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| | INTERVIEW WITH PETER CHUNG | | Well, THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK: DARK FURY is out and it's good. Great, even, loaded with brave ideas and fantastic imagery, along with more of everyone's favorite perma-escaped convict. Peter Chung, long known in the world of animation for his groundbreaking work on AEON FLUX and more recently known for his episode "Matriculated" included on THE ANIMATRIX, was brought on board to deliver this package. Deliver it he did. Take a look at this in-depth conversation with Chung, and then head out and give DARK FURY a look.
Interview was conducted by Scott Essman of Visionary Media for Universal Home Video.
ESSMAN: What in your background prior to THE ANIMATRIX and now, DARK FURY prepared you for this type of work?
CHUNG: Well, I was asked to work on THE ANIMATRIX because of my work on Aeon Flux, which is mostly what I’m known for. Aeon Flux was the first animated series produced in the US for adults that played in a late night-time slot that was a dramatic, non-humor based animation series. It’s an area of animation which interested me and which I think the public is more interested in today, largely because of the exposure to a lot of Japanese animation projects. And I think when they proposed this DARK FURY project, there actually weren’t a lot of people who had the experience to do this kind of venture.
ESSMAN: What was the first step when you got the gig to do DARK FURY? How did the producers at Universal Home Entertainment Productions explain to you what the project was going to comprise?
CHUNG: They told me that there was a movie that was just starting production at that point, called The Chronicles of Riddick, which is a sequel to a 2000 movie called Pitch Black. They wanted to do an animated episode which covered the story that takes place between the two movies, which would actually become a prequel to the new movie. It was bridging the gap in the story. Because I’d just worked on THE ANIMATRIX, I understood that very well, because THE ANIMATRIX had a similar purpose coming between THE MATRIX and MATRIX RELOADED.
ESSMAN: How did the project differ from what you had to accomplish with THE ANIMATRIX?
CHUNG: In the case of DARK FURY, I was given a script that had already been written and worked out by the people who were working on the feature, based on a story by David Twohy and a script by Brett Matthews. The story lent itself to the possibilities of doing something really cool with the animation because the story was placed in a very unusual environment. It took place on a spaceship that in a sense is an art museum in space which is very baroque and very mysterious. So that aspect of it makes you alert that it could be a great story line.
ESSMAN: How much of what Riddick encounters in DARK FURY had been outlined in the script?
CHUNG: In order for me to prepare, I was given a copy of the script to The Chronicles of Riddick and noticed immediately that the movie that was being planned was very different from Pitch Black. It was really expanding the whole universe, the type of environments, and the relationships among the characters. It would have been simple to just make the piece just an action-oriented episode, but it was very important to me to try to further explore the relationship between the characters of Riddick and Jack, plus explore Jack’s development between the way she is in Pitch Black and the way she is in The Chronicles of Riddick.
ESSMAN: How much input did you have on the final script?
CHUNG: Well, as far as the events in the story go, the script contained all of those. In fact the script was a lot longer, and one of the challenges was to try to cut it down to exactly 33 minutes. That’s what I do as director. I essentially do the cuts and try to streamline the whole story.
ESSMAN: How much description of the DARK FURY characters was in the script, and how much did you bring out in your designs?
CHUNG: I started designing right away while the script was still being revised. You knew, for example that the main characters had to look like the characters from Pitch Black. The events of DARK FURY happen immediately after Pitch Black, so I started looking at the film very closely and doing a lot of drawings of the characters of Riddick and Imam and Jack from Pitch Black and find ways to make them stylized in animation, and yet make them recognizable.
ESSMAN: When you were designing the three main ones, Riddick and Imam and Jack, were you adhering to a certain style that is your own unique approach?
CHUNG: Well, it’s hard to say I’m doing this film in my own style. It’s not like I make a conscious effort to draw in my own style. I did tend to, in this instance, play it a little more straight than I would with my own characters. Here I had live actors to reference, where most of my work is based on characters who are original.
ESSMAN: What about the fantasy characters? We hadn’t seen those before as they were all new.
CHUNG: I had a lot of fun designing them. And the character of Chillingsworth, the main villain, was the most difficult because I had so much potential freedom in terms of the way I could take her, and when you’re faced with a thousand different choices, it’s very difficult to nail down one thing. It’s much easier to base a design on something that exists where you have a model. In the case of Chillingsworth, it was very difficult to visually define just how young or old she would be. She needed to look old enough to have acquired vast wealth, but at the same time she would try to preserve her own youth as well, so that was a challenge.
ESSMAN: What about the different kind of alien characters that we see? Were they described in the script? For instance, the tentacled Shrill.
CHUNG: They were described, but I took certain elements from the descriptions, and I added on my own concepts. The Shrill was described as having tentacles, and in the script, actually, they were described as being quite hideous. But I took it another way and I tried to make them very elegant, and in a way, cute, partly because I thought it fit in with the theme of Chillingsworth being an art lover and since this battle which she stages is meant as a form of performance art for her pleasure. So I wanted to make the creatures like living works of art that an art lover would collect. In a way, I think the Shrills become even more mysterious as they are creatures that are so beautiful and yet so deadly.
ESSMAN: Was your design approach the same with the Brax character?
CHUNG: The Brax was basically described like it’s a giant bloodhound who tracks the escaped convicts from the ship by tracking their scent. My take on it was that it could be a creature who is re-purposed for that use. So I started with the idea that they had pieced it together from different parts mechanical and biological. It’s like a bloodhound machine with aspects to help it run faster and make it more efficient. I think it was the idea that they’d made it sort of like a patchwork, like a Frankenstein monster, which kind of makes them more perverse.
ESSMAN: How did you arrive at the different colors in the project, all of which were very striking?
CHUNG: We were given specific directions not to overlap in any way with the designs in The Chronicles of Riddick. And we were provided with guides from the upcoming movie, not as an example of what we should follow, but what we should avoid. There was some concern that the villain in DARK FURY might be interpreted to be the same type of villain that you were going to see in The Chronicles of Riddick. And the idea was that the Necromongers in The Chronicles of Riddick were going to be introduced in that movie. And so, for example, the Necromonger design is very dark and they wear a lot of black and the feeling is very Gothic. What I went for in DARK FURY was an environment that was very colorful. We needed to fit in with the theme of the story that Riddick thrives in darkness, so it’s a very luminous environment in the script which is an environment that he does not operate well within – it is more threatening to him. And so he needs to use the darkness, find the darkness in the ship, and uses it for his own ends. Thus, the light theme and the dark theme are where Riddick is the protagonist.
ESSMAN: As a director, when you’re planning this whole movie, does it start with your storyboard as far as the angles and the types of shots that you want?
CHUNG: Actually, no - it starts with the designs in my case. I’m involved in every aspect of DARK FURY--I’m designing and storyboarding and directing. I try to make the designs an intricate part of the storyboard, because good designs mean that I can accomplish a lot of storytelling in itself. Whenever possible, your work reflects a great deal about the characters. So a lot of the time I’m thinking about the staging while I’m designing a space.
ESSMAN: Once your designs are locked, then you move to storyboards?
CHUNG: Well, in this case, because of the schedule, I also had a couple of storyboard artists working. Robert Valley did a lot of the storyboards. And that stage is taking place at the same time as the designing, so it’s an overlapping process. One side, the design side, will provide input into the storyboard, but also the storyboard artist will provide input to the designer - it’s a collaborative effort. I think there needs to be as much coordination between these members of the team as possible to create a very cohesive and consistent overall piece of film.
ESSMAN: Once you’ve got the storyboard together, then I’m assuming in the storyboards that you’re designing all the shots, being that you’re the director, right?
CHUNG: Well, again, it’s a collaborative process. Sometimes I’ll ask for a certain way of something to be staged. In the case of storyboards, then I’m locked in myself. In the case of DARK FURY, I did a portion of the storyboard, and maybe a third of the sequences done by Robert Valley. Some of it I propose to the other artists, but they’re creative in their own right, and I select them for that reason. And when they come up with an idea which I think is great, then I go with that. Part of the reason that animation appeals to me is that in collaborative process - that the important, really talented people provide you with ideas that maybe you wouldn’t come up with on your own.
ESSMAN: From the storyboard, you created a full animatic for this movie. Discuss how that developed.
CHUNG: Normally what’s done is that we take the storyboards and then scan them into a computer and cut them together to determine the correct length of the scenes and where the camera should be. We try to get a sense of how the whole thing is flowing and how the whole thing feels on film, and whether or not we’re at the correct length overall. And in this case, we ended up working with this very experienced animatic editor, Kim Seong-Sik, who also actually provided the final compositing and final animation. And that’s important, because very often the people who work on the animatics are not involved in the animation process later on. I let him do his own pass at it where he can ignore the storyboard and just cut it, timing it the way he sees it. And then I look at it and it gives me a chance to view it very objectively.
ESSMAN: Was it your decision to integrate your crew members into many step of the process?
