Less than a decade ago, the world was bombarded with a video game that almost instantly became a sensation. True to its name, Angry Birds struck a chord with everyone who played it. The crowd-puller that the game was led to the creation of a range of merchandise from stuffed toys to clothing lines. In 2016 came Angry Birds – the movie, and it took the box office by storm worldwide.
Clay Kaytis, the director of Angry Birds , speaks about the journey of making a film from the video game. “It was very exciting because we did not have much to work with. When you’re working with a text, you have a firm ground to base the film in and also expectations from the readers. On the other hand, the video game didn’t really have much of a storyline – so creating a story, building characters and attributing personalities to them was a fun experience.”
Apart from Angry Birds , Clay has also worked on movies such as Frozen , Bolt and Tangled amongst others. He has also been the head of animation at Walt Disney Animation Studios.
He notes that the most challenging aspect of making the film was the sheer size of the Angry Birds universe. “There is a separate island for the birds and another one for the pigs. And then there’s the space in between. It is huge. We had about 400 people working on the design and animation – I think that’s the best part about animated films – the number of people working as a team” he says.
“My favourite part of the movie is the final showdown between the birds and the pigs,” he says, “the action, the music, the magnitude of everything – it was very exciting.”
He says that unlike most people whose favourite character is Chuck, he holds a special place for Bomb. “I love all of them immensely. But Bomb is my favourite character,” he laughs.
The movie has some cleverly-placed and subtle adult jokes. About this he notes: “Those were jokes that made us, the makers, laugh. We figured that it would make sure that the movie appealed to a wider audience. I laughed myself when I saw the movie in theatres. That was the type of comedy we were aiming at.”“For me, the biggest takeaway from the film was the characters – the amount of work we put into creating them was immense, and they will always stay with me,” he adds.
The Angry Birds Movie premiers on Sony PIX on June 25 at 1 pm and 9 pm.
