right." "But this kind of performance too, all this improv all these multiple cast recording, this was pretty new." "I mean, it sounds strange to say it but this was a new technique for animation." "Because in animated movies usually we have the actors by themselves." "And we get a very clean recording and then you can cut everybody together." "The problem with that is that, you get a very..." "You can get a very sterile performance." "And they don't always feel like they're in the same room together." "Or that they're actually relating to the other character." "Biggest challenge for an editor is to cut a natural performance from a bunch of different sessions." "And they said, "Well, let's skip all that." "Let's encourage..." "Get them in together, have them overlap have them, you know, of course, work off the script but turn the pages over and see and just let it, kind of, go on its own and wing it."" "We told all the actors we're gonna do this at the outset." " And they were all excited." " Right." "And they were all really good at it." "Not all actors can pull that off." "James Woods, of course." "We have so much recording of James that in the end, we were unable to use for all sorts of reasons." "It was a heart thing, you know?" "Can we just take five minutes?" "We couldn't have written some of the stuff the way..." "You know?" "So we try to replicate as much as possible the conditions on the recording stage." "So the actors could even get out from behind the podium and move around and act things out." "And we had a guy with a boom, following them on occasion." "And I just freed them up to get more physical with everything and make it real." "I remember many times, you guys would pick up a video camera." "And really be in..." "Quite intrusive with the camera like you were there." "That's right." "We did that to Jeff." "That's right." "And you really did throw something at us." "How's your head, by the way, there?" "Sal Masekela, the real voice of the X Games." "This all worked..." "I forgot how this happened." "But we came up with the idea that if we had this fake sports network we could just get a lot of information out in short order." "And then coincidentally, Sal dropped by the studio through Quicksilver and was a perfect match." "Over lunch, I think, we had an accidental lunch..." "Yeah, we just talked about it, how we could use him in the movie." "And same with Kelly." "Yeah, they did their scenes together." "We had Kelly, Rob and..." " Yeah, all three." " And Sal." "They weren't originally a part of..." "Kelly and Rob weren't originally in the movie." "They were on as consultants." "To help us get the waves right and the surf culture right." " Right." " But it turned out to be really good." "The twisted Tank." "Diedrich." "You never want to get in there and help them out..." "He is the biggest character in the movie." "A big personality and the nicest guy." "He's a really great guy to work with." "But Tank, you know, we tried to just find something a little bit different for him, so he wasn't the same old villain." "And I think we came up with something very unique for him." "Yeah." "We always said he was like a cross between John McEnroe and a forklift truck." "...John McEnroe and a forklift truck." "Mikey Abromowitz played by Mario Cantone is anything but the typical surfer." "He's sort of a..." "He's sort of a..." "We refer to him as an office gopher which got very confusing because he's really a sandpiper." "And he's the kind of guy, originally, anyway..." "We were thinking of the kind of guy that really didn't wanna get his feet wet with his boss." "So the sandpiper's interesting because they never really seem to get their feet wet when they're fishing for..." "Yup, and he's a talent scout that doesn't surf." "A surfing talent scout." "But Mario gave him a great edge." "This guy has done this way too much." "Nothing fazes him." "Ash, you brought up Mario from a one-man show." "Oh, yeah, my wife and I saw him in his last show in Broadway." "His one-man comedy show." "And a few months later, we're trying to figure out who would do the voice and popped in the head." " Great." " He's a huge animation fan." "He knew more about animation than we did." "Jon Heder knows about animation." "Jon Heder, Chicken Joe." "Now, this was added late." "But it was about showing what Cody really wanted, you know?" "It's not about winning the competition." "He just wants somebody to be there for him." "And he clearly doesn't have it in his hometown." "You know, I think it was also added so that he would have a chance with mom." "Because originally, it wasn't in there so he would just go from the fish pile to the water, to the whale." " He's gone." "He never says goodbye." " He didn't get to say goodbye." "To his family." "And this was his chance to say goodbye but mom, still, is not really interested, so..." "It seemed to help his character a little bit better." "Well, I think it re-injects that pathos that you have for this young kid..." "Well, I think it re-injects that pathos that you have for this young kid that just has a passion right from the beginning." "Lets you know what he really wants, what's important." " And how no one understands him." " Yeah." "I gotta thank my wife, Nicole, for that toucan line." "She had a handle on who Mike was." "Can't this blubber ball go any faster?" "Step on it, fish sticks!" "Bunch of other surfers up there on the whale." "They were gonna be bigger characters initially." "We have an Aussie up there." "Japanese surfer." " Brazilian." " Brazilian, yeah." "There's so much material that you discover when you create a movie like this." "Particularly, I think, as a documentary or reality show." "You can really get into these characters." "And then, at the end of the day you realize, well, you got 80 minutes and a story to tell." "So there were a lot of casualties simply from the point of view of not having enough time to get into all those back-stories." " Casualties." " Casualties." "It sounds painful." "The whole idea of Cody chasing this whale was inspired by surfers who ride the wakes of oil tankers, I think, in the Gulf of Mexico." " Yeah." " Yeah." "Yup." "They had a hard time getting these two together too." "We had to get Joe and Cody get an introduction before we get to the next sequence of Pen Gu where the just takes off, so..." "Yeah, they needed a quick moment to bond." "Deeply enough that you could buy that Joe would spend the next several days going to find Cody as he's lost in the jungle." "Joe, kind of..." "We always had that character." "He was gonna be that guy that, you know, nothing fazed him." "But we did have." "We went down the road where he got a little." "You know, he'd get angry sometimes or this or that and you realize, this guy just..." "Nothing fazes Joe." "Everything is good." "Every moment is good." "And he turned out to be one of the favorite characters in the movie." "He seems to epitomize a quintessential surfer attitude." "Inspired Ash Brannon moment there." "Butt freeze?" "No, the whole whale spout." "Joe being blasted off in the air." "Finding a way to end that scene properly." "Our visual development team, Paul Lasaine Marcelo Vignali." "Hope I pronounced it right." "Armand Serrano, Ron Lukas designed a beautiful world." " The characters." " They're natural primitive." " Oh, yes, Sylvain Deboissy." " Sylvain Deboissy." "He had a real challenge because most of our characters are penguins." "It's real easy for them to start looking alike but he gave them all distinction." "They ended up having different tattoos to help you..." "I think it started with the Hawaiian shirt thing." " That was a Marcelo invention, right?" " Yeah, Marcelo." "It was a brilliant, brilliant invention because it just carried forward to everybody else then." "I think we wanted to find a much more organic way to actually feel the excitement of this island and the MTV style." "You know, music video was the best way to go." "Introduced a lot of things in here." "Introduced the fact that Joe and Cody are really good friends." "Or have become really good friends." "Yeah, saving..." "Joe saving Cody made all that work." "Just instant bond, you get that." "Like when we pulled you out from in front of that moving train." "Yeah, the one that you were