With the quirky animated feature ICE AGE currently taking the box office by storm, first time director Chris Wedge takes a moment to reflect on the obstacles, challenges, and joys of working on this chillingly funny CG feature.
Ray Romano, John Leguizamo and Denis Leary lend their voices to ICE AGE
© 2002 20th Century Fox
"I thought I had worked pretty hard in my life, but this project was pretty relentless," says Wedge. "It's like running a marathon. You have to pace yourself. We had to put in a lot of overtime. We worked very hard for 8 to 10 hours every day."
ICE AGE is the story of three friends, Sid the sloth (voiced by John Leguizamo), Manny the wooly mammoth (voiced by Ray Romano), and Diego the saber-toothed tiger (voiced by Denis Leary) who must return a human child to his father in the face of the coming ice age. Before the animated feature made its way onto the big screen, however, it spent a year and a half in story development and three years in production. But beyond the time it took to develop the movie as a whole was the fact that this was the first feature project that Wedge had taken on as director.
Creating an animated movie about the ice age and creating characters that were appropriate for that time period posed a challenge for Wedge and his crew. The director tried to maintain as much historical accuracy as possible, but found himself taking a fair amount of creative license as well.
Manfred races to rescue Diego from a perilous situation in ICE AGE
© 2002 20th Century Fox
"We did a lot of research and I felt a responsibility to portray some historical truth," says Wedge. "We talked to other people. We made a lot of [trips to] the Museum of Natural History and disappointedly for me the Ice Age, although it occurred somewhere between 10 and 30 thousand years ago, looked a lot like the world does today. I expected it to look a lot more alien. I expected to find fossils and leaves and trees that looked [weirder].
"When you open up [a] Mammoth's stomach you find clover and grass the same that it is today. But the animals did look different in many ways. Ultimately we took a lot of creative license, but most of the animals are based on things that were there. I have to say as far as the animals go we were very faithful to what existed then. I don't know if there [were] any saber tooth squirrel[s]... that's just a joke."
Along with taking a creative license on the animals, Wedge also took license with the film's human beings.
"The movie takes place 16, 20 thousand years ago and Neanderthals were long gone," says Wedge. "As far as I understand, these were people like us without walkmans and televisions. They had spears [instead]."
In addition to altering both the animals and humans to fit the theme of the feature, Wedge manipulated the way graphics were used to animate the movie.
Meet the herd of ICE AGE: (L-R) Diego the saber-toothed tiger; Sid the sloth; and Manfred the woolly mammoth
© 2002 20th Century Fox
"We take a scientific approach to simulate the way that light works within the world," says Wedge. "We actually traced light rays through a scene from a wide source as the interactive objects reflect back to us. It's called the simulation technique and it's different from other computer rendering techniques in that it is more photographic and less graphic. We act more like cinematographers, [while] some of our colleagues act more like painters. We do very complex and subtle shadows with multiple light sources or even the light that comes off of one object and illuminates another."
After working on ICE AGE for over three years, Wedge is anxious for the public to finally see the movie. He hopes that audiences have fun and feel every emotion that comes across onscreen.
"I hope [audiences] have just a completely rewarding movie experience because we have tried to incorporate every emotion you can feel in a movie into this one," says Wedge. "We were very careful when we designed it to make sure that parents felt comfortable watching it with their kids. I am just hoping they come off feeling like they have had fun. [There's] a pretty clear message at the heart of it, that despite our differences there are common bonds that we find through sacrifices and heroism and respect."
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