Explain to me this concept of “emotion capture” that you used.
We didn’t now what else to call it because it’s not motion capture, which is when your actors’ physical performance is driving the computer. We were just recording their sound only, so we jokingly called it emotion capture because we had all the actors in this one space at one time wearing flip flops and hats and side arms, jumping off apple boxes. It gave it a theater of the absurd feeling. We were just trying to get a really lively soundtrack, get any sort of anomalies we could hold onto and cherish.
Everything that we were trying to do was to make it feel like there actually is a lizard talking to a tortoise. We’re trying to fabricate this sense that it happened. It wasn’t manufactured. The term “emotion capture” was just a poke at motion capture to say, “Look, we’re doing something different.” The actors were all saying this isn’t how you do animation. A lot of them worked on animated films and they never wore hats and jumped around and shot guns and running around while doing them.
What’s an example of something you were able to change because all the actors were together in the same room?
I would say when Rango and Beans (Isla Fisher) are together, when she freezes for the first time, and he’s got her arm around her, and he’s doing, “What are you doing?” “I was not,” that sort of thing. If you had one person in the room and then a few months later another person in the room, and you were cutting the different audio together you would never get that sort of awkwardness.
– Read the full Q&A with Gore Verbinski at VanityFair.com
Category: “Rango”
Isla’s appearance on The Early Show
CBS have now posted the video of Isla’s appearance on their show earlier this week, and you can view it by clicking the link below (they’ve sadly disabled embedding).
Screencaps coming soon.
Isla’s Regis & Kelly and Jimmy Fallon interviews
Screencaps from both shows are already in the Gallery!
Isla appears on Rachael Ray Show
Isla appeared on the Rachael Ray show this morning (sorry I didn’t let you know beforehand – I wasn’t aware of the appearance til just now!) to promote Rango, and a short clip from the segment has been posted on Rachael’s official website.
If anyone can provide us with a full clip from Isla’s appearance then please get in touch!
Isla Fisher cracked up moviegoers with her hilarious turns in Wedding Crashers and Confessions of a Shopaholic, and now she’ll be entertaining younger audiences with two new animated features: Rango with Johnny Depp, and The Rise of the Guardians with Hugh Jackman. And despite being a mom of two now, Isla tells Rachael that she didn’t pick these films in hopes that one day her girls would enjoy them. “I don’t think that far ahead,” she laughs. “I was really excited to do Rango because I love director Gore Verbinski, who directed Pirates of the Caribbean, and I love Johnny Depp – who doesn’t?”
Watch the video about to see Isla explain which two actors she based her character’s voice on, and why she turned down a kiss from co-star Johnny Depp! Plus, enter here for a chance to win a copy of The Ballad of Rango: The Art and Making of an Outlaw Film.
WATCH THE VIDEO HERE (embedding disabled)
Backstage Pass: Isla Fisher
The Rango star shares three things you don’t know about her! Plus, tune in today when Isla explains why she passed up the opportunity to kiss co-star Johnny Depp!
WATCH THE VIDEO HERE (embedding disabled)
New interview with Scotsman.com
Interview: Isla Fisher, actress
TEETERING into the London hotel room on six-inch heels, Isla Fisher is in full glamorous mode as she grips my hand: a gesture that combines warmth with a pressing need for something to hang on to.
This is day two of a European tour to promote her new film Rango, and the tight schedule of TV and press leaves her no time to change between interviews – hence her plunging neckline, some Weimar-era eye make-up and the vertiginous footwear. Yet underneath it all, a rising comedy star is still recognisable as she wobbles towards a chair.
“I’m definitely at my most comfortable tapping into my inner idiot,” she confirms. “I mean, I love dramatic actors and actresses but I’ve never personally aspired to have an Oscar. I’m just a comedy fan.” Up until now however, in films such as Wedding Crashers, Confessions Of A Shopaholic and Wedding Daze, she’s been able to rely on her physical gift for slapstick. In Rango, her performance concentrates on a deadpan vocal performance as a sceptical frontier lizard called Beans, who doesn’t even have Fisher’s Australian accent. “The director wanted Beans to sound like Holly Hunter – so I watched Raising Arizona a million times and practised until I got the pitch nice and low.”
