In addition, Lowery discusses his love ofAndorand why he prefers the series to a movie.
DAVID LOWERY: Thank you.
LOWERY: That is a great question.
Image via A24
The entirety ofA Ghost Story, perhaps, just because we were never confident that the sheet would work.
Every movie has them, and they always feel like, Nothing has ever been harder.
And then you make the next one.
You’re like, What was I thinking about?
That was a piece of cake.Thisones the hardest.
That’s because you climbed the hill already on the previous one and solved whatever you had to solve.
Image via Disney+
LOWERY: Yeah, and often there are things like the Great Hall sequence inThe Green Knight.
And if the answer was yes, we moved on.
Then I had to figure out how to make everything feel intentional in the edit.
Image via Disney+
I’m glad you asked this question because I need to not forget about that sequence.
How did this short film happen for you?
Was it Alfonso [Cuaron] reaching out?
Image via Disney+
Had you seen the previous ones, and you were like, I wanna do this?
So, I knew about that.
Part of the reason I said yes was I just wanted to go talk about movies with Alfonso.
Image via Buena Vista Pictures
I’d never met him before.
So, I thought, We’re not gonna make this till next Christmas.
This sounds like just another joy.
Image via Disney+
And I get to elaborate with Alfonso.
Of course I’m gonna say yes to this.
So, that’s how it came about.
Image via Disney+
That leads me to my next question.
Things always change in the production process.
I did not realize you originally were thinking about this with live-action.
One of the things that Alfonso encouraged me to do was to make it my own.
He’s like, I wrote this, but make this a David Lowery movie.
You start to bring more of yourself into it.
Moon, a curious young owl, finds herself trapped in a Christmas tree destined for Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. Trying to escape the city, Moon befriends a lost little girl named Luna. Together, they embark on an adventure.
I love ourGreen Knightfox and I love Elliott inPete’s Dragon, although he doesn’t talk.
I didn’t feel that was necessary for this one.
That was the very first inkling of stepping into a different territory with this movie.
So, we put together this incredibly extensive, spectacular chase sequence.
Finding which ones are the most necessary to the story was my big learning curve.
Every beat of an animated film needs to contribute to the story.
You could be like, Oh, look at what the sun is doing through the trees.
Let’s go shoot that, and maybe we’ll use it, maybe we won’t.
It was an incredibly difficult sequence.
His oner work is insane.
LOWERY: Especially as it’s gotten more invisible.
It’s still going on.
You don’t even think about it.
It’s really a new level of it for him.
Talk about the construction of that because I think it just plays so well.
It was originally very underlined in the script.
Not because it’s unimportant but because it was something that could emerge much more gracefully and beautifully.
It’s something that you probably would not expect as a reference point, but it certainly was one.
LOWERY: It really is, especially when the movie needs both languages.
LOWERY: This one just was an automatic G. I am very proud of this G rating.
That gets us our PG, and we’re cool.
I love that David Lynch has made a G-rated movie, so I wanna continue in that tradition.
One of things with animation, and we talked about this, is the cost.
The short is 22 minutes.
Did you always know going in, We can’t go over this amount of time?
How did that work in figuring out the runtime?
This shot is gonna cost this much more to fully animate and render.
LOWERY: I’m a cardboard fan.
This movie fulfills all of my cardboard dreams.
So, to keep those, like the chase sequence, I had to lose other things.
And you really are, again, looking to confirm every frame is serving that story.
I’m really grateful that Disney+ is making short films like this because it’s fantastic.
Before I run out of time with you, they sent me screeners ofSkeleton Crewthis morning.
It was really special.
I know you are, as well.
I wanna sit back over December and watch this story unfold.
They went back to the original Star Wars movies.
Did you get to play with any of the matte paintings?
Did you get to do anything vintage Star Wars in your episodes?
Literally,these characters were hand puppets, and that’s still what they are.
I also just love that Star Wars can include that.
The series stars Jude Law.
I have not seen the show yet, but I do think thatAndoris the best Star Wars since 1980.
It’s a masterpiece.
It doesn’t make sense how good it is.
Hopefully, I’m going to do a Collider event forAndorSeason 2.
For Season 1,we did the first three episodes as an event on the Disney lot.
Seeing those episodes on a movie screen was amazing.
It’s streaming on Disney+ right now and it looks like it was shot on 35-millimeter in 1977.
Streaming can hold up with some film grain on it.
Andy Serkis starred as Kino Loy in a 3-episode arc in ‘Andor.’
Iwantto see that kind of stuff.
You gotta do better.
LOWERY: I wish I could show you the 16-millimeter grade forPeter Pan & Wendybecause it looked freaking great.
It looked like we shot on 16 and it was beautiful.
An Almost Christmas Storyis available to watch on Disney+ now.
Trying to escape the city, Moon befriends a lost little girl named Luna.
Together, they embark on an adventure.