driving." "Coming through!" "Oh, crap." " Introduction of Lani." " Lani." "Now, the squid life preserver." "That was an invention of our character designer, Sylvan Deboissy." "Brilliant invention." "This is why animation is great because of that squid." "This is also a scene that Zooey ad-libbed." "She came up with the character Arnold." "She was holding a sandbag, remember?" " And invented that character." " That's right." "Then we said, "Well, she's talking to a kid, we need a kid."" "And Chris Buck took a portable DAT recorder home." " Yup." " And just recorded his..." "What was he, eight at that time or seven?" " He was probably eight." " His son, Reed, just at home." "To do scratch and it turned out so good we had to use it in the production." "Yeah, because a lot of times there's nothing worse than an adult trying to do a kid voice." "So we have real kids." "I love my job." "I have an amazing job." "This is so Zooey." "This whole thing here." "Again, the camera work here, working so beautifully." "They're gonna go for the interesting thing that's happening at the moment." "That would be this little kid who's about to drown." "And James Williams, our head of layout." "Wonderful cinematography in this movie." "A lot of times, the camera..." "We had to sort of give the illusion that the camera was finding the action." "It couldn't be ahead of it." "As you would normally create these shots at this stage." " Remember?" " No, no." "Not really." "More of the archival footage that we..." "Little scratches on the side." "Actually, that stuff is pretty easy to do from what I've been told." "It looks hard." "I think a lot of times it was just..." "Well, you know, the guys would do the work and it'd be beautiful and pristine and the color would be perfect." "And then, we would say, "Okay, now, make it look..."" "Yeah, muck it up, make it look pretty bad." "And then, you know..." " They would do it." " And then, on the long run, they go:" ""Okay, I get it." "I know what you guys are doing."" "It was all part of getting a real organic look and feel for the movie." "That was really important to us." "That it didn't feel CG." "And in fact archival footage aside every shot including shots like this have film grain." "Because when we saw the original images they were too perfect." "And, too, almost a little sterile." "But adding that little bit of film grain took the edge off everything." "The character of Tank was really articulated by Jeff Ranjo, our head of story." "He took what could have been a real cutout, cardboard-like villain and went somewhere different with him as you'll see later." "We used to have a sequence that took us off into a big luau party right here." "And actually, Cody was gonna ride the wave the next day, isn't that right?" "It slowed everything down." "We had, like, a three-hour first act, didn't we?" "Yeah, 80 minutes." "Get to the point." "This used to be a much more complicated scene." "It was a big dialogue-driven..." "Or even before that, remember?" "When Cody was saving Chicken Joe from being beaten up." " That's right." " And then the Ransoms came in." "They were Tank's cronies." "And they held Cody down." "Lani rushed in and flipped Tank on his back." "That was the three-hour version, I think." "It was our head of story, Jeff Ranjo." "He came up with the great, efficient way of just moving forward." "You have the memorial surfboard out on the rock." "You have the memorial surfboard out on the rock." "And somebody's throwing rocks at it." "Now, those urchins, they come back a little bit later." "At least one of them does." "This one used to be, like, so much longer too." "Cody would..." "He wouldn't take a wave." "And he was really..." "Really was wearing his fear on his sleeve." "You just wanted him to wipeout." "I remember nearly doing this." "Of course the wave that I was on doing that was about a foot and a half high, but it was still pretty frightening." "Well, we've had some of the best teachers in the world." "We had Kelly and Rob teaching us too, so..." "And we still surf the way we do." " Yup, no reflection on their skill." " Yup." " We're still useless." " I wouldn't call it surfing." "Now, we can't tell you anything about the waves technically because we don't know anything about the waves." "And we all, between us, we have a brain the size of a hamster." "But a lot of the scenes with the water, and the jungles and everything I know we would look at them and say, "Fantastic."" "And the guys would say, "Yeah, but we're not done yet."" "You know, and a few days later, it would look even better." "And these guys kept topping themselves." "And this one, this is an odd one where we kept trying, you know well, would it be just two wipeouts, three?" "Rule of comedy is three." "But somehow when we added the fourth one in people really laughed." "The three was funny." "The fourth one they weren't expecting, especially the different angle." "Plus Cody had said, "You know, you're gonna wanna watch it one, two, three." "Over and over and over and over."" "Now, why the camera people didn't go and rescue Cody..." " I'm not sure why they..." " There's a rule of noninvolvement." " Oh, right." "That's right." " Yeah, don't make the news." " Just report the news." " Yeah." "We used to have Lani out there, doing the rescue." "Cody was passed out and she was the one kind of suffering for Cody." "I don't know why we did that." " Now, this scene..." " Try, you try." "...described to us by a guy from Quicksilver and he walked in." "Yeah." "He described what it's like to almost drown." "It stayed with this, because I think it was early on that he showed us that..." "You know what it looked like to drown as he's, sort of, like, lying on the floor of the conference room with his arms and legs in the air." " I forgot about that." " Yeah." "A lot of the surfers talk about how once you're..." "If you've wiped out and you're under water often, you can't tell which way is up, which way is down." "And you'll be swimming thinking you're surfacing and you'll hit the bottom of the reef realize you're going the wrong way." "When you come up for air, sometimes that next wave is right down on top of you." "You don't even get another breath." " Tank, you okay?" " Tank needs fuel." "Now, he says it tastes like..." " Shellfish." " Shellfish." "Shellfish, I just wanna be clear about that." "And he doesn't like shellfish." "I think it was Ed who animated that." "I'm sorry, boarded that scene, initially." "And there were fish coming out of Cody's mouth when Lani was pushing down on his chest." "That's right." "Ed Gombert." " You know, I'm..." " Ha." "We had these three actors on the coach together and they were..." "This was the moment where Glen acts out Cody wiping out that was a touch that the animator, Pete Nash, added." " That was beautiful." " We didn't expect that." "Again, beautiful camerawork here with a little spotlight that they used." "The rain." "We did have one point, we were gonna do it all that sort of night camera." "Green with those sort of, you know, those glowing eyes." " Green retinas and all that." " Just a little too creepy." " But I think we always wanted this." " Yeah." "And it came out beautifully." "I think from the beginning we always imagined setting up the Geek as..." "Or introducing him as being a guy asleep outside in the rain." "Just kind of tells you all about how out of touch he is how washed up he is." "Jeff's great here." "Remember when he first came in he was actually doing more of a cartoon voice." "Yes, little bit higher voice and all that." "We said, "Just do your own voice."" " I remember." " Jeff is this character." " He just..." " Yeah." "He brought so much of himself to it." "These actors did this, I mean, the same thing all together the three of them." "It gives all that overlapping feeling." "The three of them acting, workshopping this sequence was fantastic." "Okay, Fire Urchin." "Oh, Ivan, you know, this is a tribute to our editor." "Who came...?" "Who did this first?" "Was this Ed Gombert, who did the...?" "Yeah, but I think it was your idea, Chris, to..." "To interview the Fire Urchin." "Yeah, and then Ed Gombert boarded it and came up with a lot of great dialogue." "I'll take credit for it if you like it at home." "And if you don't, it was Chris