How animation and documentary filmmakers built Pharrell's musical biopic “piece by piece.”

At the core is piece by piece is totally ambitious. The acclaimed new biopic-documentary hybrid interprets the life story of hip-hop legend Pharrell Williams through Lego animation, delving into blocky depictions of synesthesia, famous music videos and the intricacies of Pharrell's imagination. piece by piece is set to be the first Lego feature released under Universal (through its boutique indie distribution arm Focus Features) since it received the license in 2020.

“The documentary impulse and the animation impulse are diametrically opposed.” “We constantly had a lively debate about how to preserve the rawness and imperfection of documentary in animation.”

– Director Morgan Neville

The project will be directed by Morgan Neville, a well-known live-action documentary filmmaker Best of Enemies, Won't you be my neighbor? And 20 feet from famewhich won the Oscar for best documentary film. Neville's return to musical storytelling demonstrates his fascination with genius. “Pharrell is full of magical thinking, the idea of, 'If everyone's going this way, I'm going this way,'” Neville says Animation magazine. “I responded and thought, 'Why can't we make a movie like that?' Why not?' I think that reflects his entire career.”

Neville quickly realized that Lego wasn't just a toy for Pharrell. “It's central to how his creative process works, this idea of ​​constructing your own realities and having agency over your fate,” he adds. “This whole film is about how we listen to our creative voices, how we lose touch with them, and how the world wants us to stagnate. All of these questions are very interesting to me.”

Film festival

Animators are used to working with reference material, but Pharrell asked Neville to take it to the extreme. “When I first met Pharrell, his suggestion to me was, 'I want you to make a documentary about my life, and when you're done with it, I want you to throw out all the footage and put it in Lego again.' do'” Neville remembers. “So I feel like we shot the movie twice. We made a version of the film where we did the interviews, the archival footage, the film clips and some rough storyboards. Then we came to Howard and started all over again, re-storyboarding the entire film.”

“When we showed Pharrell character designs with the available Lego hair, I remember him saying at one point, 'I really don't feel represented.' It opened my eyes wide.”

— Animation director Howard E. Baker

The Howard in question is Howard E. Baker of Pure Imagination Studios, the animation house responsible for a variety of Lego animation projects, including 2010's The Adventures of the Clutch Powers, which Baker directed four years before Phil Lord and Christopher Miller The Lego Movie. Comes piece by piece After the footage was shot, Baker no longer felt like he was simply remaking a live-action documentary.

“I always felt like we were making a film for the first time,” Baker explains. “Morgan's version of the film was like a script for me, my team and my board artists. “Morgan allowed us to incorporate many of the ideas from the first version of the film.” Some of Baker's team had to learn to go against their instincts. “As artists with a traditional animation background, they wanted to restructure the film more like an animated film. I think at some point Morgan had to say, 'No, let's keep the structure.'”

Changing gears

This conflict arose from the way the film switches between different styles. “There are three courses of storytelling,” Neville explains. “There is a documentary division where we have a music video or footage that we shot and we translate it into animation. Then there's a cinematic setting where someone tells a story and it's like a normal film. And finally the music equipment: when the music comes in, the real world disappears and the rules disappear.”

For Neville, this could only work in a fully animated film. “I've done documentaries with animated sequences before, but when you go to an animated sequence, it's a big leap for the viewer. When you’re in the Lego world and suddenly your character takes off and floats in space, you just go along with it.”

That didn't stop the two media outlets from clashing. “The documentary impulse and the animation impulse are diametrically opposed,” says Neville. “In animation you have a lot of control. You can build the world and control every detail of every item. With a documentary you have no control. You walk into a room and you can't decide what it looks like, you can't always decide where to put the camera. We constantly had a lively debate about how to preserve the rawness and imperfection of documentary filmmaking in animation.”

Baker underscores this need for balance. “Because animation is so pragmatic, we have an instinct to do everything perfectly. There are art directors and people in the animation industry who are so snobbish about everything having to be perfect all the time, but we had to try to keep things light and natural. A lot of times we would do things and ask Morgan, “Do you think this is OK?” And he would say, “Well.” It's a documentary, that's what it looks like.” There were even times when we had to say to Morgan : “But, Morgan, it’s a documentary!” because he might have tried to make things too perfect. It was difficult to find that balance.”

See sounds

By taking on an animation project, Neville had a steep learning curve but stuck to the specific ideas he wanted to explore. Pharrell's synesthesia, a condition that allows him to see sounds in the form of colors, was one of these ideas. “It’s kind of a superpower, that’s what it definitely stands for. As Pharrell [in the film] is the most creative, this synesthesia is the most saturated and predominant. We had a lot of discussions about that, how synesthesia could be a storytelling tool that we could show in animation, but never in a normal documentary.”

Baker brought in an industry legend to tackle piece by pieceRepresentation of synesthesia. “I called Michel Gagné, who is known for his synesthesia animations in films like… Ratatouille. He said, “I think I'm done with synesthesia.” I said, “Yeah, but did you make it out of Lego?” At some point I became convinced that the movie was really about synesthesia. That disappeared just because it was overstimulated. There was a time when storyboards had synesthesia everywhere.”

What you can make from Lego is only limited by the blocks available. However, adapting a real story forced Lego to think more about diversity. “Hair and skin tone were things that Pharrell knew would be really important,” says Neville. “We discussed this with Lego from the start. We wanted to be able to better represent the different African American skin tones and hair representations. I think I'm really proud of how many different things we were able to push in the film, pushing Lego in new directions.”

Baker reiterates Neville's point with an anecdote. “When we showed Pharrell character designs with the available Lego hair, I remember him saying at one point, 'I really don't feel represented,'” Baker recalls. “It opened my eyes wide. I remember from that day trying to be more open to the idea that these things need to change and that we have the power to do so. I’m very proud of that too.”

Focus Features releases piece by piece hits US cinemas on October 11th.