#i130

When you first signed on to do the show, did you ever imagine that you’d be working on such complex storylines as the recent Umbara story arc?

The short answer is “No.” This is insane! Not only to be involved in a show that’s gotten so big, so deep, and so gratifying to watch as a fan, but also to be involved in the Umbara arc is striking in a lot of ways. One of them is the involvement of Walter Murch, whose work with George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola includes THX-1138 and Apocalypse Now. He is very exacting, very thoughtful, and has a unique directorial mind. Despite all the fun things that I get to do on the show, to be directed by Walter for episodes like this is a whole different level from anything I’ve been involved with. I can hardly believe it. As I was watching it up on the screen at Skywalker Ranch I was amazed. It’s really knockout stuff.

When you first saw those scripts, can you remember your initial thoughts?

My initial thoughts were Oh, boy! Here’s another clone arc! It’s always very challenging and interesting, and a lot of fun. As we got into it, and as we marched across the dark planet of Umbara, with a Jedi general who has strategies and methods that are not in line with what the clones are used to, I realized that we had something here that we’ve never seen before.

To spend four episodes on this planet, trying to fight our way out and trying to find how to get along with this general, was really rather difficult for me. With the level of personal involvement I feel with these clones, to be sent into this story with this despicable character actually bothered me. It’s something I’d never seen before in this show and it was not an easy thing to bring to the surface, but once it got out there, it became pretty dramatic!

So how did you overcome those feelings?

The only way to overcome them is to fully realize them, and that’s really what we did in this show. This story and the performances don’t pull any punches. You see Rex pretty much lose it at one point, which I’ve never seen before. You see clones that come into conflict with their general in a way you’ve never seen, and the only way to exorcise that is to bring it all out and bring it to life. This is more like a war film and really has some interesting issues involved in terms of who the clones are, what the war is, how they deal with the difficult situation and how the war is fought.

Rex is incredibly popular with the younger fans (see page 19). Was there ever any concern whether they would be okay dealing with such dark themes?

This is not a show that I think is written with just kids in mind. I think this is a story that George Lucas wants to put out there, and most of it appeals to kids, but a lot of it appeals to adults and deals with issues that are in the adult world.

This story is predestined to play out in a way that everybody already understands in Episode III. The fans who know and love this series know what’s coming. I think it’s something you can expect to manifest itself more and more as we get closer to Episode III with our television series. With the television format and the length of the series, we’re able to portray it with depth and reality, and with a sense of humor and humanity that adds so much to the epic storyline of this saga.

How important do you think Season One’s “Rookies” was in putting the clones to the forefront for episodes like these?

To my mind, that was really the first big experiment: whether we could throw an entire storyline to these clones, who in the feature films were not really presented with distinct personalities or any sort of differentiation. It was a really cool creative risk to step out and do that and I think most people will agree that it really paid off. It showed that these guys were interesting and different. We can always go back to the clones because actually, they have a lot to do with what’s interesting about this whole conflict. What happens to the humans that are thrown into this war to fight against droids? These guys are intelligent, they’re flexible, they have a sense of humor and you love them because of it! They’re able to adapt and think, and to attack their problems and solve them as humans facing great odds, and a great war. This comes in the face of the manipulation that they’re really only beginning to become aware of and, in this case, perhaps even against one of their own commanders.

The humanity of the clones makes what happens in Revenge of the Sith even more tragic and poignant.

Absolutely. That’s the thing that’s killing me: I want to know how this plays out for Rex! He’s Anakin’s right hand man; he’s there for him! What happens to Rex? I want to know what happens to Ventress, and to Ahsoka, for goodness sake! But for me, it’s about what happens to Rex. I’ve heard that the finale’s been discussed, but to my knowledge, it hasn’t been decided yet. But then again, I’m pretty far down the command chain!

How important is the writing in separating the various clone characters?

The differentiation comes from the really marvelous writing on this show—that’s ultimately my guide in separating the fellows and portraying their distinctness clearly. I don’t know all the writers, but that ultimately is the compass for me. The bedrock of any good show, whether it’s dramatic or comedic, is the writer, and it’s often an unsung position or part of the whole project. But you can’t have a good show without good writing: I don’t care how good the rest of it is. We’ve got great writers and I rely on them every episode!

