Dougal Wilson has already proven his ability to reduce people to tears through the medium of CGI animals with John Lewis' ‘Monty the Penguin' Christmas advert, but Paddington in Peru marks his feature debut (you can read our thoughts on the film here). The director chats with FILMHOUNDS about the pressure of taking on such a massive project, and what it's like working with the great bear himself.
Following up on the success of Paddington and Paddington 2 is a daunting way to break onto the big screen. How did you get involved in the picture?
I was approached by Rosie (producer) and StudioCanal because they were interested in doing a third instalment of Paddington, but Paul King, who so brilliantly did the first two, wasn't available because he was off doing Wonka. They needed someone new, and they looked around, and for some reason thought I might be suitable. I thought, “That's terrifying. Why on Earth would I want to attempt to make the most difficult instalment of something so brilliant? I'll inevitably mess it up”. But I also thought, “Well, if I don't try, I'll probably regret it”. It was a bit of a conundrum, I kept humming and harring, and before I knew it was too late: I was involved.
That's a great story, filled with fear. The best stories are. What was it like, stepping into an established franchise? Especially after the second film was so immensely successful.
Terrifying. The first two films were great, and I loved their style, their tone, the way that a lot of British comedians had become involved; I loved the way Paul had done them. I was under no illusion that it was going to be easy to follow them, but I thought, I'll try my best to continue in that style; it's something that I like anyway.
When I became involved I started to develop the script visually and storyboard everything, working in conjunction with the set design and the cinematographer to bring all the elements together. That's what I feel the first two films have; it's a real coordination of all the different departments involved in making the film. I think you can see that it's not simply coverage of a script, it's very much that the camera, the design and the script all work together with the performance and the animation.
The animation was an enormous part. One of the main people I worked with was our animation director Pablo Grillo and his brilliant team at Frame(store). We did drawing sessions together—he's a much better artist than me—where we worked out sequences and then he'd take them away and visualise them. Along with his team, he is the one that animates Paddington, brings him to life. I had a lot of help. It was a big team, and I was very much joining a family. It was best if I just didn't think about it too much. I just got down to it, knuckled away at the script and tried to do the best I could.
You've worked with CGI animals before. How do you incorporate them into your direction of the human characters, to get them to interact with something that's not there?
There's a whole process, which luckily was established in the first films. As you said, I've had a little experience myself, but nowhere near as intense as this. We have an actor, Lauren Bertrand, who's fantastic. She wears a Paddington outfit and interacts with the actors and blocks scenes out so we get a real sense of what's going on when we walk through them. We do that on the morning of a shoot, so when we start filming everyone knows where Paddington is, everyone knows where to look. We might put in some eyelines, too.
Obviously, Paddington is involved too, sometimes he comes out of his trailer and does it for real. But, you know, he's very busy and he can't be disturbed a lot of the time. He's often having a snooze or eating a sandwich. It's a testament to the performances of our brilliant cast that you believe they are interacting with a living, breathing character. It's the creation of the character, too. There's a whole world after we finish shooting and editing where Pablo and the visual effects teams get involved. There are layers of lighting and interaction, and simulation of fur and fabric that we have to put on. It's a bit of an undertaking, but it's great. It's just ironic when you finally watch it, you don't notice all that stuff – and you shouldn't!
Lots of the themes in Paddington are very pertinent to the real world, and have been since Michael Bond originally wrote the books. Did you have the real world in mind when you were directing the film, or did you want it to be a complete escape from the horrors?
I was kind of cut off from the real world for about two years while I was making the film, but of course I was aware of what was going on. We try not to be too on the nose with Paddington in terms of commenting directly about anything, but I think Paddington's approach to the world, his innocence and his tolerance, are all obviously great qualities that we should all be aspiring to. Sometimes we fall short. It's difficult. If everyone was like Paddington, that would be great.
The world would certainly be a better, if chaotic, place! One last question: what's your favourite moment of the finished film?
I liked thinking of the titles of the newspapers! You can actually read them too. Paul had put so much detail into Paddington 2; I love the scene in the prison when Knuckles is reading the Hard Times newspaper, and if you pause the film, you can read it. I thought, we've got to do that too! So you have the Grrrdian and the Furnancial Times.
Paddington in Peru is out now in cinemas.