Jenkins." "And Matt Taylor did the voice for the urchin which is..." "Matt was one of our storyboard artist." "And great improviser." "He helped..." "We would workshop scenes with Matt and one of our development guys, Pete Burns and they would give us great material." "Particularly with our final sessions with him." "It was written in a different way in that regard." "I mean, we just allowed the improv to, you know, create the scenes." "Knowing that we were hitting marks all the way along that..." "We went back and forth in this scene a couple of times." "Yeah, well, our first instinct was to go with this." "That's what you do when you get some kind of..." "Yeah, it's really a surefire cure." "It really is." "Then, we second guessed ourselves." "Well, Jeff, every time he came in, he'd go, "Is the pee scene still in?"" "We got nervous at one point." " We said, "Yeah, kind of."" " Because I'm not, you know..." " Oh, good." "Okay, good." " And it really works, right guys?" " I hope." " I don't know." "We hear." "Why did you...?" "That time I cut my foot?" "Why did you...?" "That time I cut my foot?" "Then the kids came in later and I think they kind of take the ick factor off it, if you have any of it." "Now, this is Reese, our youngest daughter." "And then Reed, my son, and Jeff Ranjo's son." " Jack." " Smudge, Jack." " Playing Smudge." " Is his son named Smudge?" " Son Jack playing Smudge." " Okay." " Oh, come on." " Bye." " This was a much longer scene too." " Oh, yeah." "And then we decided to end with a little classy joke." " Look at that for..." " Masterpiece Theatre right there." "Now, that burp was provided by Jon Heder." " Jon Heder." " Jon Heder." "That's right." "With the Reggie character he was originally much more of a villain, and then he just..." "Cody was his own villain, really." "You know, it's his struggle whether to..." "Yeah, the internal struggle and his struggle with Z." " Yeah." " We didn't need a... kind of villain." " Right." "So Reggie's part got a little..." " We couldn't even spell that." " Or villain?" " Yeah." " I can't spell either of them." " Yeah." "Okay, so then we got the idea of Joe..." "We gotta keep Joe in the movie." "Everybody loved Joe, but Joe was separate from Cody." "So, what is..." "I guess the idea came up that he would be searching for him." " Yeah." " So that keeps Joe alive." "Well, not in that scene." "Chicken Joe, of course, was just a breakout cool and wonderful character in the movie." "Yeah, Jon just found him." "But Jon found him in the first session." " Yeah, he did." " But we had him come in and audition." "Just in that room, set up a little tape recorder and did some great stuff." "Jon was always the choice for Chicken Joe after seeing Napoleon." "Napoleon Dynamite that is." "At this point in the movie, you can't smell this but, you know, Z hasn't washed for about 10 years." "The jungle that these guys created, the lighting and the leaves and the wind blowing it's amazing." "I think it was one of our writers, Don Rymer who came up with this idea that Cody lost his necklace." "And once he had made that suggestion everything fell into place here." "Because we struggled for a long time about how to get Z motivated to help this kid out." " And get involved in his life." " That's right." "Yeah, we had that whole thing about Z having a particular scar." "Yeah, and Cody would recognize." "So losing the necklace brings up the conversation about the meeting 10 years earlier." "And then gives Z a chance to make a decision after he's gone back to his tree." "Yeah, so Z feels somewhat responsible for where this kid is right now." "And has set him on his path." "Beautiful song by Ken Andrews here." "It's just fantastic." "We had a great music supervisor Liza Richardson, also working with Lia Vollack." "Some incredible music." "They would just turn up..." "These original songs would come into the studio." "They can bring a CD in and say, "Hey, we're gonna play this moment."" "They were perfect." "It was a treat the day this came in." "This anchors the scene emotionally." "The values in this scene, it's not sad." "It's just, there's a certain kind of something that I can't think about right now." " Lf you say so." " Not quite." "This is the international version, listeners." "One of the inspirations for Z was a legendary surfer named Greg Knoll who rode big waves before anybody else was." "Back in the '50s." "And he rode one of the biggest waves ever recorded." "It wasn't filmed or anything and he walked away from surfing after that." "And that was part of our..." "Something..." "That idea led to, you know what if we had this Elvis-type surfer who got really big and then all of a sudden disappeared one day?" "We learned all about the koa wood." "And how boards how they're made, best boards." "You want to make one?" "Remember we talked about this bit, too where, you know, I was talking about a scene you know, at home where you go to your teenager and wanna do something with them." "And you wanna be the best dad in the world." "And you're gonna go to them and say:" ""Hey, you wanna go do this with me?" "I think it'll be great."" "You're expecting the kid to say, "Yeah, Dad." "You're the best."" "And give you a big hug and all that, whatever." "But normally, they would just say:" ""Never mind, I don't really want to."" "And so we tried to go for that kind of feeling more than..." "You know, the believable kind of relationship with Cody and Z as opposed to just the, you know, the fantasy of it all." "I think that happened to you, didn't it?" "Isn't that...?" "There was an example that weekend you brought it in, we thought, "Great, let's get that."" "Oh, yeah, we bring our lives into this, you know this movie." "And I think our families will be scarred forever by watching some of this." "Now, this whole log-rolling concept came up we just needed a device to get Z and Cody to the beach." "We knew Z wouldn't consciously go back to his old place." "See, he's heading back to his house." "His house is off on the right there." "And now, they're heading away." "Mychael Danna created some really great music for this." "It was fun watching this stuff being recorded too." "Oh, once again we threw something completely different to him, you know." "Instead of this big, lush, symphonic score, we were like:" ""This little bit, try something kind of Islandy sort of thing." " You know, log chasing." - "Okay."" " And he'd go for it." " Yeah." "His brother happened to be in town that weekend." "And his brother plays the uke and they put this little piece together." " It's a great piece." " Yeah." "Well, the scene used to feel really dangerous." "We had Steve Ticknor, who's our sound designer and he did brilliant work." "But it was scary because a giant log rolling down and Z caught going off a cliff." "But we added the music and it made it just gave it a tone..." "A little more humor, right?" "Here's the most perfect beach you will ever find." "And it doesn't exist." " Darn." " Yeah." "Squids don't necessarily need to live in water in our movie." "There's a tank of water just off frame." "There's a tank of water just off frame." "Our visual development team just did a beautiful job coming up with this world." "We said we wanted something natural and primitive." " And I think it was Armand Serrano." " Armand Serrano." " Beautiful." " Who drew this originally." "This leaned-over palm tree converted into a board shack, like an old garage." "I love watching this with people." "Actually people that..." "Or kids." "They may have figured it out in the scene before, you know." " It was Z. - "It's Z. It's Z."" "But they're not sure yet." "So they're with you on the journey." "Of course they look at the Hawaiian flowers." "They sort of figure it out." "Yeah, on his chest." "Everything's working in the scene." "The way that the flowers in the background at the bottom left there." "Sand's moving." "It was tough finding out where to reveal Z." "And then, it just kind of landed in our laps." "When he gets to his old house, it's the perfect way to reveal it." "Well, he reveals himself and he doesn't tell Cody who he is it just happens, right?" "Because of his being confronted with his past, he just..." "That's how he reacts to everything." "Cody puts it together." "It's a very organic