When you’re working with (supervising director) Dave Filoni, what sort of direction does he give you?

Dave’s very clear. He knows the story and the clones. He’s an ultra Star Wars nerd, and deeply involved with this entire universe. He knows what he’s talking about. Working under him is easy, because he knows what he wants. That’s ultimately what you need as a voice actor—a good script and a director who knows what they want. We get a lock on that right up front and we pretty much go straight through recording these days.

Doesn’t that get confusing?

It used to, but now we’re used to setting the characters. We have a little method for setting their status, their degree of obedience, their age and all these other things so that I can flip back and forth with just a quick little note I make next to their name on the side of the script. I don’t get asked to do something like this ever. From a voice actor’s standpoint, it’s a very unique project.

Do you think there can be more stories like the Umbara arc?

Yes there can, and there will. I have it on good authority. Bring in the drop-ship and let’s go!

Dee Bradley Baker on why kids can’t get enough of Captain Rex!

Can you describe the role of Animation Supervisor and what the job entails?

We have three studios working for us currently, so basically every studio submits their shots to me on a daily basis. We’re working on multiple episodes at any given time, and I review these shots—around 80 to 100 of them each day—and I make notes on them. There are also many times where I will record myself, as sometimes this is the easiest way to get across my thoughts on the performance.

There’s also a lot of work that is done upfront, earlier in the design process of the episode. From the start of the show, the assets are created. These are modeled, both in-house and overseas from the amazing designs on the show. I’ll give feedback on these and make sure that the characters can move properly. We also have rigging dailies to take a look at the upcoming characters in the episodes. This is to make sure that they meet the deformation and motion requirements that are necessary for the show. Sometimes a still image can look good, but we have some really crazy designs and outfits—plus the armor of the clone troopers—so you have to make sure that it all works onscreen.

You started working on The Clone Wars at the end of Season Three. What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced so far on the show?

With every episode we’re creating new characters, new locations, and new designs—so each and every show has its own special set of challenges. Obviously, we have our main characters: Anakin, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan and so on, but with different story arcs we also get to delve into other characters that people haven’t seen in the Star Wars universe yet. It’s a lot of work creating those characters on an episodic basis, and making sure the character stays consistent across our three animation studios.

Which is the bigger challenge on the show: creating a new character or animating an existing one?

To me, it’s creating a new character. Occasionally, due to different production and scheduling things, we have different studios animate a new character. That’s a big challenge, because there’s a lot of different ways to animate a character. A really great example of that was Pong Krell in the Umbara quadrilogy. He was created across two different studios, with each doing two episodes. A lot of my job is trying to make sure that we maintain a complete character with all the subtle characteristics intact.

Speaking of characteristics, is it difficult to make sure all the clones in the show are different?

The challenge is finding their different personalities. The upcoming arc on Umbara is mainly about clones. Obviously, they all look the same, so trying to make sure the audience could tell them apart by both their body language and facial expressions was a big challenge. Some clones would be more questioning, so I’d have their inner eyebrows up just a little bit, just to kind of get that subtle nuance across that this is the one that’s questioning the orders. There might have been another who is angry about what’s going on, so maybe his brows were down a bit more, his lower lids up slightly more; just subtle little things like that.

Do you have a favorite character?

I tend to like the villains, just because they can really chew up scenery; you can be a little more aggressive with them, have little jaw-rolls here and there and little nuances in the face. It might be a facial tic like we had with Osi Sobeck in “The Citadel.” Whenever he spoke to Count Dooku, we gave him a little bit of an eye-twitch to show how nervous he was. With villains, you can push them probably about 20 percent more than what you can do with your heroes.

You brought Chewbacca into the show —are there any other classic characters you’d like to see?

We just got to do Ackbar in “Water War,” which was really cool. To see him as his younger self, commanding an army in the field was really fun, and to be able to see him mentor Lee-Char was great.

I liked seeing Tarkin come back; it gave the audience a glimpse of what he was like when he was young. As we keep going through Season Four, I’m sure you’ll start to see some more classic characters that have been brought back, but I’ll just wait for those to surprise you as they come!

