Director Jill Culton on the Evolution of 'Abominable,'
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HOME > FILM > PRODUCTION OCTOBER 11, 2019 1:00AM PT Director Jill Culton on the Evolution of ‘Abominable,’ Working With Pearl Studio By TERRY FLORES CREDIT: COURTESY OF DREAMWORKS ANIMATION It took several years, but writer-director Jill Culton has inally seen her animated ilm “Abominable” come to the big screen, and in a big way. The DreamWorks Animation-Pearl Studio production led the domestic box oice with $21 million in its opening weekend. As of Oct. 8, it has taken in nearly $80 million worldwide, and critics have sung its praises. The longtime animator irst started the project at DWA seven years ago, but left it for awhile after the company experienced exec changes and was sold. Then, not that long ago, Culton was asked to come back on to see it to fruition. Culton, who will be among the keynote speakers at the 2019 View Conference Oct. 21-25 in Turin, Italy, spoke with Variety about her upcoming View presentation and about her journey to inish the story of a girl who learns to move past the grief of losing her father by helping a lost yeti return to its home on Mount EverePstr.ivacy Jennifer Aniston - Full Power of Women Speech Variety: What will you be speaking about at the View Conference? Jill Culton: Luckily, they’re showing the movie at the conference right before the conference starts as part of the ilm festival. And so, knowing that, I’m going to show some parts of the movie, but I’m also going to talk about the origins of the idea and how I came up with the story. That’s probably the most common question I get asked. For me, this has been a great movie because I got a little bit of a blank canvas. The studio wanted a yeti movie, and I got to come up with the rest. I’ll give the backstory of why I came up with this story and how, in this kind of storytelling, you put a lot of your own inluences from your own life into it. Or you pull inspiration from your own life, and how that gives your stories more of an authentic grounding. I’m going to walk through the movie that way. I also want to highlight some of the music. There was so much that I couldn’t say [earlier this year] because the movie hadn’t come out yet. I couldn’t show clips and things. And now, I want to show a little bit of that, like the orchestration, which was such a big part . We recorded at this old cathedral, and I’m going to share some footage from that. I’m going to talk about the magic [in the movie] and how our great team came up with that technically. Variety: Is this your irst time speaking at VIEW Conference? Culton: It is the irst time I’m speaking, and I’m really excited because [conference director Maria Elena Gutierrez] had contacted me and said, “We have Brad Bird, and we have Peter Ramsey, and we have Dean [DeBlois]. But we have no women on board.” And I was like, “Sign me up. I’ll do it.” I’m literally, right now, putting my thoughts together a little bit. I’m anxious about that, but I’m also super excited to go and just be a part of it all. I have heard such great things, so I’m thrilled. Variety: “Abominable has been kind of a long process for you. You started on it, then you were away, and then you were back with it. How much did the story change from the irst to what you inally came up with? Culton: I wrote the movie about seven years ago, and the core of the movie was always about taking Everest [the yeti] back home. Then we went through a lot of studio head changes. When the dust kind of settled, they said, “Can you come back and do this movie in 18 months?” Which is very quick for animation. And so, I jumped at the chance because I love the movie, and it’s still the core story of a journey across China. [ThPerivacy supporting characters of ] Jin and Peng were added in there. Also I aged [main character] Yi up a little bit, and that was for a lot of reasons. I wanted her to be able to work and earn some money, and you can’t do that in China if you’re not 16. And Jin [aged up as well]; they could not travel across China unaccompanied unless he was 18. Then there were a few practical reasons why we aged the kids up. It all worked out for a better story because they ended up being teens that are kind of on the verge of adulthood, and I think that gave the story so much more to grapple with and deal with. The story evolved a little bit, but honestly it didn’t change that much from the beginning, from the original: The Buddha’s in there, and the South Mountain hike, and the Yellow Mountains, and getting Everest back, and the magic ability to control nature. All of it was in the original version seven years ago. So it was actually a delight to come back and recapture all that because it felt like a story that wanted to be told. Variety: Have you actually taken the journey across China yourself? Did you go to all those places? Culton: I have not. I wish I could go to all those places. I wish I could go to the Himalayas. But I really started with research, writing with a map on the wall. I knew that I wanted to end up in the Himalayas, and I knew that I wanted it set in China because it’s bordering that. And of course we were working with Pearl Studio, so it was a perfect it. Pearl is in Shanghai, so I picked Shanghai as the inspiration for the city [where the characters start their journey]. It’s not exactly Shanghai, but knowing that it’s based on Shanghai, I knew we could plot a logical journey all the way across to the Himalayas. I kept stumbling upon these amazing places in China just by doing research. And I’d be like, “How come nobody knows about this place?” And then I’d research the next place. “How come nobody knows about this place? I have to set something here.” From the Western perspective, you think of China as full of big cities. And you think of the Great Wall and the Potala Palace, but China’s very diverse. It’s got so many different landscapes. It’s got amazing things like the [Leshan] Buddha, like the Yellow Mountains and the stairways; all those ancient stairways, and no one really knows who carved them. I fell in love with the landscape and I actually started deciding on places that I wanted to have that would be setpieces. We have gone to China quite a few times, and we’ve gone to the Li River, which was amazing. And we’ve spent time in Shanghai. I hope after this movie, they make an “Abominable” tour, and I will give that tour, if I can. Variety: Talk about your collaboration with Pearl studios. How did that work? Culton: Peilin Chou is the chief creative oicer of Pearl, and Margie Cohn is our president over at DreamWorks. When we met for any story thing, to review locations, to go over screening notes, any of that, they were both in the room. It really did feel like a partnership. One beneit we had was that the artists that were working at Pearl were in Shanghai. So they designed the city, which our whole irst act is in. There was no way that, from a Western perspective, we could do enough research that could give you the details of a city like that, and give you the spiritual feeling like you’re in China. So, they designed most of the city. They designed the apartments. Again, it’s not even just the look of it, it’s the feel of the whole thing. We relied on them for etiquette and behavior. When we were getting into animation, we would show them the blocking and they would say, “Oh no, no, no. Yi can’t turn her back on her grandma like that. That’s very disrespectful.” Because I’m setting something in China with a mainly Chinese cast and it’s the irst CG feature ilm to highlight that, as a ilmmaker I absolutely wanted to do it right. And I wanted to make sure that not only to audiences around the world, but to those in China especially, that there was nothing in the movie that would make them go, “Oh, a Western company did this.” So we relied on our partners at Pearl. Privacy We would hand stuff back and forth constantly. They would help us with line work; they helped us with color keys. We would constantly send stuff back and forth, or talk to them whenever possible. A lot of it was through email. But it really did feel like we had a second unit that was working side by side with us. The people at Pearl embraced this movie so much and they have promoted it everywhere in China. They’re very proud of this movie. Variety: Talk about the art direction and production design. Culton: Max Boas is our production designer and Nico Marlet is our character designer.