reveal that..." "I remember we had so many ideas about Z having a scar a cupboard of trophies..." "Well, the question was always, like, "How would Cody know who this...?"" "It's like, "Wait a minute, Cody's not..."" "He's pretty bright." "He's gonna put it together, you know." "You see this character reacting the way they do." "Often in story development, you work on these things." "And you second guess yourself." "Or you're being guessed by a lot of people around you." "All for good reasons, really, but you kind of forget that people are discovering their journey with you." "And sometimes you try too hard to disguise things without realizing that your perspective as a storyteller is everything." "You know the story inside out." "But the audience is just walking this path and discovering things as they come up." " What happened?" " I don't want to talk about it." "I love the way he looks in the camera there." "We were always trying to keep that idea alive that these characters were going about their business." "But at times, when they were revealing things they didn't wanna be revealed, in particularly with Z they'd looked right at the camera." "Yeah, we wanted awareness of the camera throughout." "Not too often, but enough to remind you that there's cameras on the beach." "And there's only 800 and something shots in the movie." "It's a really low shot count for a movie like this." "Especially when we get to making the board which is very long." "Couple of long scenes." "We wanted the limitation of the camera having to stay away from the characters." "It couldn't get exactly where it wanted to get for the perfect shot every time." "We had this kid thing all as one and then, I think, Ivan our editor split it up into three." "Just kind of wrap the whole thing around, yeah." "Ivan's not only a fantastic editor he's a really great, accomplished surfer himself." "It turned out to be indispensable that he was..." "Could help us connect to the surf world and keep it real every day." "Jack Ranjo's big line coming up." "He's a dirty trashcan full of poop." "Hey, now, nobody made him say that line, Chris." "Hey, now, nobody made him say that line, Chris." "That was his own line." "Yeah, well, maybe Jeff wrote it." "We don't know." " Hey, what's that?" " And Tank's mom..." " What a looker." " Oh, yeah." " Played by Diedrich Bader." " Yeah." "Who is also a looker as a matter of fact." "Okay, this is probably the weirdest sequence in the whole movie." "Yeah, we admit it." " And it's Jeff Ranjo's fault." " Jeff Ranjo, it's all his fault." "Then Diedrich ran with it and we encouraged it and all that." "But as strange as this is, you know, we were questioning it you know, is this just too out there?" "Then I think about at the same time, it was Super Bowl Sunday and in this particular Super Bowl, they had..." "When you cut away from the game they would cut to photographs of the players posing with the trophy and kissing the trophy and hugging the trophy." "And we realize this is not so far out." " This isn't weird." "You know, but we pushed it." "We make a little weirder." "We had a test screening and this first version slightly, sort of the same, people didn't like." "We did a different version, edited it." "Nobody liked." "So we went back to the original version." " You know..." " I like the pretty..." "Kids get it on one level." "Adults get it on another." "Well, one of the ideas is that Cody was..." "That's all Cody wanted to do, was to win the trophy." "That's all Cody wanted to do, was to win the trophy." "Epitomized winning." "Well, we thought, "What if our villain...?" "That's what he's all about." "It's all about the trophy."" "One of our best documentary shots here." "Camera follows." "It's still one shot." "Hey, who said you..." "Turn the board around." "Get back here." "I think the water is..." "Some of the best water is when it's like that." "Not necessarily when there's breaking waves." "I just love this scene." " You wanna jump in." " Yeah." " Well, I'd like you to jump in there." " Beautiful." "Jump off." "We never got tired of putting Cody through the ringer." "He needed to be." "Well, it's a cocky..." "A cocky character, you don't mind seeing him..." "That was the interesting thing with him was keeping him sort of driven and cocky and that..." " Likable?" " Likable." " Gotta keep him likable." " And believable, I guess." " Mychael Danna's score." " Oh, yeah." " We gotta..." " Funny little ditty that he did here." "The guy was versatile more than like..." " That's..." " He's amazing, amazing." "But he also wrote the SPEN theme, the original, the opening theme." "And then the Boneyards." " Incredible music at the end." " Score." "Now, this X started off as a gag." "And it also showed you know, that Zeke was really connected to the water." "He knew when the waves were gonna break." "And it was kind of a one-off gag at one point." "And we'd realize we could use it later on." "Now, the precursor of that was a scene that, I think, Ed Gombert had created." "A lovely scene." "Where Z was very much..." "Kind of like he's doing transcendental meditation on the beach." "Oh, right." "And he was counting down the waves and he knew exactly when each wave would break." "With his eyes closed." "He didn't really need it." "That wasn't ultimately, what, Cody needed to learn." "He didn't have to learn the technique or the technical aspects of surfing." "He needed to learn how to have fun." "We could have gone conventional and said:" ""Well, there's gonna be a big contest in act three and we need to have Cody, like, training every day in leading up to that." "We tried some versions." "Yeah, they just never..." "It wasn't fun and it felt like you had seen it before." "Now, Rob has hair kind of like that." "And by coincidence adolescent penguins grow this crazy, brown feathery stuff out of their head when they're teenagers." "Not quite as much of a Chia Pet as Rob became in this movie." "Okay, you gotta tell our wonderful listeners about this one right here." "Well, Reed was talking about..." "Actually, he loves, you know, toy guns and stuff like that." "So I was asking him, "What would you like on your gun?"" "He said, "I'd like grenade launcher."" "So we took that out of context and put it into the surfboard thing." "Those happy accidents." " Oh, the Pen Guans." " It's another happy accident." "How many cameramen did we lose in the movie?" "Now, we gotta give a nod to Jason Lethcoe." " Yes." " He really..." "Early on in production he took the whole middle of the movie with Cody and Z and worked out a through line about making a board." "Now, he..." "I think he told us he was inspired by..." "Being in the workshop with his granddad when he was a kid." "And he tapped into something here that's universal." "He really understood the father-and-son dynamic of these guys." "And in creating this scene, it had echoes back and into the end of the movie." "The movie, I think, really sort of added those elements back in to all aspects." "Again a lot of great improv from Jeff and Shia." "Yeah, they were in the room together." "I think it was their first time together, like the second day." "We did three days in a row." "And they did four takes." "That was all we needed." " Yeah." " We wanted the overlaps." "We wanted the improv." "We wanted it to feel natural." "This scene could be so written and really traditionally, the information in this scene..." "It could be over in a few seconds." "But to actually experience this relationship developed on-screen this is kind of the core of the movie in a way." " Yeah." " It is." "We were asked many times to cut it." "Trim it way back." "We kept saying, "I don't know."" "I think the whole gag works because of the tension that builds up throughout the sequence." "The subtlety of these performances is just staggering." "But they were cuing off too, I think of the great performances they were getting." "The very natural cadence of the actors." "And those little eccentric you know, characteristics that you don't normally get because lines are, in other movies, so delivered." "Very unusual to have two actors in the same space acting out a scene for an animated movie." "Normally, you would record one actor at a time and then a great deal of work goes into trying to forge a