{"id":24457,"date":"2016-02-02T10:00:46","date_gmt":"2016-02-02T10:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skwigly.co.uk\/?p=24457"},"modified":"2024-01-29T09:22:59","modified_gmt":"2024-01-29T09:22:59","slug":"chris-renaud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.skwigly.co.uk\/chris-renaud\/","title":{"rendered":"Director Chris Renaud on &#8216;The Secret Life of Pets&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>Following the release of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.skwigly.co.uk\/pets-trailer\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">new trailer footage and images<\/a> from Illumination Entertainment\u2019s upcoming feature <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/thesecretlifeofpets.co.uk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Secret Life of Pets<\/a><em>, director Chris Renaud (whose industry credentials include co-directing the first two installments of the <\/em>Despicable Me<em> franchise and co-creating the indefatigable Minions) was recently on hand to offer some perspectives on the film as it reaches the final stretch of production. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Secret Life of Pets: Trailer 2 (Universal Pictures) [HD]\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Bw6p-vHUhDw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>In the past week we\u2019ve been given a wider look at the world of <em>The Secret Life of Pets<\/em>, although we won\u2019t be seeing a full release until the summer. At what stage is the film at presently?<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We\u2019re sort of in the home stretch as far as how much work we have left to do. We\u2019ve got a little bit more animation for another month and a half, and then of course we finish lighting and creating the final images &#8211; we\u2019re also now just starting to get into the scoring. So we\u2019re getting close to being done!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Having co-directed (with Pierre Coffin) the <em>Despicable Me<\/em> films, two of Illuminations biggest hits, what determined your taking the reins of <em>The Secret Life of Pets<\/em> as opposed to last year\u2019s <em>Despicable Me<\/em> spinoff <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.skwigly.co.uk\/minions-review\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Minions<\/a><\/em> (Dir. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.skwigly.co.uk\/lightbox-minions\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pierre Coffin\/Kyle Balda<\/a>)?<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I was an executive producer on <em>Minions<\/em>, so I did work on it &#8211; though not at the same level as being director obviously. A little bit of it had to do with timing and wanting to do some different projects, so in conversation with Chris Meledandri we started talking about what was going to be next after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.skwigly.co.uk\/despicable-me-2-review\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Despicable Me 2<\/em><\/a>. Pierre Coffin \u2013 who I co-created the Minions with along with Eric Guillon &#8211; was going to direct <em>Minions<\/em> and had it in good hands with Kyle Balda and writer Brian Lynch. What very often happens is that when you want to get different things moving forward, you have to split up the team, I guess! As the studio was growing we had to strategise where to put different people to try to create new films. So with <em>Minions<\/em> on its way we started talking about Chris Meledandri\u2019s concept of what our pets do when we leave. Literally that\u2019s all we had, so right towards the end of <em>Despicable Me 2<\/em> we started building what the story and the characters were going to be, to figure out what that concept would mean in the course of a film\u2019s story. So that\u2019s kind of it, the studio was growing so it was a matter of how to expand beyond <em>Despicable Me<\/em> and those characters that we all loved, and hopefully try to create something else that connects with the audience.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Certainly the animal lovers out there are sure to be a big part of that audience.<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Yes, which we\u2019re hoping are numerous!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Secret Life of Pets - Official Trailer (Universal Pictures)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FEORedomcIk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Did your ultimately taking on the project have any ties to a personal fondness for animals?<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It did &#8211; it\u2019s funny, I hadn\u2019t really thought of it before making this movie but I\u2019ve had a pet of some kind or another pretty much my entire life; I had a dog as a kid, I had a cat with my wife, we just got a new dog, we have guinea pigs with our kids, so there was a definite appeal to the project for me. It was fun to be able to think back on all those animals that I had, and everybody on the team did that, citing their own memories and things that their pets did. That was something we wanted to do with the film, by the way &#8211; the dogs are the main characters but we really wanted to shine a light on all types of pets; we\u2019ve got lizards and guinea pigs and pretty much everything under the sun in this movie and that was something we thought would hopefully be a fresh take on it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>From looking at the trailers there seems to be a pretty even balance of anthropomorphism and true-to-life animal behaviour in the performances. Did the team draw upon much by way of reference footage to capture the believability?<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We did, and we had the perfect research tool \u2013 the internet! In addition to doing a story about a whole variety of different pets, the other thing that we really wanted to hit was that we\u2019d hopefully make a film that was a contemporary view of pet ownership and a lot of that really has to do with social media and how people share images and video clips of their pets. So whenever we\u2019d talk about certain things we would just go and type in \u2018cat pushing something off a table\u2019 (laughs. Even in some of the background animation in the film, because there are quite a few characters, if you take a look you\u2019ll see dogs chasing their tails, cats pushing stuff off tables, we really tried to make sure that we populate this film with those very relatable pet behaviours. So it was kind of fun and, as I say, there was a wealth of information out there to dive into and research with.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>The voice cast features some absolute comic royalty. Did their own performances have any impact on the animation?<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It certainly did, I mean one of the things that we tried to do as we were looking to cast people was that, for all the roles, we really tried to get really top comedic talent as the driving force. Certainly in the case of our lead, Louis CK as Max or Eric Stonestreet as Duke and Kevin Hart as Snowball, certainly the \u2018character\u2019 of those actors really comes through in the animated performance of the characters themselves. So what\u2019s nice is that the three personalities, as personified by those actors and within the character designs, really contrast with each other in a great way. You have the high energy of Kevin Hart next to the drier personality of a Louis CK, we think it creates a nice chemistry. Their personalities definitely shine through these animated characters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Secret Life of Pets - Snowball Trailer (Universal Pictures)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/oLuNK7teLNY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>The Secret Life of Pets<\/em> is your fourth film with Illumination, is your plan to continue working with them on future projects?<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I am, I\u2019ve been very fortunate working with Chris Meledandri and the team at Illumination. We operate out of Paris, France, and my family and I really love to live there. It\u2019s really been a great ride and I\u2019m looking forward to continuing!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>The Secret Life of Pets<em> is scheduled to be released in UK cinemas June 24<sup>th<\/sup>. Visit the film\u2019s official site at <a href=\"http:\/\/thesecretlifeofpets.co.uk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">thesecretlifeofpets.co.uk<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following the release of new trailer footage and images from Illumination Entertainment\u2019s upcoming feature The Secret Life of Pets, director Chris Renaud (whose industry credentials include co-directing the first two installments of the Despicable Me franchise and co-creating the indefatigable Minions) was recently on hand to offer some perspectives on the film as it reaches [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":114,"featured_media":24460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[247,755],"tags":[2680,3813,2352,3816,2682,3815,3044,3814,2351,3043,3003],"class_list":["post-24457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-interviews","tag-chris-meledandri","tag-chris-renaud","tag-despicable-me","tag-eric-stonestreet","tag-illumination","tag-kevin-hart","tag-kyle-balda","tag-louis-ck","tag-minions","tag-pierre-coffin","tag-the-secret-life-of-pets"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - 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