The Magic Pudding PRODUCTION NOTES
How it all came about ....

Almost a century after the first book was published, and over three 
years in the making, Norman Lindsay's children's classic THE 
MAGIC PUDDING has finally come to life on the big screen. As 
with most major motion picture stars, many will consider Albert's 
meteoric rise to superstardom as an overnight success story. In 
truth it took many years, many approaches and many hours for 
Energee Entertainment to create the new sensation of the animated 
screen.

It was back in 1994 when Energee first approached the Lindsay 
family to secure the rights to produce the film. They were 
interested but passed. Energee were in good company - many had 
approached the family in the past, from Rolf Harris to Walt 
Disney, and all had been turned away. However, showing a 
commitment to truly represent Norman Lindsay's book, vision and 
characters, Energee finally secured the option in 1997.

The first priority was to write the script - Morris Gleitzman was 
approached, and his irreverence was fitting to bring Albert to life 
on celluloid. Gleitzman wrote 3 drafts of the script, which included 
creating new characters as well as the villain of the film - Buncle 
(Jack Thompson). Initially Buncle was a human: "It was a last 
minute decision to change Buncle into a wombat - it allows Buncle 
to be nastier and Possum and Wombat to be the comical villains - 
the fall guys. In the book they are more sadistic," says director 
Kart Zwicky, "and Buncle's rodent offsider - Ginger (Mary 
Coustas) also solidified when we made him into a wombat. She's 
always standing on his shoulder." Adds animation director Robbert 
Smit: 'The problem with Ginger was her size - she would visually 
fall out of the frame all the time, so we had to bring her to the 
foreground, and into the picture."

As the book was written as a series of vignettes it necessitated that 
the script be adapted as one continuous story. Throughout the 
script's genesis some of Australia's most successful screenwriters 
were brought on to the project to develop the script further. Greg 
Haddrick and Harry Cripps worked on the dialogue and action, and 
Simon Hopkinson completed the final script polish - all the while 
preserving the film's G rating.

Adds producer Gerry Travers: "People take the book and its 
adaptation very personally and it was a challenge to unshackle the 
creativity of the book into an animated world."

The prospectus for the financing of the film was issued in June 
1998 and all the funds were secured in December that year. Prior 
to that, all work on the film had been self-financed by Energee, as 
had the development of the project. Before the production of THE 
MAGIC PUDDING, there were 40 people working in Energee 
Entertainment. With the Pudding, numbers swelled to over 320. 
Says Karl Zwicky: “There have been so many people who have 
contributed to the making of this film. The thing with animation is 
that it never stops. There is always something more you can do, 
somebody else's help you need..."

Another element intrinsic to the film was the writing of the lyrics, 
songs and score. Chris Harriott and long time collaborator Dennis 
Watkins worked with Lindsay's poetry and words, as well as new 
material created by themselves and the writers. The songs 
comprise an array of ballad, twenties musical and bawdy 
vaudeville numbers.

The voice actors were signed in April 1998 creating a buzz and 
excitement about the project. One of the first to commit was John 
Cleese who brings a large dose of irreverence to the character of 
Albert, and indeed did his voice recording before the financing was 
complete. Geoffrey Rush was asked to play a breathy 14-year-old 
koala; Jack Thompson brought menace to the villain Buncle; Sam 
Neill, (who knew the Lindsay characters from playing Lindsay in 
SIRENS), was cast as Sam Sawnoff, Toni Collette as Meg 
Bluegum, Mary Coustas as the loud-mouthed Ginger; and Hugo 
Weaving "who even looks a little like Bill Barnacle," laughs Karl 
Zwicky. "Jack Thompson is a walking encyclopaedia of Australian 
children's literature," adds Gerry Travers. "His father actually 
knew Norman Lindsay! Jack lifted the whole thing and brought a 
show biz feeling to it all." Indeed Jack took his gravely character 
acting to such a degree that by the end he actually lost his voice.

Working with such high profile voice actors made THE MAGIC 
PUDDING a truly international affair. Despite attempts to get the 
actors together for recordings, busy schedules resulted in hardly 
any of them being in the same studio as each other. Recordings 
were done in Sydney, Melbourne, Los Angeles, New York, 
London, Santa Barbara, Chicago, Thessaloniki (Greece) - and in 
some cases with Karl directing over the phone.