connection between the performances." "And that seemed a little crazy to us, quite honestly." "We thought..." ""If you want a natural performance, put them together in the room."" "And everyone was worried about them overlapping dialogue and how it would limit us when we got back to editorial." "No, we embraced it." "We embraced to a large degree the idea of spontaneity and kind of being stuck with what you get on film or what you get on tape." "That's what documentary filmmakers have to deal with." "It was important to keep that sense of spontaneous reality in everything." "It was important to keep that sense of spontaneous reality in everything." "The camera moves, then obviously, the character performances the story events." "We wanted a sense of reality unfolding in front of you not these sort of preordained events being locked down in a kind of a formulaic way." "That can sometimes happen." "We had transcripts of everything that these guys said so we could go in and find just the right things with our highlighters and try to cut it all together." "We had hours and hours of tape to work with." "So that made it a lot easier with the transcripts." "We have to thank the blistered fingers of Jeannine." "Yeah." " Jeannine Marques, yes." "So those voices are really good on those penguins." " Who plays those guys?" " Why, that would be us." "Sped up." "Well, I have never..." "Oh, it is just us." "Again, you know, like with the kids, you added more kids as the movie went on, we added more Pen Guans." " They're a very popular character." " Yeah." "And John ad-libbed this scene here." " We just said, "What...?"" " Yeah." ""How would Chicken Joe take being put in a pot a boiling pot of water?"" "I love the opening up the pores and..." "This is something that..." "I remember you bringing this idea into work, Chris." "The idea of going non-linear with this sequence." "Going back and forth, yeah." "Cutting ahead." "We always had that struggle of trying to keep the documentary alive because sometimes it would just become too narrative." "We're trying to tell the story and we forget that it's a documentary." "And we'd push ourselves to keep that alive and others would push us too." "So wherever we could, we tried to keep those bits going." "And then the fun idea, too, that came in late." "Not late." "I mean, it's always there, but I think we just kind of lost it in the second act a bit." "So we tried to keep that alive and it started here, I think." "Because this sequence was a little more melancholy than we really wanted." " Yeah, Z was too down." " Yeah." "And we realized, if he's gonna be the mentor he's gotta be the one who realizes, "Wait, what are we doing?" "We're..." "We should be having a great time."" "And even Z hasn't been having a good time and when he realizes that then it's time for him to be a great teacher to Cody." "And also, you know, Cody, for Z, is a way of kind of reconciling with his past because he's..." "Cody is kind of like Z was as a kid." "Z is what Cody might be if he goes down the wrong path where winning becomes everything." "And if it's everything, it's not gonna..." "Being the champion, you're not gonna be on top forever." "And what your life's like, when your glory days are behind you?" " So..." " Right." "That was a strong hook in the movie, I think, is that they're the same character essentially separated by time." "This is a huge moment for Lani in this sequence, I mean..." "A little nod to Denise Koyama who storyboarded a lot of the Lani stuff." "You know, being guys, we just didn't understand the girl." "And she brought a warmth into this character and the slight sense of romance building between Cody and Lani." "I think it's a really lovely..." "Ash, you rewrote some of this stuff too." " That's right." " That kooky stuff she does." "Yeah, the waterfall stuff and all." " That's great." "That's good." " Yeah." "What was the whole thing with the lava tube?" "Because we knew that we were really pushing the rules of a documentary in a camera following them down here." "Well, there's a parallel track through the ride coming up." " Yes." " And that's how the camera followed." "Yeah." "Bravest cameraman in the history of animation." " We lost a few." " Yeah." "All right!" "But James Williams came up with this idea of a parallel track." " To make it more believable..." " How'd they get ahead of them there?" "Yeah, how did they...?" "How are they ahead of them?" " Where's the camera...?" " I track..." "You know what?" " The guy's Welsh, I can't explain it." " Yeah." "And by the way, penguins didn't invent surfing." " You're kidding." " Yeah, I know it's surprising." "Man, all this time." "This idea came up..." "I'm not sure where it originated." "We were well into production and then somebody read about how the Hawaiians were doing this 2000 years ago." "They called it lava sledding." " Jerry had been to Hawaii." " Yeah, yeah." "And glow worms really do exist." " Yeah, it was..." " That really is their poop." "Yeah, the glowing stuff is their poop." "Now, maybe they don't output that much." "I don't think so." "I hope not." "These guys are big eaters on Pen Gu." "A little known fact that that's actually radioactive." "We're kind of concerned about Cody, I think." "Yeah, Ash, the stuff coming up here." "You wrote this beautiful stuff between Cody and Lani." "Look at that, look at the sentiment of that." "It's just..." "I think that was Zooey-ism, right?" "That stink-stink thing?" "No, that was Ash." "That was an Ash-ism." "What happened is you..." "You know, well, you'd..." "You're with actors and you kind of get to know their voices and we could all go back." "We can all write." "Yeah." "You're right because it's one of the last scenes we did." "You just got to know their voices after a while and they talk to you in your head." "Oh, do they talk to you in your head?" " You know, I never had that, Ash." " Oh, okay." "We can cut that." "He's my uncle." "He's the only family I've got." " There she is." " Bucktoothed Lani." " Even though penguins don't..." " Do they grow teeth?" "I'm not sure." "No, I think that might have been some kind of snack food that she was eating at that time." "It just looks like a tooth." " It was a lucky photograph." " Oh, it was a snack food." "Another great song that came in from a band called..." " Dirty Heads." " Dirty Heads." "Slow mo, we slowed that down, didn't we?" "Didn't we stretch it?" " Yeah." " Is that what it's called?" "We were down in the wire." "We had a shorter scene and then we just..." "We wanted to..." "We wanted the music to hit certain beats and, you know, really swell here." " So we open up a couple of the shots." " Can we stretch it?" "I think it was all carefully planned you guys are just making this up now." "No, no." "They have a stretching machine." "There was the idea of that..." "That curl of wood looking like the wave, which is kind of nice little..." "Oh, that's right." "Yeah." " Little thing that we threw in there." " We tried." "It was out there." "That's pretty good for a second board." " Pretty good job." " The ones that he damaged before we got to this state." " No." " Let's see here." "Don't try this at home, by the way." "Come on!" "Come on!" "I think this is the most beautiful scene in the movie." "I love this one." "We wanted to bring in the concept of the tube as a..." "Because we..." "We went down to Trussels..." "It's a surf spot near San Diego." " And we interviewed real surfers." "They're the voices that you hear coming up." "And we just started to realize that..." "Yeah, surfing is competitive, but there's also a real spiritual side." "Everybody kept talking about what it's like to be inside the barrel." "And we just knew we had to incorporate it into the movie and it became..." "Became the metaphor, I think, or the theme, in a way." "Wait, wait, that's Toby, Cody." "It became the metaphor of the symbol." " Tobey, Tubey?" " This is Surf's Up not Spider-Man, ladies and gentlemen." "Isn't it?" "I thought we were talking about Spider-Man all this time." "No, it was Cody's thing." "It was Cody to be tubed." "Right, to get tubed." " It's not what he wanted to..." " Be one with the wave." " You know, necessarily do but..." "Well, here, this moment right here sums it all up for where Cody still is." "Yeah, "How