Throughout the month July you have accompanied me through my LA adventure via my animation post, story artist post and of course my voice over post. 🙂 In the following weeks I will continue to share with you my experiences while I was at the DisneyToon Studios and will also share with you my movie review of Disney’s Planes. While I was at the DisneyToons studios, I had the opportunity to screen the completed movie. To my shock and amazement, the movie was introduce by director Klay Hall & producer Traci Balthazor-Flynn, who informed the attendees that we were the first audience to see the completed film outside Disney’s executives, how cool was that! 🙂 If that wasn’t enough, after the screening Mr. Hall and Ms. Balthazor-Flynn took time from their busy schedule to spend sometime sharing with us anecdotes from the creation of Planes, today I will tell you about that experience.
A little bit about Klay Hall:
Mr. Hall was born in Burbank, Calif. Mentored by several of Disney’s legendary “nine old men,” including Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Marc Davis and Ken Anderson, he received a Disney Scholarship to the California Institute of the Arts character animation program. Immediately upon graduation from CalArts, he was hired by The Walt Disney Studios to work on the featurette “Sport Goofy.” He subsequently joined Amblin Entertainment’s animated television series “Family Dog.”
A two-time Emmy® nominee for his work on the hit animated television series “King of the Hill,” Hall also directed the popular “Natural Born Kissers” episode of “The Simpsons.” His additional television animation credits include “Father of the Pride” as supervising director and “A Wish for Wings That Work” as directing animator. In addition, he worked on the Rolling Stones’ music video “Harlem Shuffle.”
Hall returned to The Walt Disney Studios to direct “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure” for Disneytoon Studios, a division of Walt Disney Animation Studios under the creative leadership of John Lasseter.
A lifelong aviation enthusiast, Hall is from an illustrious line of flyers and began drawing airplanes at an early age. His father and grandfather were both aviators, the former serving as a pilot in the Navy. Hall has flown in dozens of aircraft from World War II bombers to Vietnam-era Huey helicopters. He is also an ex-Motocross racer and still enjoys riding in his free time.
Hall resides in Los Angeles with his wife and two sons.
A little bit about Traci Balthazor-Flynn:
Ms.Balthazor-Flynn was born and raised in Southern California. Her early career in the entertainment industry began on the creative side as a background painter at Sony Pictures where she worked on many Saturday morning cartoons including “Extreme Ghostbusters.” She then segued into a management role on the studio’s CG productions including the popular animated television series “Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles.”
From there, Balthazor-Flynn was recruited by the Walt Disney Studios where she took on her first role as a digital production manager overseeing a team of technical directors and CG artists on such animated features as “Return to Never Land,” “Bambi II” and “The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning.”
As she took on more responsibility, Balthazor-Flynn quickly rose through the executive ranks to support production for Disneytoon Studios, a part of Walt Disney Animation Studios under the creative leadership of John Lasseter. As director of production, Balthazor-Flynn was part of the team who helped launch the hit Disney Fairies film franchise. She has been instrumental in helping drive the expansion of Disneytoon Studios.
Balthazor-Flynn lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons.
Now that you know more about both Mr. Hall and Ms. Balthazor-Flynn, I can tell you more about their collaboration and research to make Planes possible. First of all, I learned that Klay’s family life is deeply intertwined, both his grandfather and father flew planes. As a matter of fact Klay’s father was in the Navy and the character of Skipper is homage to his grandfather. The creation of Planes came to be after a conversation with Jeffrey Howard and John Lasseter, Klay wanted to make a movie about trains, he loves trains! Instead of making a movie about trains, the decision was made to create Planes. Planes creators took on the experiences learned from the creation of the world of Cars, which took 10 years to develop, but still creating a unique film that is both for kids and adults alike.
Planes had to be as accurate as possible, to make this possible, a lot of research went into each single concept of the movie. From the planes to the landscape, many hours were spent making sure that everything would fit into the individual areas the movie will be covering. Navy commanders were actually invited to screen an early version of Planes to offer advice on the movie. As a matter of fact both Klay and Tracy flew to the USS Carl Vinson, where they spend a couple of days with the men and women onboard, first-hand knowledge helped bring additional authenticity to movie. One thing that was a constant theme throughout the conversation was, to make Planes believable: if I a real plane couldn’t move in a certain way, the planes in the movie couldn’t do it either.
Klay, Traci & their team did such a tremendous job on this movie, watch for many references to what was learned during the movie. I promise that I would not give anything important away, but if you are a Top Gun fan be sure to look for Bravo & Echo! 😉 Also look for cypress trees shaped like propellers, the Statue of Liberty and piston skull and wrench crossbones for the Jolly Wrenches Squandron.
Having seen just a tiny part of what takes to bring a movie like Planes come to life, my respect goes to all that invested their passion into it. Thank you to Klay and Traci for taking the time to sit down with us!
Next stop in our adventures in L.A, I will share with you my interview with Teri Hatcher, who voiced of “Dottie”, followed by my Planes movie review. ‘Till next time!
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Synopsis: From above the world of “Cars” comes “Disney’s Planes,” an action-packed 3D animated comedy adventure featuring Dusty (voice of Dane Cook), a plane with dreams of competing as a high-flying air racer. But Dusty’s not exactly built for racing—and he happens to be afraid of heights. So he turns to a seasoned naval aviator who helps Dusty qualify to take on the defending champ of the race circuit. Dusty’s courage is put to the ultimate test as he aims to reach heights he never dreamed possible, giving a spellbound world the inspiration to soar. “Disney’s Planes” takes off in theaters on Aug. 9, 2013.
For more information, check out Disney.com/Planes, like us on Facebook: facebook.com/DisneyPlanes and follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/DisneyPictures.
Disclosure: I was provided with an all expense paid trip to L.A to facilitate the review of Monsters University and Planes, no additional compensation was received. I was provided with the information in this post by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.