In the close - decade since the conclusion of his eponymic situation comedy , comedian Jerry Seinfeld come back to his stand - up funniness source and – periodic talk show appearances even so – has steered clear of the Hollywood spotlight . But , in fact , for the past four geezerhood , he has been gruelling at oeuvre on a film that marks his first foray into vivify features . " Bee Movie , " which hits theatre Nov. 2 , 2007 , is a computer - quicken comedy showcasing Seinfeld ’s idiosyncratic sense of humour . In this article , we ’ll traverse the picture ’s maturation from thought to block out .
As the writer , producer and star of " Bee Movie , " Seinfeld brings his singular comedic panache and vision to animated life sentence with the assistant of directors Simon J. Smith and Steve Hickner , phonation actors include Renée Zellweger , Matthew Broderick , Chris Rock , John Goodman , Sting , Oprah Winfrey and Ray Liotta , and several hundred artists , animators and other gang members .
It all start with an offhand commentary to Steven Spielberg , with whom Seinfeld was having dinner party . " Would n’t it be funny if they made a motion picture about bees and called it ' Bee Movie ' ? " Seinfeld mused . Spielberg thought it was actually a good estimation , call Jeffrey Katzenberg of DreamWorks on the maculation , and the next thing Seinfeld knew , he had a deal – and had to descend up with a movie to go with his title .
" There were many versions , probably two and a one-half year of different ideas and storey until we had one that we felt would act , " Seinfeld says . His final version – the 212th incarnation of the script – centers around an independent - mindedbeenamed Barry B. Benson who ventures outside the hive , where he devise a friendship with a florist shop ( Zellweger ) , come across that humans are stealing honey , and takes his outrage to the homage system , where he faces off against lawyer Layton T. Montgomery ( Goodman ) .
During the casting process , Seinfeld predict upon friend like Rock ( as amosquitoBarry meets on a windshield ) , Broderick ( as Barry ’s best protagonist , Adam ) and Patrick Warburton ( who play what Seinfeld calls " a little more belligerent and a little dumber " avatar of Puddy , his " Seinfeld " character ) . He hold convention by recording with each of them alternatively of editing together solo performance .
" As the writer , I know what we ’re going for , and it create things easy , " Seinfeld says . But coming fromTVand stand - up , he never could get used to the obtuse idea - to - execution process in animation . " The pace of it is very difficult , " he says . " You hint something and it could be week before you see it , so you have to recall what you said , and sometimes you forget . That occur a lot . "
For research , he visited a beekeeper – and got stick for his problem – but gained priceless cognition about bee flight patterns and social hierarchy . The filmmakers and artists also require field trips to apiary ( " bee farm " ) , studied hundreds of pic and spoke to bee expert . Among the odd facts they learned : If bee did n’t pollinate , the incidental imbalance of nature would get humanness to collapse within four years – and it take 17 bees to make one teaspoon ofhoney . The knowledge had an impact . Director Smith enunciate he felt guilty enough to stop eating the sweetened bee product . " We feel spoiled for those guys , " he says .
Next , we ’ll learn more about the " Bee Movie " directors and the production mental process .
“Bee Movie” Directorial Dilemmas
Directors Simon J. Smith and Steve Hickner , who worked together on the Universal Studios attractiveness " Shrek 4 - five hundred , " came to the project in July 2004 and hit it off with Seinfeld from the starting . " He ’s not wanted about where ideas come from , and we had some great banter with him , " Smith says . " There ’s a very in high spirits standard he play that he wanted to keep . The great thing about Jerry being the writer and manufacturer and star in it was that we could develop thing very quickly . We could rewrite something in an afternoon that would normally take six weeks . "
make Seinfeld hands - on and present – he often telecommuted fromNew York– try out invaluable , especially in the recording studio apartment . For the other actors , " having a performer who was bringing his A game contribute everyone ’s level up , and they ’d be bounce off each other , " Smith pronounce . " You ’d get the kind of performance you ’d normally get on a curing . The first six months was a learning curve for Jerry , but then he could just turn Barry on at the flick of a switch , and that made everybody go up a degree . "
Barry ’s Seinfeldian visual aspect and personality evolve organically , Smith say . " We shoot reference footage when we record the voices , and it came to a point where you begin seeing Jerry in Barry – it ’s just the way of life the character evolved . As Jerry started cause into the character , Jerry became Barry , and the animators helped coalesce the performance with the image . "
fittingly dressed in mordant and yellow , Barry is neither realistic nor completely conventionalize . " We wanted the design of the part to be somewhere in the middle , " Smith says . It accept upward of 800 invention to nail down his look . Renée Zellweger ’s florist character reference , Vanessa , posed dissimilar problems – accord to Smith , female aspect and forms are unmanageable to reproduce . But it was localize the tinybeeand human Vanessa in the same creation that proved catchy of all .