many points can I score for getting barreled?"" "Didn't understand the spiritual quality of being one with the water." "Now, Reggie Belafonte is not a gopher." " He is not a..." " Koala bear." " Koala, hedgehog." " We're here to tell you..." "What is he?" " We're here to tell you." " He is a sea otter." " Sea otter." " Okay." " So chosen because..." " Look at the feet." " So chosen because..." " Look at the feet." "Is that his real hair, do you think?" " I don't know." " Hard to say." "I've never seen a sea otter like that personally, but, you know..." "He's a sea otter because of..." "He's a sort of a manipulative guy." " And sea otters are very manipulative." " They have hands." " That's great." " Oh, they have hands." "Did you ever go to Monterey and watch how they pick pockets and stuff." "I get it." "You guys look hungry." "So Joe got away from the natives." "We had to bring him back." "Now, the Pen Guan language is similar to Hovitos." "Hukana matusa means, I think, "kill him" in Hovitos but in Pen Guan, it means "tastes like chicken."" "So there's no confusion." "Squids can actually either be made into a snack food or into a life preserver on Pen Gu, by the way." " What face?" " Oh, man." "They go pink when you cook them." "That was all improv to." "Reed's..." "It wasn't true." "It was the improv of..." "Reese was actually..." " That 's right." " Sitting at home recording that line and the cat..." " Oh, the cat." "The cat had a trouser cough as we call it back in Wales." "Cat had too many bean burritos that night." "And she responded to that." "Hey, Z!" "Come on!" " Where you going?" " I thought we were going to train." "Not in the water." "Jeez." "What are you thinking?" "And this all became..." "Again, last minute thing." "All became about fun also." " Yeah, originally..." " The training..." "It was real nuts-and-bolts training like..." "Here's how you balance on a board and here's how you turn." "There's a little leftover with the rock thing, right?" "Yeah." "But this was Ed again, right?" "Ed Gombert had done a lot of stuff, initially." "I know that..." "I think I actually brought a lot of gags in here too but the pineapple slices on the eyes was from..." "Yeah, that came from the scene you mentioned earlier." "That was a line improvved by Jeff." "Right, so we added that music back in and sort of..." " That sitar." " Sitar." "Okay, how did Jeff do that, guys?" "He was talking about..." "He wanted us to show him doing this great wave and he acted out this whole thing." " How he would surf the wave." " Surf the wave." "He was not..." "He didn't think he was on mike, right?" " Yeah." " He's just showing us, so it's all real." "These are the kind of tricks we used to play on each other in making a movie." "Pineapples on the eyes." "Yeah." "Can I take them off now?" "Ash and I do the interviewers throughout the movie..." "Ash and I do the interviewers throughout the movie so those are our voices." "Whether you like them or not." "I love them." "You owe me 20 bucks for that." "Where's my wallet?" "Now, this used to be a heck of a lot more complicated." "And there's the X again." " Show them that Cody has..." " Number two X." " Learned to read the waves." "And have fun." "Then, Cody..." "And we took a lot longer for Z getting back in the water and we also had this moment where..." " The tiptoeing in." " Yes, but..." "But Z, wouldn't he have this spiritual moment going back in the water?" "At this point in the movie nobody cares." "It's like, let's just get into the water." " That scene was much bigger." " Yeah." "I just took forever to get Z in the water." "We thought we had to make a big deal about it and he'd have to tiptoe out there and..." "Yup." "The idea was Z hadn't been in the water for 10 years." "And so that was such a big moment and you had it be very serious." "He was, you know considering whether to smack Cody on the head or go surfing and..." "Just had him jump in the deep end." " Yeah." " Yup." "It came through Chad Stuart animated that great shot where Z's upon the board for the first time and he's tipsy." "It all came through right there." "We wanted to do..." "Slow-mo photography is a big part of surf documentaries." "The waves look so much better if you're shooting at 200 fps rather than real time." "Again, lmageworks folks, they pulled it off." "You're gonna see a few shots coming up here that's just couldn't be more beautiful." "Thanks to Sugar Ray for this fantastic song." "And for Liza for bringing it to us." "Now, in this sequence, originally Cody was gonna get tubed." "He was gonna find out what it's all about and he was gonna unlearn that lesson that was much too complex." "I think we felt that just to be able to hold on to the experience that's transformative for him." "Yeah, if you got tubed this early then it said that he'd gotten past needing to win." "If he went back to wanting to win, then he hadn't learned a thing." " So it was confusing." " So we just keep it." "He has a good time out here, but he doesn't get tubed." "Yeah, it's more about just getting his confidence back so that he can..." "That he feels he can really ride these waves and maybe has what it takes to go compete now." "Now, where did the cannon ball come from?" " Was that in animation?" " I don't remember." "Was it...?" "Was it lvan?" "Oh, Ivan suggested it." " Ivan Bilancio." " Great moment." "The water in that shot even when they're not waves, the refraction..." "I just wanna dive in." "So this is probably, I would say the most complex story sequence of the movie." "Z having to reveal what happened." "It was not easy." "We had it earlier in the movie." "Or I don't know if it was earlier, but it was in a different place." "How much to reveal?" "How much to say?" "We had one point when both the characters were really angry." " You kind of hated both of them." " Yeah." "You really didn't care what happened." "But somehow Z's journey was about coming back to life and returning to the beach and to his..." "His old friends and his family." "We let that fear of having lost so many years ago be the thing that keeps him from being able to go to the contest and support Cody and be there for him, so..." " It was tough." " Yup." "History revised, we call this sequence." "And I think we revised this one about 1000 times." "It's such a delicate balance on information in here and tone for the movie." "Gets too deep and you start to break the tone, the movie becomes more of a drama." "But there are some very big and important things going on in this scene." "It turned out to be the right moment for Z to reveal why he was in hiding." "And that his fear of showing his face again as a loser kept him from being able to go and support Cody." "So they didn't pass." "God, it looks so easy now, guys." "We struggled..." "Back to the archival footage." "Great grainy look." "Ash, you did some beautiful versions of this I mean, going all the way back to virtually the beginning of the movie." " Well, we have..." " Yeah, it used to be in in his tree, he revealed this, didn't he?" "Oh, really?" "And even before that this is where Geek revealed that he was Big Z." "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah." "Oh, this is the exact same scene, right?" " That we used earlier." " Yeah." "There's this spot lit..." "So if you go back and look at that scene now..." "Back when Cody first arrives in the island." " You'll see Z backing off the board and disappearing in the white water." "Not wiping out." "I thought it would be kind of nice to have a Zapruder like moment." "I mean, I think our hats are off to our actors on this." " Oh, yeah." "Yeah, we put Shia through the ringer on this." "But he committed totally." "Well, every session we'd come in, we probably had a new version of it." "And they'd keep asking, "What was wrong with the old one?"" " They were troupers." " Yeah." "But kudos to Shia, man." "He can handle both, you know, the comedy and the drama." " He can handle anything." " Just anything we threw at him." "He's been an amazing guy." "So this is Cody's lowest moment in the movie." "In case you hadn't noticed." "Well, you struggle with that." "It has to be somewhere in here but you're not exactly sure." "Yeah, you question, when to..." "When to do an interview and when just to let the