As a filmmaker, imagine what you could do if you had the ability to change anything about a picture at any given time during post. You could tweak everything. Camera angles, lighting, environments, or even add or remove characters. That’s exactly what editor Tim Mertens experienced on Walt Disney Animation Studios’ new animated film Big Hero 6.
The story, directed by Don Hall (Winnie the Pooh) and Chris Williams (Bolt), pairs a huggable healthcare companion robot named Baymax (Scott Adsit) with Hiro (Ryan Potter), a fourteen-year-old whiz kid in an astonishing journey of science, loss, and friendship. It’s this animated world that gives creatives the freedom to explore storytelling in a unique way. “The ability to change elements so fast is what makes animation very different compared to live-action. We’re able to adapt along the way and really discover what’s happening within the story and see a character’s development,” says Mertens.
For Big Hero 6, the team, which included executive producer John Lasseter, took on their largest visual spectacle yet, especially in terms of computations. Helping galvanize the backbone to the narrative, Mertens worked tirelessly with the directors to meet the release date. “In comparison to Tangled and Wreck-it Ralph, [which Mertens also edited]this film was especially challenging. It was difficult due to the limited amount of time we had for changes. However, I worked with Chris on Bolt and Don before, so having such a trust and understanding with each about their wants and needs for the film really helped the process,” explains Mertens.
One of first things they set out to do was find the story’s heart. “It’s something that we strive to create in all our Disney films,” says Mertens. “You can create movies that are funny, but I think finding the heart and building the pieces around that is something we do so well. With Big Hero 6, the relationship between Hiro and Baymax is definitely where the heart lies.” The success of the last five Disney animated features has been due to the openness and collaboration between producers, directors, editors, and other creatives, all of whom use the script as their foundation. “We all get into a room together and talk about what’s happening in the entire film. Even before preproduction stages, we’ll talk about what we would like to see happen or what we think the story’s missing,” explains Mertens. “John has helped us to build an open collaboration at Disney. We are always pushing the boundaries of how far we can go. It’s both a blessing and a curse that we can modify things so much with animation, but in the end, we know the many hours spent editing are going to make the film that much better.”
In those early stages, they start to shape the story and the characters as they review each reel – which characters are comical, how they interact with each other, and the overall narrative that’s developing. As an editor, Mertens works with very simple visuals called animatics, which are basically animated storyboards. When a storyboarded scene is approved, it goes to Rob Dressel (director of cinematography layout) who will work with them on picking camera angles, shots, and moves before turning the scene over to Zach Parrish, head of animation, and his team, who will then create the performances that we see on screen. Animation will continue to work with editorial as they move forward in their process. “Zach and his team are constantly revising and fine-tuning things to make the animation as fluid as possible,” says Mertens. “We are always in communication and figuring out what is best for each and every scene as we move along.”
Creating likeable characters is important to any story, and with Baymax, the team got there with simplicity. “We didn’t have to do a lot with him in order to get the audience’s attention. If you think about it, all he does is inflate and blink his eyes and you’re immediately engaged,” notes Mertens. “One of our struggles was making sure we didn’t humanize him too much. He is a learning robot, and you can see that. In one particular scene, Baymax and Hiro are sitting on top of the turbine above San Fransokyo, and Baymax starts to rock his feet back and forth, mimicking Hiro, but we made sure he didn’t do or say things that made him feel too human.”
The plot is based on a Marvel comic book of the same name, but the Disney team made the story their own. It follows Hiro, Baymax, and a group of science aficionados (GoGo, Honey Lemon, Wasabi, and Fred) as they try to overcome Yokai, a mysterious masked man who has stolen Hiro’s microbots, making him very powerful. Hiro gives each of his science buff friends a power that matches their own identity, forming Big Hero 6, a group of nerds turned superheroes. “Creating their arcs was the hardest thing in this film. We have a lot of characters who needed screen time so it became important to figure out what mattered most,” says Mertens. What they found out early on during a scene where Baymax flies over San Fransokyo was that the relationship between Baymax and Hiro was what stood out most. “In that wonderful scene on top of the wind turbine after flying through San Fransokyo, for a long time, we actually had all the Big Hero 6 members present and were planning their attack. We discovered that it was better to have a Baymax and Hiro moment alone instead, and started to find more places we could do the same. It goes back to the heart of the story and putting these two on screen as much as possible,” says Mertens.
Besides the characters’ allotted time on screen, Mertens also had to weigh Hiro’s anguish after the loss of his brother, Tadashi. “When I first came on the film, there wasn’t enough time invested in the grief of Hiro’s loss. We ended up adding more screen time so there was believability in what he was going through emotionally,” mentions Mertens. To help edit situations like these, he likes to watch the entire film whenever possible. “It’s the one thing I try to get everyone to do on a regular basis. I want to make sure we are focused on the bigger picture and not missing something,” Mertens explains.
For the climatic fight scene, Mertens approached it from a storytelling standpoint first and foremost. “We wanted to make sure each character had some sort of an arc if you will, and got to show off their superpowers and be successful with them. Once we got the foundation of the superheroes down, we were able to build from there,” says Mertens. “Visually there’s a lot going on. We have our antagonist, Yokai, destroying a glass building owned by tech guru Alistair Krei, through a time portal while Big Hero 6 is trying to stop him. We needed to make sure our audience was able to hear the dialogue and not have their attention turned away by what was going in the background. It was a challenge, but once we got all the exposition of the characters out front, we could go as far with the visuals as we needed to get.”
Mertens wanted to be bold with Big Hero 6. Given such freedoms with the editing of the film, he mentioned how great it was to have guys like Zach Parrish, Rob Dressel, the directors, and the rest of the team in the room with him. “We wanted to tell a great story, but still make something that was very cool – something Marvel worthy, and I think we accomplished that. It’s what I’m most proud of with this film.”
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