It was a surreal experience to hear a producer of a film wishing that he had made the worst film of their career. But that is what Leon Tan, who also serves as executive director for Tripod Entertainment, aspires for Malaysia's first stereoscopic 3D animation "War Of The Worlds Goliath", well, in a cheeky manner of speaking of course. This 41-year-old aims to make much better films in the future that this award-winning animation would pale in comparison. Not only did the feature pick up the "Best 3D Animated Feature Film" award at the Los Angeles 3D Animation Film Festival, beating out international made for 3D films like "Madagascar 3" and "ParaNorman"; "War Of The Worlds Goliath" also boasts a unique mix encompassing talented local and international cast and crew. It is evident that this film, being a Malaysian product of high calibre, is a source of pride to all that were involved, especially Leon. Cinema Online's interview with Leon Tan conducted recently at Tripod Entertainment Sdn Bhd. Q: Great to meet you, Leon. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how your interest in filmmaking came about? Sure! I've always loved animation as a child. I enjoyed making up stories and telling them although my later path in life took me on a more corporate career. I enjoyed my corporate career but eventually I moved into this industry and formed an audio production company called Imaginex Studios with Mike Bloemendal in 2003. Four years later, I met Joe Pearson (who is also the director of "WOTWG") and the three of us formed Tripod Entertainment with Imaginex Studio under its umbrella. Q: Was the company named Tripod because of the film? Well, in a way it did. The decision for the name came really quickly. First, there were three founders, myself, Mike and Joe, a tripod of founders, if you like. Secondly, "WOTWG" was our first film and we thought, well, let's remember it. It's like Steven Spielberg's production company – Amblin Entertainment, where you see the logo for it is ET, a nod to one of his favourite films he made. So for us, it's the same thing, where the film brought us all together. Q: How did you and Joe meet and what eventually lead to "WOTWG" being conceived? I remember that we were both attending the Tokyo International Film Festival in October 2006 and were the only two people on the last morning shuttle bus from the hotel to the festival and we started talking. It was an interesting moment for me when I discovered not only he was an animation producer but he also produced the Pearl Jam video "Do The Evolution", which in my opinion is one of the best music videos ever made. We became friends and I visited him at his home in LA. While there, he started talking about his work in the past 30 years and showed me a ton of properties and ideas he had. One of those ideas happened to be "WOTWG". It really appealed to me then. I looked at him and said "Wouldn't it be fun to make something like this?" And he said, "I've been trying to make it for years!" And that was it. "WOTWG" was initially conceptualised as a TV series, but when we got involved, we were looking at it like a movie. Q: Is it possible to reveal to us the budget of the animation? What is your target box office for the film? We put together a budget of approximately USD 5 million for "WOTWG". That budget involved the pre-production, production, post-production, the stereoscopic and also all the other elements necessary to make a film like this, to be prepared for delivery into the world such as marketing, promotions, business development, legal, finance, and insurance. We want as many people to watch this film legitimately. Not just to make a profit and to repay the budget but also we want to be given the opportunity to make more films. We would to look back and say "WOTWG" was probably the worse film we've ever made because all of the other films we will make after it would be better. Q: What was the process like to get "WOTWG" to where it is today? Well, when it comes to animation, pre-production is the key. Unlike live action, where you can just shoot and roll the tape to see if anything interesting pops out, animation takes a more deliberate process where every single detail is planned. Based on Joe's idea, the next step would naturally be to expand it. We managed to get writer David Abramowitz on board to write the screenplay. Kevin Eastman, the co-creator of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" also signed up as executive producer of our film. Of course, it is still essentially very much Malaysian. All the major concept art was done by Studio Climb Sdn. Bhd., where they had to imagine New York 1940s in steampunk style, including the vehicles, props, the human army, martian army, and even the hierarchy of the vehicles. After all that conceptualisation, we moved onto storyboards, figuring how long it took per scene and mapping out the animation. We had a timing director called Graham Morris, who is also based in LA with more than 20 years of experience in animation. He helped us out with the timing because there aren't many timing directors in Malaysia for animation. At the same time, we were already recording voices in LA as well as Malaysia since it is done before the animation stage. It is only after all these preparations are done that we officially went into the production stage. The film initially started out as a DVD movie before we made the decision to make it stereoscopic. But very quickly the market for DVDs went away, so we had to reinvent the film to make it more cinematic. And we decided to do just that by going stereoscopic.
Q: Balancing creativity and commercial is not an easy feat, especially in Malaysia. What gave you the courage to launch such an ambitious project? The decision to go stereoscopic was based on the fact that when "Avatar" came out, a lot of other films came out in 3D as well to capitalise on the hype. There was a new audience waiting with a potential revenue stream. We worked the numbers and we saw the potential of a Malaysian stereoscopic team which is really, in our opinion, world class. The film is a balance of what we want to do creatively and how we want to succeed commercially. On the creative side, it's because all of us want to tell stories, to entertain, to share ideas and we use this medium to do this. We set a goal and then start figuring out how to get there. Some things we wanted to do but couldn't do and some things we thought we couldn't do but we did. Many decisions we made hopefully would turn out well on the commercial side because for one thing, we consider things like we wanted to make a film where everyone in the world will follow as a story. We wanted people to like the film for what it is and not for where it came from which is why we got together a team of people who were really experienced. The decision on the US cast was also a commercial move in a way. We have Adrian Paul ("Highlander: The Series"), Peter Wingfield ("Highlander: The Series"), Mark Sheppard ("Supernatural", "Firefly", "Battlestar Galactica") and Adam Baldwin ("Firefly", "Chuck"), who were famous in the science fiction world. While we don't exactly have Tom Cruise, because of budget reasons, obviously, we had the right kind of people with a big following. When their involvement was announced, there was a crowd made out of their fan bases following the movie for four years because all their favourite actors were in it. So that helped us built a momentum that got us noticed. Even David Abramowitz and Kevin Eastman had a huge following. When all these people came on board, they got the excitement of the film out there. Q: So why did "WOTWG" took so long to be released on the big screen? The whole production took close to four years because everyone involved, despite their long history and experience in their careers, has never done something like this before. The challenges were at many levels. First, you have KL, LA and Seoul working remotely. Also, the stereoscopic side, none of us had ever done that either. And in Malaysia, this is the first stereoscopic feature. A lot of experimentation took place to establish what you see on screen.