" Choreographing those scenes was one of the biggest challenge . You require a relationship to flourish and have intimacy , but you ca n’t have a two - injection . And you have to establish the relationship without having weirdcameraangles . "
ordered series problem also came into play in the design of the surroundings in the film . " You have two full man , the human humanity and the beehive world , and each had to have enough detail to balance each other out , " Smith says . Merging those worlds when bee stake outside the hive multiplied the difficulty factor .
" The bees are so airless to the television camera lens and they ’re flying through human space at 200 miles an hour , so to get the compositions right and adjust the camera was very hard , " Smith says . " There ’s one shot where you see the whole reversion of Central Park with bees flying through the kite . That chronological succession took nine month . "
On the next page , the motion-picture show ’s animation supervisor will tell us more about why that sequence took so long .
“Bee Movie” Animation Challenges
Supervising animator Marek Kochout explains the challenges of that sequence . " Just the sheer bit of characters in the shot was quite challenging , " he say . " Plus , you have to track them all and put them in group so you may control the delivery and the pealing and how each single character moves . We had to ensure the wings did n’t break apart through the bees ' backs because everything in the3 - Dworld has no physical limitation – if you move something it can kick the bucket through another object . So if you made the wing too big , they ’d crash through the organic structure . There was a fortune of double - checking to verify thebeesdidn’t pass through each other . "
And the difficulties increase when invigorate characters pertain or pick up an object . That , says Kochout , is " because they do n’t use up any forcible space , so they can go across through each other . You do it in layers and constantly go back and check . "
echo director Simon J. Smith , Kochout take apart the issue of scale that tested the creative person and vitaliser . " You ’ve find shots that look over the shoulder joint of this tiny little bee at a human fibre , so any movement he take in is magnified , he says . " There was quite a perspective challenge to it . If things in the foreground were small , you could n’t be broad with their movement . You had to verify to position the character in the right space so it was visually appealing as opposed to relying on physical science and where they would really be in that space . "
bugger off the faces right was another hurdle for the animators . " Facial animation is always slow because there ’s so much information in faces , " Kochout aver . The animators used stripped - down edition of the animated persona to quickly block out their ideas , using the full - featured characters later in the cognitive operation .
pattern for Barry and the other character were basically set by the time Kochout came alongside in February 2006 , but Barry needed a personality . " A lot of that came from Jerry himself , " Kochout says . " He use his bridge player a lot , so that went into Barry . He had great estimate and was great about giving notes on what the characters were cogitate , and that made it easy for us . He really thought stuff and nonsense through as far as how the joke was pose up . But every now and again it was a little painful – you ’d be nearly finished with the animation and he ’d say , ' That ’s not really funny , I have a sound approximation . ' That materialise a few time , but it was always for the better . "
Kochout and his team did observe bee for research , but they were instructed to take considerable indecorum in translating their movements to the screen . " Bees have a bulk large , highly strung sense to them , " he explains . Seinfeld and the directors " did n’t really need the bee to be too worm - like . They desire the movements to be smooth and the flying to be moreairplane - same , so they would bank and roll . There were quite a few remainder between our bees and the real humans . "
“Bee Movie” Step by Step
superintend energiser Marek Kochout , who supervised a group of 40 vitalizer ( seven to 10 of them put to work on a given succession at any one fourth dimension ) , delineate the character development unconscious process . " Once a character ’s design is sanction , it ’s present to the moulding department , and they make a3 - Dmodel that goes through more changes , " he says . " Then it ’s given to the rigging section , which puts the CG equivalent of a skeleton in the closet andmusclesinside of it . " The rig section decides how the example moves and tests it repeatedly .
Meanwhile , the sequences are storyboarded and timed out , so the crew knows what the shots will look like . The layout section run out the shots and setscameraangles . Then the animators block out the shot , get feedback from the conductor and shoot the sequence .
Next , the firing and essence section nail down color and add element like skunk and burst . " Once everyone is felicitous with it , the editors snip out a shape here and there and get the sequence put together , " Kochout says . When it ’s all put together , the composer adds the music .
Kochout , who work on " Over the Hedge , " " Shrek 2 , " and " Madagascar , " say that late technical developments made his line on " Bee Movie " a bit well-fixed . " It ’s a combining of bothhardwareandsoftware , " he says . " The machine – really immobile dual - processor computers with big presentation – allow us to do our employment a piddling agile . And the software is a little smart . "
Bee-fore and After
Seinfeld had no agenda for " Bee Movie " other than to make a curious movie and put his personal pestle on CG animation , but now that it ’s done , the family valet de chambre in him – he ’s the sire of three – is " really mad about it as a giving to kid , " his own in special . But in typical psychoneurotic fashion , he has one concern : " I hope they do n’t go up tobeesafter this . What I ’m worried about is a circumstances of kids see bees after the motion picture and trying to go pet them . "
While he admittedly did n’t mean much about bees before , Seinfeld state his opinion of them has changed " enormously " as a result of making the movie . " I have much more esteem for them now , " he say .