moments play out without the interview." "But we really felt we needed to remind people that he's are not just there to win a trophy." "That there's something deeper going on." "What he's really missing is a dad." "And what was a joke in the one of the first sequences of the movie ends up being, as we kind of knew it then really, just a core emotion for this guy." "I think Cody's really been looking for a chicken all his life more than a dad." "Like many of us." " Great." " Yeah, I've been looking." " I'm still looking." " How's lunch coming?" "We won't ask how far the beach is." "Of course, it's right there." "The jungle set and the beach set were two completely different models and there was no way to..." "We couldn't move the camera around to show..." "Show that the beach was close." "Now, this whole competition day was inspired by a location up in Northern California called Maverick's." "Where Cody got his last name, right?" "Yup, we were..." "It was that..." "That documentary we watched..." " Condition Black." " Condition Black, yeah." "Surfers going out in Hawaii after a hurricane or..." "They were gonna cancel it, right?" "And the promoter wanted to keep doing it." "Yeah, that was back in '74." "The promoter pushed the surfers out against their will because he had a big, live broadcast all set up to go." "That's right." "Didn't wanna have it cancelled." "So Reggie was inspired by that." "And if he's watching right now, we apologize." "We hope you learned your lesson." "Without you, we'd never have been able to get story point." "So thanks." "I'm trying to think of all the incarnations of this scene." " I couldn't tell you." " The whole..." "Yeah, the fight Reggie and Lani had about whether the contest would proceed or not." "That's right." "Man, I remember this used to be like 15 minutes longer to set up the contest rules and..." "Oh, we had the rules and the scoreboards and all that." "And we realize that you folks, out there don't really need all that information." "You already know this stuff." "If a surfer falls, you probably lost." "If he stands up on the board, rides it, he'll win." "Those were our rules, we decided." "That's all people really care about." "Now, this scene kind of really happened." " With our animators..." " Surf day." "Surf day out at Zuma Beach." "Not quite that size a wave." "Watching 40 or 50 people taking the same wave." "Wiping out all at the same time." "Hey, you guys came up with this." " Little flashbacks, they're great." " Flashbacks, great." "Just needed to get inside his head." "Yeah, you were doing something unimportant like you were having a baby at that point, I think, and..." "Not me, I won't take credit." "Great shot here." " I love this." " Not sure if he's gonna make it or not." "I love the soundtrack." "It was a huge moment for Cody and we had to watch the music still swell but we didn't get too big because it's not the climax of the whole sequence." " There he is." " That was a late addition." "Oh, we struggled." "Should we bring him back, should we not." "Really hats off to Ash on that one, we..." "We weren't sure." "We kept thinking we could bring him back at the shrine." "But it's nice to bring him back earlier." "We used to have a really extended..." " We showed everybody..." " Two minutes of..." " rising up through the ranks." "It's called that, right?" " Rising through the ranks?" " Yeah." "Oh, nobody care." "I just told you what you already knew was gonna happen." "Exactly." " Joe was enjoying everything." " We knew from the beginning we wanted Joe to win the contest." " From the beginning." "Just didn't know how it was gonna happen." "Joe's gotta win." "Joe's the guy who doesn't care about it." "As his character developed, it made more sense though." "I love Chicken Joe's surfing style and that scene too." "It's like holding on to the rails with his talons." " Joe, typical Joe." " Yup." "Again this is all improvved, right?" "Yeah, although they were recorded separately, the kids, were." "Their agents and managers would not let them work together." "So we had to record them separately." "And the hiccup was real too." "The hiccup..." "I think this is when Jeff brought the DAT recorder back in the first day." "And his son was just hiccupping, and we go, "We gotta have that."" "This was a late little addition, too, but it's a nice touch of Lani." "Instead of just supporting Cody, actually hurt by the whole thing." "That he would choose to compete over Lani and Z." "Well, I like that story point, it just holds that energy back for the end of the story too when that energy back for the end of the story too when everybody realizes that Cody's triumphed." "I love that kind of decision." "One thing we never got to make a point of was that surf board of Joe's, it's an ear of corn." "Some bit of old wood that fell of a barn somewhere and turned it into this corn board." "Remember there was a long dialogue scene with Cody and Joe here?" "Where Joe is talking about the meaning of life." "It got a little preachy." "Yeah, it got a lot preachy." "Much better for Joe to be talking about kittens in the cloud." "Yeah." "A reminder of Z." "That medallion came in real useful." "It wasn't planned that way, originally." "This used to go by so quickly that..." "A big moment..." " Tank wiping out, yeah." " Weren't you guys saying:" ""I wish we could just replay it." And we said, "We can, it's SPEN."" ""It's animation." "It's SPEN." " We can do it."" " So here you go." "So we did slow mo." "So anybody that missed what's happening we not only show them we have Sal tell you." "But the energy that Sal brings to this when you hear it." "It's great." "Well, Sal did a lot of improv." "We just showed this to him." "We showed him the scene and he just did a few takes." "As if he was commentating on a live event." "Doing it live." "And we hoped that the audience would forget about Tank and think that maybe you know, you misdirect to think..." "Make everybody think..." "The last wave is gonna be about Cody having to ride against his best friend." " Right." " And we were struggling with all this in editorial." "Well, we struggled every day in editorial." "And Ivan said, "You know what?" We wanted Tank to come back into it." "And Ivan said, "Well, there's a really tough move called the Airdrop where a surfer comes off the top of a wave and drops straight down."" "And then that spurred all this, coming up." "Yeah, that was the signature sound of the tube again." "So Cody's about to get tubed." "He has a choice to make." "Here he comes." "Joe's unfazed." "Even then, yeah, Joe doesn't go, "Hey, wait."" "He just..." "He enjoys it." "Of course, Cody's gonna do the right thing." "Boneyards was there from the beginning, wasn't it?" "Yeah, we had that." "It was gonna be our climax." "We had that thing where Cody went back and saved Tank and..." "Right." "But they were taking Lani's job away from her." "It was getting convoluted so we said, "Well, we gotta get Cody to Z." "That's where the story picks up again."" "We made some tough trims in here that was really..." "We'd animated some of them." "It was beautiful." "That wave..." "That wave is just staggering there." " This whole Boneyard sequence." " Just incredible." "And the mist that these guys are put in there and..." "I love these shots in here." "All the..." "Yeah, Mychael Danna incorporated some Hawaiian drums into the score here, especially coming up right here." "I just love this part." "Now, that was..." "We saw something like that on some documentary stuff." "It was a guy on a jet-ski getting pushed up onto the rocks." " Yeah." " Trapped." "In, like, this area, they couldn't get to him." "We poured over this moment for hours to get this last..." " Days, months." " Weeks, months." " Maybe you hours." " It all blurs together now." "This is where we talked about the X again so we'd play it off again." "Third X." "And Cody having to let go." " Oh yeah, the third X." " Stop fighting." "Fighting life, fighting everything." "This really does work if you're in a situation like this." " We tested it out." " Well, we put Chris in..." " Yeah, he tested it out for us." " Well, I only needed..." "I only need one leg to get around." ""Is he dead?" "Are they dead?"" "Where's Cody?" "Lani is an incredibly powerful penguin." "The