Share This
Robert Stromberg is a renowned special effects artist, designer and filmmaker. His credits include family favorites such as James Cameron’s Avatar, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and Sam Raimi’s Oz the Great and Powerful. You’ve also seen his artistic work in movies such as Hunger Games and Pan’s Labyrinth. He’s won two Academy Awards for Best Art Direction, and we can only hope his directorial debut with Maleficent will add one more golden statue to his mantel.
He took some time out of his busy schedule readying for the film’s premiere to sit down and tell us more about the process, his motivations and his muse.
Was Angelina your first choice for the role of Maleficent? Did you write this with her in mind?
RS : She was actually already attached when Disney hired me. She had wanted to do this character for a long time. So, lucky for me, I didn’t have to do much digging on that part. It was [a] perfectly made iconic combination that I was blessed to have.
Just because you have [someone] that looks really good in the costume – this iconic figure, that wasn’t it. What really surprised me was the emotional depth and the richness of the emotional part of that character. When you combine that with the image [that] is what made it powerful.
This being your directorial debut, what was different on set compared to being in the art department?
RS : I’ve always wanted to be a director. I used to make movies when I was a little kid and I was a huge Disney fan. I had an art teacher who was an ex-Disney artist. I used to draw like crazy – including Maleficent – when I was five, six years old. So I had always wanted to tell stories and be a director.
I got sidetracked by the art direction stuff. But, it was part of the journey. I’m glad that I did all that stuff because it prepared me [for] not only being around these big movies but also meeting a lot of great directors. I spent four years with Jim Cameron and that was useful in how to be strong when you need to be. I worked with Tim Burton on how an artist can direct. These are all directors, but they do it in different ways.
You have to have spent your life studying human behavior and really paying attention to why people react a certain way when they’re told something. I think it’s all those little bits of information plus all of the knowledge I got from my experience with other directors. That’s what made me feel comfortable in being a director.
What was your favorite scene to direct?
RS : I think there are many different special moments. But, I suppose the christening scene. It was a retelling. So we’re not just doing a straight out of the box remake of that classic version. It was very intentional, that when you watch the movie, you’ve learned a whole bunch of new material. When you get to that center point of the movie…we shot that scene almost verbatim, word for word, from the classic cartoon version.
That was so that you now had all this new, fun information that you had learned and you understand why that character is doing what she’s doing. It wasn’t challenging but, for me personally, as a Hollywood moment, just standing there with several hundred extras in this huge set… and she came into the room in that costume… I was a big fan myself at that moment; just in awe.
What was the creative process used to create the Moors and all the characters?
RS : Over the years I probably have a file full of just sketches and strange creatures and stuff that you wanna use one day. The Moors themselves — I always approach a movie using the world itself as a psychological steering device. So, in other words, just for instance, at the beginning of this film we start off and it’s sort of happy and sunny and everything else. And the mood of the whole world goes dark with Maleficent and then comes back up again at the end.
I think it’s really interesting, to create fun things — there’s no rule book there. That’s what’s fun about it is you just do a sketch and oh, this is cool — and three months later it becomes something real. You can steer the audience and make the audience feel something, even if they’re not aware that that’s how things are done.
I’m a big fan of Eyvind Earle, but the look of the original design was a bit too stylized for this sort of emotional, organic, grounded-in-reality story that we’re trying to tell. So that would be distracting in this case. But it was important to me to keep the essence of what that design was that Eyvind Earle had done. So if you really look at the film you’ll see elements that you could say he would have done.
What was the most challenging thing…
RS : This is really intimidating, by the way. [he laughs]
What was the most difficult thing to bring to the big screen for this film?
RS : It’s just getting through the film and still carrying a big, beating heart under your arm as you make it through this jungle. Someone once told me, “Directing is like painting in a hurricane. And it’s true.
I can’t pick one thing that was challenging because just making a movie at this scale –you’re just constantly juggling chainsaws and trying to draw pretty pictures at the same time. The challenge is to [bring] elements together and, and at the end of all that, have something with a heart and soul and emotion and something that means something.
Were things you felt absolutely had to be captured in this movie that were in the original movie?
RS : We had to steer away from certain elements. But it was really important that you walk away from this film, as a fan of the original film, with enough that you can relate to the comparison. You could walk away saying, “You know, I learned all this new, cool stuff, but it was still Sleeping Beauty.”
What was it like, working with Angelina for the first time?
RS : I went to her house the first day and met her — and what was really great is [that] we didn’t talk about the movie for the first hour. We just sat on some back steps in her backyard and watched her kids play. We talked about life and, and being a parent and just normal stuff.
I think that’s why we connected — because we had to find out that we were both human beings first before we tackled human being problems. And that was a special moment for me. I wasn’t necessarily intimidated by her, but I had never seen the human, motherly quality in there before.
You said you stayed true to the original Sleeping Beauty but did you still have creative license in what you were able to do?
[00:12:39]
RS : Linda Woolverton wrote the script. A lot of times when you’re in the moment — it looks better on paper than it does when you’re actually seeing how two characters are reacting to each other, or how a scene plays out. So, I think part of what you learn as a director is how to adapt in a situation and understand that something is just not right and to adjust it so that it is.
Are there any Easter eggs for us to look for in the movie?
RS : Good question. Besides the Eyvind Earle elements, I’m sure there is. I know we did some stuff because I would tell the prop people to just put a little thing here that looks like — There are some things. I did that in Oz and I did that in Alice. Like in Oz, you know, we put like a little figure of the Tin Man in the corner and just to see if anyone would notice. Things like that. You guys are gonna find them.
Maleficent premieres nation wide TOMORROW, May 30th. You can get more information, watch clips and even order tickets on Disney.com
https://www.facebook.com/DisneyMaleficent
https://twitter.com/maleficent (#Maleficent)
http://www.pinterest.com/disneystudios/maleficent/
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTnR43JTLNs8AKNpJ4KFI6SSdpTzkcXjw
*Travel expenses and accommodations provided by Disney in exchange for editorial coverage on RJC. All opinions expressed will be my own.