CHUNG: Yes. My efficiency is to work with people who have multiple skills. On my own projects, I’m writer, director, designer, storyboard artist and animator. On DARK FURY, for instance, Kim Seong-Sik was the animatic editor and art director, and was also somewhat the color stylist. Also, Eric Canete was a designer and storyboard artist. Ed Lee designed backgrounds and props, but he also did 3-D models. Robert Valley did storyboards, and he also animated. It’s very unusual in an animated production to have a storyboard artist also be an animator on it. But the reason why it’s important to me is because it increases the level of involvement of these artists and heightens their commitment. And very often somebody will storyboard something and they really have no idea how that’s going to end up on the screen later on, so they misinterpret it. Very often what happens is that, a storyboard artist will do a really beautiful polished storyboard, and then he’ll get the animator. The animator will actually produce animation which is not as rich and expressive and interesting as the storyboard was. And that should never, ever happen. Each stage in the animation filmmaking process should add to, never take away from the stage that occurred before it.
ESSMAN: What is your primary role in dealing with artists who have so many different functions?
CHUNG: To answer by example, Kim Seong-Sik was the animatic editor and in that capacity, he did what a traditional animation director does, which is cuing off the timing of the movie. And that’s what he did and that’s why he’s credited as the director. I would still go over his timing and make revisions to it, but it was based on his pass. And there’s just one reason: obviously I have to do that, because I’m involved in other aspects at that point. I was doing storyboarding and recording dialogue and helping to rewrite dialogue. Also, I am coordinating the rest of the scenes.
ESSMAN: Animation aficionados can tell that this movie not only is traditionally animated, but implemented some 3-D elements as well. How could you integrate 3-D with 2-D animation?
CHUNG: Well, the way the animated medium is evolving now, it’s actually taken for granted that you’ll be using computer-generated elements, particularly with a subject like DARK FURY, which is a classic story that takes place on a spaceship with alien creatures. It’s much more efficient to build these environments in 3-D. I believe that 3-D is particularly good at architecture and mechanical things and maybe less effective at some natural environments like a forest. DARK FURY involved working with a separate 3-D team who I worked with before on THE ANIMATRIX project. We gave them not only the background, but also the alien creatures. And the Shrills in particular needed to have very detailed and very fluid kind of motion to them, which to do in 2-D is very difficult and expensive. It was going to be faster to do them 3-D.
ESSMAN: Is the 3-D work happening simultaneously to the 2-D material?
CHUNG: Exactly. For scenes which integrate both 3-D and 2-D animated elements, I’ll block it out in terms of camera placement and character placement in 3-D with the 3-D artists using very rough 2-D and 3-D models that represent the CG characters. When that’s determined, when it’s animated to the point where we like the way it looks, those frames are printed out and gone over by the 2-D animation team. They place the 2-D elements in the sequence, and then it goes back to 3-D. It’s a back and forth process. Those scenes are the most time-consuming to do. What you see on the screen is very often cutting back forth between the 3-D animated picture and the 2-D animated picture.
ESSMAN: Was any other character besides the Shrill animated in 3-D?
CHUNG: Yes - the Brax was 3-D, and so were the Brax handlers. Those characters were done in 3-D part of the time, and then when there were just close ups on them, they’re just 2-D. Also, at the beginning of the story, the technicians working at control stations, and they’re in the chairs that are plugged in - those guys were 3-D.
ESSMAN: Do you find that the future of these types of projects is going to entail more and more 3-D? Or do you think it will stay divided between traditional and 3-D?
CHUNG: That’s going to depend on the subject matter of the project. For example, in ANIMATRIX, there were segments that were completely 3-D, and then there were some that were 100% 2-D, and still others that were both. And I think the question of whether you use 2-D or 3-D is going be a matter of who the director is, what he doing, and what the subject matter is. I think what we’re going to see is a wider range of both 2-D and 3-D.
ESSMAN: How about your personal preferences for the future? Do you want to work on projects that integrate elements of both, or do you want to always have a hand in 2-D? Also, do you see yourself working some day in all 3-D?
CHUNG: I do see myself some day working in all 3-D. One reason is that I haven’t done a lot of 3-D and it’s something new for me. I think it opens up a lot of possibilities which are not available in strictly 2-D animation. But there’s immediacy to doing 2-D animation. That’s why I wanted to be an animator. Working in 3-D can be more of an analytical, intellectual process. When you’re working through tools which can be cumbersome and have definite needs, you have to work through the art process via a computer program. When you work in 2-D, you’re very directly expressing your feelings through your art.
ESSMAN: Are you ultimately pleased with the final product of DARK FURY?
CHUNG: Yes, I’m very pleased with the way it turned out. I think it reflects a lot of effort by a lot of talented people. I feel very fortunate that I assembled a very, very good team of artists. I think that I was able to accomplish some of the strengths of classical animation with some of the cinematic approaches that the Japanese directors use. And I hope that it’s a blending of good elements from each. I think that concept was very appropriate for DARK FURY.
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