THE CHEWBACCA CHALLENGE

Keith Kellogg reveals how Chewbacca was brought into The Clone Wars.

“When we introduced Chewbacca to the show, it was the first time the world had ever seen Chewbacca being performed by somebody else. [Original Chewbacca actor] Peter Mayhew was really heavily involved in our recreation of the character and he gave us subtle ideas of how Chewbacca should behave. Peter is the only person to have ever portrayed Chewbacca, and we tried to make sure we were true to his vision. We made sure we incorporated the fact he’s not as aggressive as some of the other Wookiees, and he’s a little more curious, and that he has the movie-Chewbacca’s little bow-leggedness. Hearing all that from Peter’s perspective helped us to bring that character to life.

“There was also a technological advancement because we had moving fur for the first time. Chewbacca was an incredibly heavy character to animate; the animators struggled a bit at first, because of how dense he was, but we came up with ways we could help with that.”

How has it been working with some of the guest directors?

There have been some really big names, for sure. Duwayne Dunham’s episode was an incredibly challenging thing to do because we were going underwater for a three-episode arc. We had to create all-new environments and the characters had to be constantly treading water and moving. I chose a lot of the underwater fight scenes from Thunderball, the James Bond movie, as reference for the animation studios to look at, and I’d constantly be sending them clips of other things. Reference is always the key. Duwayne also pushed us on the amount of characters that we use, and we’ll be seeing a lot more of that in Season Four. We’ve started using Massive at some of the studios, which is a crowd software package, and we’ll be using more of that and fleshing out the universe. It all adds to that level of realism.

Another guest director was Walter Murch, who worked on the Umbara arc. Everybody around the studio was obviously really happy he was here and learned a great deal from him. He’s got so much experience. You can really see his camera-work and all the details in the Umbara arc; you feel like you’re down in the actual trenches, fighting alongside the clones.

When you’re working, do you study the actors at all, and how closely do you work with the voice actors?

One thing I’ve always found to be a really big help in animation is filming the actual ADR [Additional Dialogue Recording] sessions of the actors. You can see what the actors were thinking and get an idea of what their emotions were when they recorded the scenes. In studying the performance, you always find little things that you can bring out that take the performance to another level.

Some of our animators don’t actually speak English, and it’s a real challenge for them to animate lip-sync. So to actually be able to show when the mouth is opening and closing, and what the different shapes are, helps them a great deal.

Would you say that the animation is stylized or is it striving to be more real?

It’s a stylized realism. We’re definitely more realistic than a lot of animated shows are, but we do still have a specific style that we’re trying to hit. We have a very angular kind of design and I try to emphasize that angularity a little bit. Making sure that we have really strong poses is a big deal, especially when lightsabers are blocking blasters. We definitely are stylized, but there is also a high level of realism.

As the show advances, can you tell me what you think is the next step in animation?

In any animated show, sometimes there can be little things which draw you out of the story—for instance, if a walk looks a little stilted or you suddenly realize that something doesn’t look quite right. My biggest goal was to make sure that none of those things appeared on-screen. The second task I wanted to accomplish was really pushing both the facial performances as well as the acting in order to bring a new level of animation to The Clone Wars.

Also, we have so many different kinds of characters and a lot of them walked the same and did similar things, so, later on in the season, you’ll see that different species will start to have a little bit of a different walk and different gait. We’ve tried to give them some personality through that.

What excites you about the future of the show?

Our biggest thing with The Clone Wars is just to try and keep pushing and see how far we can go. Both Joel Aron, the CG supervisor, and myself, really want to push the show to a place it hasn’t been and push television animation further. We want to show that even if you don’t have an incredibly huge budget, you can still make something really amazing and blow people’s socks off.

On our show, there’s a whole lot of drama, which is something you don’t see in many other animated shows. We are starting to portray very real situations and trying to make sure that the acting looks as real as possible. We’re trying to take TV animation to the next level and my goal was to try and do feature animation every week on a TV schedule. This season, you’ll start to be able to see everything that we’ve been pushing for.

GETTING ANIMATED

Keith Kellogg discusses what made him want to get into animation.