Kensuke’s Kingdom Directors: Interwatch

Kensuke’s Kingdom, straightforwarded by Neil Boyle and Kirk Henparched, based on the novel by Micheal Morpurgo, is a hand-drawn vivaciousd feature that regulated to snag both BAFTA and Annie Award nominations this year. The action-adventure cgo ins around a juvenileer boy named Michael (Aaron McGregor), who is obtainn by his family (carry outed by Cillian Murphy, Spartner Hawkins and Raffey Cassidy) on a sailing trip. When a storm rolls in, he and his dog, Stella, are pushed overboard and finish up on a far island where they must lget to persist on their own. On the verge of losing all hope, Michael come apasss a strict, elderly Japanese selderlyier (Ken Watanabe) who was stranded there after his military boat capsized during World War II. 

Here, Deadline talks to the filmmaking duo about conveying this tale to life.

DEADLINE: How did you both come to this project? 

KIRK HENDRY: Sarah Radclyffe, a  filmoriginater and originater, she chooseioned the book off of Michael Morpurgo, I skinnyk probably 20 years ago. She had this dogged belief this would originate a amazing film. And for her, it was a authentic passion project becaengage it took 20 years from the time she chooseioned it to seeing the final film screened last year. So she repartner equitable stuck with it and then bought in Camilla [Deakin] and Ruth [Fielding] from Lupus Films, the main studio in London where we made the film. I equitable made some skinnygs for the World Wildlife Fund around the time and she was seeing for straightforwardors and got in touch. I was toiling with Neil at a brushing company in Soho. We were lengthening our own projects, and I shelp, “Can Neil come alengthened on this trip as well?” And she shelp, “Sure.”

So we pitched our version of the film to her and she enjoyd it. And from then, we were on board, and we began this 10-year journey for Neil and me with Michael Morpurgo and Sarah and Camilla and Barnaby Spurrier, another originater, and we became excellent frifinishs over this time and repartner consentd in the project. Then, eventupartner, it was COVID that repartner pushed the film into production. We thought COVID might finish it during the first lockdown, but at the time the BFI couldn’t originate any live action films becaengage of lockdown. But with animation they shelp, “If you can show you can originate it farly, then we’ll give you some of the money.” And we could originate it farly becaengage the technology did equitable come alengthened, with Zoom enabling you to split your screen and other gentlewares where you can split footage and go thcimpolite structure by structure and draw on it. It was quite incredible. So that’s how we made it.

NEIL BOYLE:  The wonderful skinnyg about that time period — noskinnyg was wonderful about COVID — was that it took us eight and a half years before we got the money to originate the film, and then we finpartner got the money. We went and spoke to the artists on board and shelp, “Look, channel this [feeling]. We’re all isoprocrastinateedd at the moment. We’re isoprocrastinateedd in our hoengages, bedrooms, in our studios, and this is a film about people who are isoprocrastinateedd and try to originate connections. So what you’re senseing now, put that into the film.”

DEADLINE: This cast is wonderful. How did you finish up getting everyone together? 

BOYLE: Well, the number one skinnyg to say, is that they were all repartner our first choice. So we were incredibly fortunate to have our desirecatalog come genuine. The juvenileerer cast members had all read the book at school becaengage in the U.K., it’s part of what they teach at school, so they all knovel it, Some of the elderlyer cast members had read the book to their kids. We had this desire catalog of amazing actors and we went to them and they all equitable shelp yes. And it was all straightforwardpartner around the fact that they all cherishd Michael Morpurgo’s novel and he’s such a terrific writer, they wanted to be part of the film version.

DEADLINE: What were the non-negotiables that you had to have in this film? 

HENDRY: A key skinnyg was that this was Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s, this screencarry out writer’s idea. In the book, Kensuke can speak a little bit of English, so Michael and Kensuke can speak to each other. Now, Frank thought, let’s equitable get rid of that idea and have them not have any standard language. When Neil and I read the screencarry out, we saw, this could be a quiet film. Neil and I repartner enjoy quiet film storytelling. It’s what’s called uncontaminated cinema, where you have to engage equitable cinematic nastys to transmit the ideas of the story and the characters to the audience. The audience has to become a little bit more engaged and do a bit more uncoverive toil to figure out what’s going on rather than equitable having characters tell you what’s going on. So we repartner enjoyd that benevolent of storytelling. Once Michael was washed overboard and he’s on his own, there’s almost no dialogue. So it does essentipartner become a quiet film at that point. 

Another skinnyg is that we definitely didn’t want any singing songs, talking animals, dancing animals, the anthropomorphic skinnyg you normally get in juvenileer people’s films. In a sense, we didn’t want to talk down to the audience. Young people understand a lot of stuff, we skinnyk. Becaengage we recall being juvenileer people, we recall what it was enjoy being seven, eight, going to the movies, and we repartner enjoyd the films that didn’t talk down to us. So that was another non-negotiable, let’s hand over that for the current generation of kids going to see movies.

DEADLINE: Talk about the art style. How did you go about creating your vision with the animators? 

