What’s the recipe for the best Western cartoon ever made?
First, start with a pirate, namely Captain Jack Sparrow. Then add a dose of “Star Wars” with George Lucas’ effects house Industrial Light & Magic. Next, reference some of the greatest films ever made, including “Chinatown” and “High Noon.” Finally, throw out just about everything Hollywood has ever learned about making animated features and do it your own way.
The result is Gore Verbinski’s “Rango,” just out on Blu-ray and DVD. The visually striking tale of an unlikely hero taking on the rogue mayor of a dried-up desert town parts with traditional animation techniques in several ways, not least because Verbinski oversaw its preproduction while making the latest installment of “Pirates of the Caribbean.” He used swashbuckling high jinks like giving pep talks to his animators while wearing a false mustache and speaking in outlandish accents.
Verbinski jettisoned the idea of recording actors one at a time in a booth. Instead, he gathered the full cast together for 20 days and had them act out each scene, complete with gestures and props, while boom microphones captured the dialog and handheld cameras documented the proceedings.
Animators then used the footage as a reference. Star Johnny Depp, who voices Rango, calls it an “emotion engine” — in contrast to the “motion engine” at the heart of most animation software.
Verbinski then called on one of the most storied visual effects outfits in cinema history, ILM, to do something it had never done before: animate a feature-length film.
“We didn’t have years of experience in feature animation,” says animation direction Hal Hickel, “so we also didn’t have years of baggage. There’s also a lot of crazy things people do because that’s how it’s always been done.”
While some of its animators had to re-think their creative processes, most of ILM’s innovations came about because Verbinski wanted to make “Rango” the same way he made any other film.
To that end, Hickel helped develop a system that allowed the director to preview “shots” from different perspectives that mimicked the effects of film camera lenses. Animators worked on scenes with notes about f-stops and other camera jargon.
The innovative “camera work” and offbeat art direction gives “Rango” a look that’s unusual in the typically fresh-scrubbed world of animation. The characters are dark and disheveled. The scenery seems slightly off-kilter yet looks real enough for Clint Eastwood to amble through town with his spurs clinking.
“There was a very tiny creative nucleus at the center of this film,” Hickel says. “For better or worse, you ended up with a really unique, quirkily odd film. Every character is dirty and messed up and sweaty. I’m really hoping that Gore’s production company has another one in the pipe.”