How They Animated 'The Lego Batman Movie'

♫ (Batman theme song)

[Woman] Batman, we love you!

[Other Woman] Thanks for saving the city!

[Batman] You're welcome.

Hi, I'm Mike Seymour from fxguide.com for Wired,

looking at the tech of making the Lego Batman Movie.

Animal Logic has another hit on their hands

with the Warner Bros. The Batman movie.

These films are like really hard to make.

Gotham City alone is made up of 220 million

distinct Lego blocks.

All these blocks have a unique patina.

Each brick, when it's made, has a lookup table

into various scratch maps, thumbprints,

dent maps, edge profiles, and all the other effects

that makes each one of them slightly unique.

It's the bat cave!

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.

Ohhhhhhh.

Oof.

(gasps)

Batman. Whoa.

You're darn right, whoa.

In the film, Animal Logic used its own glimpse renderer

to produce the spectacular Gotham City.

By the way, that set alone would be six and a half

football fields wide if it was real.

The shot with the largest number of elements

had over three trillion primitives.

Give or take a bit.

Significantly larger than the original Lego movie.

But that wasn't the hardest part about the film.

While technical issues are huge

and something to think about, the real challenge

was getting a great performance from the 1.5 inch tall

Batman toy.

In the first Lego movie, the lead character was Emmett

and he had just two black dots for eyes.

Here, in the Batman film, he only has really a glowing area

under a cowl for eyes.

All the performances come from replacement animation.

To deliver his lines, every expression means that one cowl

pops off and a new cowl is added.

You'll never see the traditional Disney-style squash

and stretch animation on Batman's face.

Even the bending of an elbow.

If you see an arm bend, then it does so

by having digital Lego blocks being swapped in and out

to make the bending shape of the arm.

It's all animated brick replacement.

Given how limited this kind of stepped keyframe approach

is for a facial performance, Animation Director,

Rob Coleman, and the team at Animal Logic,

tried really hard to give the audience every hook

to really believe in the characters.

This shows, I think, in the nonverbal acting when,

say, characters listening to other characters

in the scene.

The team has to work out how to animate what's being said

and do the facial animation of the dialogue.

But also, they have to make you question,

Does that other character that's listening

actually believe what's going on?

All of which plays into the subtext of the scene.

And it's the subtext that the audience loves.

Personally for Rob Coleman,

Rosario Dawson was extremely valuable in this regard.

She's the voice of Barbara Gordon.

Rosario acted as much when she was listening

to the other actors doing their voiceovers,

as she did when she was delivering her own lines.

Which gave Rob these really great moments

of a living, thinking, Barbara Gordon.

Especially when she's listening

to the BS of Robin and Batman.

I can wear my costume, too.

Well, luckily for us,

you left your costume back--

(fabric tears) Rip!

That's perfect.

It's called the Lego Batman Movie.

Just saying.

Aw, you're such a great padre.

What're you doing?

I'm trying to give you a big old hug.

Thought you were attacking me.

All the acting has to be delivered with just nine points

of movement for any Lego character.

This notion of subtext was also picked up in the lighting.

Is Batman moving more towards the idea of a family,

in which case, he moves more into the light.

Or does he want to go off on his own,

in which case, he steps more into darkness.

Every shot had its emotional beats

underscored by the lighting.

This is really hard to get right in a real film,

when everyone's on set together,

let alone when you're lighting plastic toys months apart.

To help bring all this together,

department heads met at regular turnover meetings.

For each scene, before they went into production,

the director, Chris McKay,

would outline at a pretty high level,

where the scene is at in terms of

the characters' arc and development.

What's going on?

Why the scene was actually in the movie

and what he wanted the audience to take away from it.

And then each of the lighting, animation effects,

and other departments would be able to contribute

their own ideas as to how to deliver on that scene.

Animation is hard.

It is really hard.

Keeping performances fresh and spontaneous

is incredibly complex.

I guess that's the nature of all animation.

But just how hard is it?

Watch this simple side gag.

[Robin] Woohoohoo!

(screeching tires)

Oof.

I am so sorry.

As soon as I get back to the bat cave,

I will make sure that Alfred puts seat belts on there.

That took quite a few takes to get right.

In fact, the gag of Robin hitting his head

on the dashboard, which may be kind of a small thing,

but to hit his head in a way that was deemed funny,

but not gratuitous, took 45 takes and months to do.

And it was just seven seconds of screen time.

Don't forget, subscribe for more behind the scenes action.

I'm Mike Seymour for Wired.

♫ (Batman theme song)

[Batman] This movie has everything.