Gore Verbinski’s animated animal western is about Rango (Johnny Depp), a chameleon who manages to blend into the old west world of gunshooting rattlesnakes (Bill Nighy), bar-room rats (Ray Winstone) and a precocious desert mouse (Little Miss Sunshine’s Abigail Breslin). Fisher’s character is the only one who suspects that Rango is an imposter rather than a real gunslinger.
“Rango” press junket excerpts from ScreenCrave
ScreenCrave.com have a number of excerpts from a press junket held for Rango. Here are the quotes from/relating to Isla, and make sure you check out ScreenCrave.com for the full article:
What did you think, Isla and Abigail?
ISLA FISHER: I think the characters had humanity because we were interacting with each other, and more chemistry; and so it felt more organic and real. What do you think, Abigail?
ABIGAIL BRESLIN: You know, it was – you know, when you’re in just like a booth, by yourself, it’s like very isolating, and like you don’t really, like, have anything to sort of play off of except like one take of like one line, and then like a beep, and then – so this was, this was – I think that it was, well, for me, at least, a lot more fun. Although I did wear a wig, like a black wig and I got a really bad rash on my neck from it, and so that was a little unfortunate, but –
ISLA FISHER: And you were carrying a gun.
ABIGAIL BRESLIN: I was.
ISLA FISHER: Which was weird, to see Abigail with a massive gun.
ABIGAIL BRESLIN: It was so bizarre, because like there was actually guns going, and like you don’t think that there are like firearms in an animated movie.
[LAUGHTER]
ABIGAIL BRESLIN: And it’s like live. That’s all I thought about it.
JOHNNY DEPP: Gore always travels with guns.
GORE VERBINSKI: Absolutely. Keep people from going to sleep.
JOHNNY DEPP: Yeah.
Continue reading “Rango” press junket excerpts from ScreenCrave
Isla Fisher is a “confident lizard” in Rango
Isla Fisher is the voice of Beans, a character who serves as the love interest of the titular character (Johnny Depp) in Rango. “She is a very strong, very decisive, a very confident lizard and she’s kind of the co-hero of the movie,” says the actress, who previously starred in Confessions of a Shopaholic and Definitely, Maybe. “So it was really exciting for me to be in a movie where I wasn’t the damsel in distress, where I was a strong woman and a good role model for young girls out there.”
Click on the Media Bar and listen to Fisher talk about why she had her share of fun doing Rango.
LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW
More quotes from a “Rango” press junket
The Daily Aztec has posted further quotes from a recent Rango press junket, so again, visit the link to see the whole thing, and below are the Isla bits:
DA: What projects do you all have in the pipelines? Isla or Abigail, do you have any desire to do animated projects again in the future?
ISLA FISHER: I’m actually doing an animated movie now, “Rise of the Guardians,” and I’m playing Tinkerbell which is a really different voice from Bean’s. And I’m really enjoying that, but I’m in an isolated booth.
ABIGAIL BRESLIN: Yeah, I love animated movies, so yeah, I’d love to do one, for sure. But I liked doing it like this, and I don’t think that they do many animated movies like that. But I suppose I’d be in an isolated booth too if it was a cool movie.
JD: But you’d still wear the wig and the gun and stuff.
AB: I’d still come completely, full out in the character’s costume.DA: Isla, can you tell us about creating the voice of Beans and if you feel like having to cover your accent so frequently in films made it easier to do the characterization?
IF: I kind of imagine Beans, if Clint Eastwood and Holly Hunter would have a love child, that would be Beans.
JD: I’d like to watch that.
GV: Yes.
IF: If you were around. No, and then the physicality of the character had already been created; I’d already seen 20 minutes of the movie and some linear drawings. So I knew how she moved. Gore was with me every step of the way vocally, and he was very specific about what he wanted. And no one ever wants to hire an Australian, so I’m just used to never doing my own voice, ever. I mean, they do want to hire — oh, that came out wrong. They do want to hire Australians, obviously.