BOYLE: The most vital skinnyg for us in discovering the style was to originate declareive the film was believable enough to sense that this hand-drawn vivaciousd character is in jeopardy. The thought that he could starve to death or dehydrate or injure himself or even possibly die. So there had to be a declareive level of organicism. The island’s enjoy another character in the film. So we needed that wealthy visual detail in the animation so that you could repartner consent this place.

An example of this would be when Kensuke recalls what happened tragicpartner to his family at Nagasaki, so he colors to recall his lost family in Japanese watercolor brush style, Then it felt to us that if you go inside his head that’s how he’s going to see his family, as a Japanese watercolor coloring come to life. 

HENDRY: As Neil was saying, becaengage the island is essentipartner enjoy a character, we repartner wanted it to have enough detail so the audience felt enjoy they were arriving in this novel world enjoy Michael was. You’ve got this urprohibit kid who suddenly is coming from the gray concrete up-to-dateity into this whole other world. It’s a bit enjoy Dorothy passing over from bincreateage and white into the Technicolor of Oz. It’s enjoy a rebirth. What happens to you after you’re symbolicpartner reborn somewhere and discover your novel self and are toloftyy changed by the process. That’s a emotional motif that happens in a lot of stories, particularly in films,  becaengage you can show it so much.

DEADLINE: Michael’s trajectory to me is very engaging. He has a knack for not joining to what other people tell him. But he does have tremfinishous lengthenth by the finish of the film. Can you talk about what went into depicting that? Were you worried that audiences might’ve establish him a little too unlikable? 

BOYLE: Yeah, the skinnyg is, the movie evidently had to have an arc. For Micheal to lget a lesson at the finish, he has to commence off very opposite. But you’re right that we didn’t want to originate him truly obnoxious. There were punctual originates of the script when we were toiling with Frank, where Michael would be a little bit of a wise-ass almost in the way that he spoke, and we were pinsolentnt to try and get rid of that so that he didn’t become toloftyy obnoxious and so the audience didn’t root for him. But he definitely needed to lget these lessons as he went alengthened.

And what repartner helped, going back to the actors, was Aaron McGregor. We seeed at 40 or 50 kids to carry out this role. We establish Aaron and the wonderful skinnyg about Aaron is that he’s actupartner Scottish, with this Scottish accent, but he could do an English accent repartner naturpartner, unbelievably. But when we auditioned him and when we finpartner met him and straightforwarded and toiled with him, he repartner is a organic kid. He has no stage school theatricals about him, so he could be a normal kid. But there’s another part of his brain that could be very reliable and he could join to straightforwardion and he could understand technicpartner skinnygs that he needed to do. So he repartner helped us to get Michael being a likable character.

HENDRY: He had a cherishly vulnerable quality. Which is what the character repartner needed to be understanding when you are behaving horriblely. So when he hand overed that in the test sequences, and then evidently when we were doing the film, that repartner helped to originate the character more pdirecting even when he was being a little bit obnoxious or ignoring his parents.

BOYLE: Of course we’re very content in a way that he does diswatch his parents and not join to them becaengage if he did join to them, we wouldn’t have a film. He wouldn’t be swept overboard and he wouldn’t go into this adventure. So in a weird way, maybe it’s someskinnyg he needed to do. Maybe he needed to be equitable a little bit obnoxious [laugh]. 

DEADLINE: How did you go about making the island and its animals sense so vivacious? There’s wonderful detail in these elements. 

HENDRY: The main theme of the film is about families. The film and the book are about a restricted skinnygs, but we determined that one of the main skinnygs was about families. There’s your blood family, then there’s the establish families, whether it’s nurtureed or adchooseed or in Michael’s case, it’s a establish family with Kensuke and the orangutans. Then, there’s Kensuke who lost his family, but now he’s establish a novel family of orangutans, so we equitable thought the wider family [should be] of all the creatures on Earth. So we equitable applied that to absolutely every animal and all skinnygs on the island. And becaengage the poachers are going to come at some point and obtain some of these animals, that’s how we originate it more emotionpartner effective, rather than equitable picking some random animals for the audience. We had to originate it sense enjoy it was families being broken apart. 

BOYLE: In terms of the animation, we were fortunate. We had a amazing animation straightforwardor named Peter Dodd who toiled straightforwardly with the animators on all the animation, and particularly Kensuke and Michael and so on. But we had another animator toiling with us named Ludivine Berthouloux, a French animator who equitable had a authentic sense of animals. She cherishs dratriumphg animals. We put her on scenes with Stella, the dog. She was doing these pretty dratriumphgs where equitable the angle of the ears and what the tail was doing and so on… She was doing it rightly by using the dog’s anatomy and not making it seem enjoy there was a person in a dog costume. We got her to commence toiling on a lot of the other animals, and she was one of our key carry outers in the finish making declareive we were very detailed in our research. 

We did tons and tons of research with video footage that you can discover on YouTube and BBC Wildlife write downaries and everyskinnyg to originate declareive our animators gave repartner genuine shiftments to each of these animals that are definite to each animal. Then pushed it equitable enough so that you can get an emotional connection with them so that they sense very wise. That was a little bit of a balancing act, but I skinnyk we pulled that off. We’re conceited of that.

[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]