interview with sharktale cast

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Will Smith, Angelina Jolie, Robert De Niro and Jeffrey Katzenberg: 'Shark Tale'
David Stratton talks to Will Smith, Angelina Jolie, Robert De Niro and Jeffrey Katzenberg at the Venice Film Festival about the animated feature film 'Shark Tale'.

David Stratton: I love Jack Black's vegetarian shark. We caught up with DreamWorks animation supremo Jeffrey Katzenberg and his dream cast in Venice last week.

Will Smith: It's essentially a two-year process. So we did, you know, just basically read through the script one time. You get the entire script down, and they have it on tape and then they'll do sketch boards. And they'll put the whole movie together with hand drawings so you can watch the whole movie but it's only hand drawings. Then they'll work the story, work the story, and every three months or four months you go back in and do the entire film over again with the different changes, different character twists – and all of those concepts. And then eventually, you get to full animation and you see how big people think your ears are. (David and Will both laugh)

David Stratton: Because this is one animated film where the animated characters have the characteristics of the actors playing them.

Will Smith: Right. Well, everyone except Jack Black's character. Jack Black said, You know, he looked at all the other characters, and he could see where people were sort of, their characters were sort of resembling them, but he couldn't figure out why his character has such a fat stomach.

David Stratton: Do you do much interacting with the other actors or do you do a lot of your stuff alone?

Angelina Jolie: We didn't do any. No. I mean, we would throw things back at each other without seeing each other. I would do my half of a scene with Will and then he would do something, maybe add a little bit and then I'd come back and respond to it a little bit and we'd throw it back and forth.

David Stratton: So why don't they do them together, do you think? I mean, is it?

Angelina Jolie: I think a lot of it is just the logistics of getting everybody, like, in this cast. We were all around the world. You couldn't really get us in the same room. I think Scorsese and De Niro did it at the same time in New York.

Robert De Niro: Marty and I, we didn't do, we did one scene together where we were like you and I over here, and he'd, you know, we'd improvise. It was a structured improv as far as where we had to go with it but that did add another level of spontaneity and texture to that scene, which was good.

David Stratton: Was there a lot of improvisation, though, through the film? I mean, I imagine Will Smith improvises a lot.

Robert De Niro: Oh, I'm sure he did, I guess.

Jeffrey Katzenberg: He does too. I mean, he doesn't think he does but, trust me, every, every sentence, he found 20 different ways to say it. And that's the luxury of doing it, which is, you know, it's him and a director, they have all the time in the world. There's not 200 people standing around on a, you know, location in the middle of Timbuktu. You know, so it's a chance to try things.

Will Smith: There's a real freedom that I sort of rediscovered in this process, you know. When I was doing, you know, my television show, 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' in the States, and when I was doing music beforehand, there was a real freedom that I had because I didn't have anything to lose, you know. Then as I became more successful, and I didn't realise it until I worked on this film, the level of inhibition that I had sort of created for myself. And then playing Oscar, it was just, you know, just coming out of me, everything, just really free, really comfortable. I found that really powerful comedic space that I'd lost a little bit of.

[Da Brakes]

nice! :thumb: