By Iain Blair
COVID may still be raging, and political, social and economic angst is at an all-time high, but Netflix’s first original live-action/visual effects musical — David Talbert’s Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey — reminds us all that the holiday season has finally arrived. And to celebrate, Talbert, who also wrote and produced, has created a completely original and inclusive cinematic experience.
Writer/director David Talbert and producer Lyn Sisson-Talbert on the set of Jingle Jangle.
The fantastical holiday tale follows an eccentric toymaker (Forest Whitaker), his tenacious granddaughter (Madalen Mills) and a magical invention with the power to reunite their family and change their lives forever. The film also stars Keegan-Michael Key, Ricky Martin, Anika Noni Rose and John Legend, who provides an original song.
I recently talked to Talbert — whose credits include First Sunday, Baggage Claim (which he adapted and directed from his own novel) and Almost Christmas, about making the film — the workflow and his love of editing and post.
This was a hugely ambitious project. What were the big technical challenges of making a musical stuffed full of VFX?
I’d never done a big visual effects musical film before, and when I started writing this, an executive told me, “Don’t write the budget, write your imagination. We’ll figure out the budget later.”
No one had ever given me a blank canvas like that before, so off I went, not realizing I’d backed myself into dealing with one of the toughest possible films to pull off: a visual effects musical that’s also a period piece with animation and CGI characters and narration. I checked all the boxes.
It was a very steep learning curve, and you’re suddenly dealing with VFX stuff like LIDAR and cyberscanning (via Clear Angle Studios), which I knew nothing about, but Netflix surrounded me with a great team. We shot it all at Arborfield Studios just outside London, and right away I met with Framestore and got the best VFX supervisor and producer. They held my hand until I got a handle on it all, and then we were off and running.
I’m assuming you started integrating post, the animation and all the visual effects from the very beginning.
On day one. We began doing previz. Then we began to work on the Buddy 3000 robot and started motion capture for the puppet Don Juan Diego. Those were the biggest elements.
How did you handle all the audio for the musical numbers during the shoot?
I got Harvey Mason Jr., who’s done so many music projects, including Dreamgirls and Straight Outta Compton. He helped me understand that the best approach was to have all the songs prerecorded so you have latitude on set and you’re not constantly worried about the live sound, as you can just layer it in later in post.
Madalen Mills and David Talbert on the set of Jingle Jangle
But I insisted that we do Forest’s song, “Over and Over,” live on set because of the raw emotion in it, and the crew all gave him an ovation when he finished. It was so special.
Tell us about post. Where did you do it, and how did COVID affect it?
We began at Pacific Post in Sherman Oaks, but when COVID hit, we moved it to my house, and Pacific provided all the Avid systems for us. We did all the sound at Warner on the lot and the DI at FotoKem.
Do you like post, and why?
I love post, and every part of it. There’s the film you write, the one you shoot and the one you post, which is where you actually make the film and shape the material. It’s where you can correct, pivot and discover – and post for me is all about discovery.
For instance, when we began post, the plan was to do all the storybook elements as watercolors, but as we got into it, we realized it wasn’t that interesting. My wife, who produces with me, came up with the idea of making miniature CG versions of the cast to tell the story. And when I saw the first test, it took my breath away. So for me, post is everything, from visuals like that to the sound and even absence of sound.
You had three editors cut this — Michael Tronick, Joe Galdo and Virginia Katz. How did you all work together, and what were the main editing challenges?
Ginny did all the cutting through production, and Digital Dailies did the dailies. Then when we got back to the States, I brought in Michael. But then halfway through my director’s cut, we realized it was way more than one editor could handle. So Joe, who was assistant editor, was bumped up to main editor.
The big challenge was integrating all the music into the film and the storytelling through all the visual effects. We knew that if you took out all the music and VFX, it would stand alone as a story. So my two big references were Paddington 2 and what they did with the pop-up book and how it elevated the storytelling, and Pixar’s Up and what they were able to do with no dialogue and how at the start they broke your heart through the animated characters. I knew if I could find that heart and emotion, and couple it with innovation and the type of big set piece musical moments The Greatest Showman had, we’d have something.
What did you aim for in the audio mix?
Supervising sound editors Ai-Ling Lee and Tobias Poppe and re-recording mixer Gary Rizzo really steered the ship. The big challenge was how to make it all sound big and epic yet intimate at the same time. Because it’s an intimate story. It was a lot of work to find exactly the right balance.
There are a huge number of VFX. Tell us about working with visual effects supervisor Brad Parker and what was entailed?
Pretty much every frame has some VFX, and Brad (Ad Astra, Godzilla) and VFX producer Roma Van Den Bergh oversaw this huge army of artists working on them in London, LA and Montreal. Brad believed anything was possible. He got the Framestore team right on anything I threw at him, and we had so many key creatives, including Eric Guaglione, who did Buddy and Don Juan, and Ian Spendloff and Tim Jenkinson, who oversaw all the storybook animation.
What about the DI? How important is it? Who was the colorist, and how closely did you work with them and the DP?
The DI is so crucial. FotoKem’s Kostas Theodosiou was the colorist (using Resolve), and it’s our third film together. He’s just a beast. He does all of Chris Nolan’s films and is so experienced and creative — not to mention his hairstyle, which is just like Elvis’. That’s why I call him “The Greek Elvis.”
He and our DP, Remi Adefarasin, worked very closely on the look, and we set out to give it a classic grounded feel —so that it wouldn’t look like a bag of Skittles, but the colors would pop. The look also mixed Victorian fashion with very bright African prints, a style and palette we called AfroVictorian. The biggest thing was making sure all the CG characters felt integrated in the scene, not plastered on, and Brad also sat in for those sessions.
Did you always love musicals?
Always. Music is a foundation of the Black church, and I grew up with all that in my bones. My earliest childhood memories are of my mother playing Aretha Franklin and Al Green, and I loved musicals like Doctor Doolittle, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Willy Wonka. I’ve also done a lot of musical theater.
Did it turn out the way you first envisioned it?
Hell no! It blows my mind what we were able to come up with.
Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.