It was always planned to have two directors, one to direct the 
filmmaking process and post-production, and the other to be 
mindful of the animation criteria - thus having an even handed 
approach and consistency of excellence across the whole film from 
the very first storyboard. Robbert Smit was appointed animation 
director and he began the process of character drawings and 
creating the storyboard: “I got excellent ideas and visuals from the 
storyboard artists," Smit says. "It was a group of people with such 
different talents, and they came up with an incredibly rich product 
- but animation is such a complex story that it is difficult to 
contribute the various elements to the various people," he says.

Karl Zwicky was brought on as director in October 1997. "I feel 
like I've been married to Robbert for 3 years!" he exclaims. "We 
spent months discussing the storyboard and the script," Zwicky 
explains. "We could spend a day discussing half a page of script. 
With animation you can't just say 'well, that's what the actor does 
on the day', which you can do in live action. Instead, we have to 
say 'at this point, will he sit that way - or will he turn over and sit 
that way - or would he flick a look over his shoulder before he sits 
down?..."

It took 3 months to complete the storyboard, comprising 16 
storyboard artists, 8 character designers, 200 characters, over 150 
props (pens/hammers/walk stick/spoons and forks) as well as over 
20 versions of the pudding itself. “We actually went through 
cooking books and studied them to come up with about 50 
varieties of magic puddings," says Smit.

The two directors worked collaboratively, adjusting the script and 
the proportions of the characters. This was assisted by the depth of 
the original Lindsay drawings, which were drawn in front, side, 
and 3/4 poses. Says Karl Zwicky: "These characters were drawn in 
the same era that Walt Disney was drawing the first Mickey 
Mouse, and it is almost as if you've got a whole treasure trove of 
characters who've been put in a box and never come out. And 
suddenly - by animating them - you see just how fantastic the 
character drawings are, because they animate so well! Just like the 
classics of Warner Brothers and Disney, they come out of the same 
school of drawing that is a bit of a lost art now."

Smit was also drawn to the physical size of the project: "I was 
pushing the angles and perspectives to create a cinematic format, 
and we had such a wide screen to work with - as opposed to the 
square television screen. With the screen space available, we could 
do a lot more with the artwork and the drawings."

To complete the film, over 248,500 original drawings were 
created. They were each drawn about 5 times, resulting in over 
1,240,000 drawings. Then came the computer work. "This is the 
first feature film made in Australia on digital computers, and we 
had to learn a lot of new things," says Robbert Smit. "But the 
animation is still very much hand drawn. The digital work starts 
when the animation is scanned into the computer, and then painted 
in digital format - whereas in the traditional way we used to hand 
trace the drawings."

At the beginning of 1999, associate producer Ed Trost was brought 
on to the project. Previously he had been an integral member of the 
Energee team and understood better than anyone in the country 
what the digital challenges of making the film would be.

One element the animators learned was that you have to be more 
disciplined when you work digitally, because there are so many 
possibilities. "I still think the computer look can have a hard 
quality to it, but when you see the images actually transferred to 35 
millimetre film, it regains the softness that I like, and defines the 
animation better," Smit explains. Another way of softening the 
digital look, was by using the roughness of the Australian bush 
texture for the backgrounds - both in the interiors and exteriors.

The design of backgrounds and textures proved very important - 
even down to the correct interpretation of the ferns which grow in 
the Blue Mountains. All felt very protective of the Lindsay look, 
which ultimately is the key to a faithful adaptation. "In terms of 
research, we studied Lindsay's art for atmosphere, and styles for 
other characters. Robbert littered the studio with all kinds of 
landscape books, creating a library of great art books and graphic 
design," Zwicky says. Robbert Smit also took his animators on a 
research trip around New South Wales, studying areas around the 
Blue Mountains and Mudgee. The fictitious Tooraloo is set in the 
heart of Lindsay country, the Blue Mountains. The landscape is a 
homage to Lindsay and will give international audiences a feel of 
Australia - similar to the way THE LION KING did for Africa, 
"The Blue Mountains worked out the most magical place to start 
and end - and works to give a completed feel to the story," Smit 
says.

Robbert Smit is probably Australia's most experienced animator, 
but Karl Zwicky started as a newcomer to the process. "I would 
love to do animation again, but it takes so long, and requires such a 
commitment of time that you have to be absolutely passionate 
about the material you chose," he says. “With this, I've been 
blessed. It's a great honour to be able to work on a film like this. 
This is a book that I’ve lived with now for more than 30 years... It 
has the most fantastic set of characters, both written and drawn, 
that have adventures that are quite surreal! I think that's what I 
have always liked about it - the humour and the lack of 
sentimentality. For an animated feature, you're always looking for 
something that distinguishes you from the general run of other 
product. For me, all these elements are present in THE MAGIC 
PUDDING."