way she can maneuver something like that." "And the Reggie character that really cares." "There's more of Reggie we had in the movie at one point." " Just couldn't fit it all in." " Yeah." "Love this scene." "Z hasn't yet decided to go back on the beach." "But here he kind of admits he lost and Cody lost and it's no big deal." "In fact, we had another take for Cody where he was really down about it." "He said, "I lost."" "And then you found another one, of course, that wasn't so..." " He's just kind of tossed it aside." "That's right." "It's a great way of bonding two guys who have gone through the same thing in life." "Realize it's not that important." "It's so subtle." "It's not like you would normally do." "You really push for maybe very sentimental lines but this is very natural." "Every time I've been on a surf board in that situation..." " "Let's go, loser."" " Yeah." ""Don't touch his stuff," if you guys remember the line." "Oh, yeah." "When Z says, "Don't touch my stuff, man."" " Okay, Doris and Sheila." " There's Doris and Sheila right there." " Yeah, Z's ex-girlfriends." " Mindy Sterling." " Jane Krakowski." " We had to cut them out." "They gave such wonderful, wonderful, wonderful stuff." "But those are not their voices." "Yeah, because they were trimmed out of the movie." "We wanna save them for another movie." " I got lost for a little while." "But that kid there, Cody..." "Okay, I'm a sucker, but I love this moment here." "Yeah, we'd knew that Z's appearance would overshadow Cody." "And that it would be great if Z could take the spotlight back over to Cody." " And then Mario takes it back." " Yeah." "The animator did this little touch here, Z rubbing Cody's head just like he did back in Shiverpool, 10 years ago." "Nice touch." "The one piece..." "The guy's we never got together were James and Jeff." " Oh, Yeah." "They never got to do their scenes together." "The idea of dropping the boards was that they were Reggie boards and everyone was kind of..." " Done with Reggie." " Yup." "Notice the fluorescent colors as compared to the natural colors of the other boards." "We used to have an extra long wrap-up, then we just said, "Well..."" "These two scenes with Kelly and Rob were animated without their voices." "We didn't..." "We couldn't get ahold of them." "They were always off in the other side of the world surfing some great breaks." "And we finally caught up with them over the Internet basically and recorded in Hawaii and..." " Very last day of production." "Last day." "Yeah, within an hour their lines, recorded in Australia and Hawaii were cut into the movie." "That's a nice touch." " Look, that hair's not real." " Hey." "Now, he looks like a sea otter." "Sponsors of the competition were Reggie Belafonte's..." " Hair gel." " Wood wax and hair gel." "That's right." "We had really wonderful help in this movie." "There was a really..." "It's quite a vision to carry out for the second movie at a new studio." "But there were great people we were lucky enough to help us along the way." " Incredible, incredible artists." " Yeah." "Incredible voice talent, everyone." "We talked about this being the ultimate..." "It's Z's beach but it's never looked better." "And everyone's back on, it's full of life again." "How did they get that thing out there, that pot?" "We always ask that." "With that..." "Who better to put, you know, on the board than Mikey at the end." "We got Kelly and Rob surfing." " Look at the lighting on this." " Yeah." "Cody used to get tubed a lot earlier in the movie." "And it seem like such a spiritual thing that it's something that maybe you shouldn't earn until right at the end." " Right." " And he also went in by himself." "And then Chris said, "No." "That's how he started the movie." "He's alone, so why don't we get him in there with Z?"" " He's never had the dad." "We thought, "Oh, come on, we gotta..." "The two of them together, finally."" "Kelly Slater said after seeing the movie that there were various other times in the movie he wanted us to go into the tube and see inside there." "He was just, like, really eager to see that and then he realized at the end, to hold off and to..." "To get the experience of being in the tube." "He was happy, relieved." "A ring of fire there with the golden light around there." "That's wonderful." " Gives me goose bumps." " Incredible." "Love it." "Oh, but it's not over yet." "No, we're gonna have a really long extended "Where are they now?"" "And we're gonna check with all the characters." " Oh, that's right." " But they were all kind of wrapped up." " Yeah, except for these two." " Yup." "We needed..." "We had a lot of feedback on what happened to Mom and Glen." " Particularly Mom." " Yeah." "There are suggestions that they show up for the competition and we just didn't want that so this was..." "And that Mom has a change of heart right here." " But not Glen." " Never Glen." "So Mom's supporting Cody, Glen never." "We tried a version where Mom was a little more..." " Yeah, just like Glen." " She's like..." " She didn't..." " "What do you mean he didn't win?" "Why are you doing this?" "You're embarrassing us?" " Get out of here," so..." " Yeah." "And then we went..." "Others went, "Wait a minute."" "They wanted to see Mom change a bit." " And so..." " She does." "We went..." "Dana was right down the hall, we recorded her." "And then we went through the transcript of Brian Posehn and found lines that worked, you know." "That was the value of these transcripts we had." " Yes." " Hours and hours of material that..." "There's always a little nugget that was right for a moment." " Right." " Lf you looked hard enough." "So those two did not record those scenes together." "The fact that Cody's mom comes back and understands that something good happened this, I think..." "Satisfied a lot of folks." "We also..." "The scene that's at the very end with Glen, was pushed up here when we thought:" ""You know, let's just leave it with those two."" "And it was such a great out, with, "This interview's over."" "But the scene was already animated I don't know if it was all lit yet." "But it was such a great scene and we said, "We gotta put it somewhere."" "So we decided to put it at the very end." "So those are the people that stay to the bitter end get a little treat." "So yeah, it's a fun movie to do and..." "It's a nice way to spend a few years on the beach, in the water." "It's fantastic." "So it came out well." " This is actually very fun." "It's great." " Yeah." "I haven't seen the movie in a while and it's, you know, it's cool." "In a week." "Haven't seen the movie in a week." "That's a while." "I was watching it probably five times a day, you know." " So..." " You know what, these movies these kind of movies, they come along so rarely and I just wanna say, it's great working with you guys." " Likewise." " Where are the tissues?" "And I'm looking up all the names in the credits here and just..." " It's an incredible team." " Yup." " Couldn't have hoped for better." " Very lucky, really." "And I think everybody had a really good time on this." "Hope you guys had a good time listening." " Yeah, thank you." " Hope..." "A little insight to the movie." "Or at least we hope we helped you take a nap if you were sleepy." "Maybe you're asleep right now." "We can make subliminal suggestions." "Buy more DVD's or Blu-ray." "Thanks for listening, guys." " Appreciate it." " Thank you, guys." "Thanks for getting this little movie for your home theater." "Get out there." "Get out there and surf." " What do you doing watching TV?" " And if you live in Indiana the lakes are going off today." "If you need a river, you can dam the river then surf that." "Do you wanna follow a tanker?" "Oil tankers are going down in the gulf right now." " Yeah." " Pretty good ride." "And there's always snowboarding." "Hey, that's a thought." "Shakabrah." " Over and out." " See you, dudes." "Remember when we were talking about you leaving?" "That was great." "Remember when you were gonna go?" " We were gonna go..." " You should still go." "It's technical equipment." "I know what I'm doing." "I can unplug one of your little Hollywood devices." "The lighting thing, whatever you call that and then the microphone thing." "Go back to Hollywood." "Cody would never do this."