Wile E. Coyote often defied gravity in his classic cartoon chases with the Road Runner when he ran off a cliff, hovered in thin air, and then plunged to the canyon floor the moment he looked down and realized he wasn’t on terra firma anymore. Now, he’s also defied the odds by starring in Coyote vs. Acme, the new live action/animation hybrid that was shelved back in 2023 and which is finally getting a well-deserved release.
Directed by Dave Green, the film follows Coyote as he takes legal action against the Acme Corporation, whose products have repeatedly malfunctioned during his pursuit of the Road Runner. Will Forte stars as Coyote’s attorney, with John Cena playing opposing counsel, and the film combines courtroom comedy with the Looney Tunes universe, placing animated characters next to humans and incorporating appearances from the likes of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Gags galore and mayhem ensues.
Here, in an exclusive interview with Post, Green, whose credits include Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows and Earth to Echo, talks about the challenges involved and the complex post pipeline.
What were the main technical challenges of pulling this together, as combining animation and live action is never easy?
“One of the hardest elements of making this movie was that while our human cast were on-set every day, our animated cast does not exist. Coyote is not a physical actor who can react to your direction. So, in the prep period we used a SketchViz process to storyboard the entire movie, much like a Pixar movie, and that enabled us to look at the movie as story reels and revise them as (we) went along. And that process allowed us to work with storyboard and story artists, and they would be the voice of Coyote, and they could speak on his behalf, and come up with gags and visual solutions to telling a story with a nonverbal character. And then we took the plans that they’d made and brought in Dave Barclay, this incredible puppeteer who worked on the Jim Henson movies for years, for the live-action shoot. And he built a life-size Coyote puppet, so the actors could have a Wile E. to look at on-set and see for eyeline reference, but also for early blocking passes to really see what he was going to do and how he’d move in a scene with them. And this puppet even had basic expressions. It could frown and smile, and it had a great personality brought to life by Dave, and it was really the first step to making sure that Wile E. could feel like he was in those scenes and existing in a live-action environment.”
You must have incorporated all the post work from day one, right?
“Exactly, as post began in prep, before we even shot a frame, because you're drawing what the characters are going to eventually be doing in animation from the get-go. And those drawings might be rudimentary storyboards, but they do give you a basic expression guide, and a basic way of watching a director's cut for example. So, we were able to carry a lot of those SketchViz illustrations into post, and things that we had drawn in prep very often could be reused for that first director's cut. And then they could also be used as expression guides for developing that animation into 3D animation for final.”
Break down the post pipeline for us.
“It was a process of making the movie in many passes and many different layers, so SketchViz began with traditional storyboards that we would cut into an animatic, and we would look at the scenes and give the animated characters and the human characters voices done by some really talented friends. Then we would put temp music and temp sound effects on those scenes to really see how they would play, and once we felt pretty good about that first pass of the animatic, we worked with Framestore to do the very first previs, and the goal was to have the live-action characters represented in previs. And then anything that was going to be an animated character would then be drawn and layered on top of that in SketchViz.
“So, for example, if we had a scene with Will and Coyote, you would see a previs actor of Will, and then on top of that you'd see a cartoon, hand-drawn SketchViz layer of Coyote. And it was a super cool way of seeing what the movie would eventually transform into, because you could really tell the difference between what was intended to be live action and what was intended to be animated. So, it was a great guide for the cast and the crew, and everyone in prep. They could just pull it up and then really look at specific shots and have an idea of what we intended to do, and know which elements were animated and which elements would be live action.”
How long was the whole prep period before you actually started shooting?
“That SketchViz and previs process lasted a year, and it was pretty intensive when you think about the number of layers involved. From the animatic to final animation was five layers, and then the animation itself has its own layering process.”
Tell us about the shoot, as you shot on-location, right?
“We shot in and around Albuquerque, and the shoot was a blast. We got lucky with a tremendous cast who were very patient and supportive, and who were also very imaginative and quick-witted, and they learned the ropes of working with Coyote really quickly. And the great local crew had worked on Breaking Bad, and we were shooting in real locations in the American Southwest, so it was also a great connection point for the Looney Tunes, who are always in and out of Albuquerque.”
I assume you had the visual effects team on-set?
“Yes, we had our Dneg visual effects supervisor George Murphy, who was there every day on-set. He was a great collaborator, and he wanted to make sure that we had the right freedoms and were able to shoot the movie in a really grounded way that felt real. That was the real joy of getting to work with Dneg. Their animation pipeline made it possible to integrate these characters, that should look and feel 2D, into a live-action world, and we got to use all these super-sophisticated tools that they bring to the table, like lighting, shadow and reflection programs. So, if Coyote is sitting at a reflective table, or if he's sitting behind a piece of glass, you see his reflection there. And in a traditionally 2D animated film, you wouldn't receive all the benefits of a powerful 3D workflow, which Dneg has.”
What was the most difficult scene to shoot?
“It was the second day of photography, with a scene where Coyote is walking through a metal detector and he has to place all these objects down on the table that he is trying to sneak into a courtroom, including weaponry, TNT and tons of stuff that comes out of his pocket. And behind him is a big line of people who are waiting to go through the metal detector, and that was a really challenging day because Coyote doesn't exist, and we're asking a crowd of 50 people to have their eyes track where he’s walking back and forth. And Dave our puppeteer couldn't use the puppet, as it would occlude the extras’ bodies. And we quickly realized that you can't just use a laser pointer to show everyone where Coyote would be in the final shot. It's got to be a physical object that people are looking at. And Dave had this entire bag of tricks that he would come to set with every day, so for this scene he was on his back on a skateboard, wheeling back and forth with just a pair of Coyote eyes that everyone could focus on, and that were small enough for the visual effects artist to paint out. So, getting that all lined up was a trial by fire, but it helped us learn on the fly.”
How long did post take after the shoot?
“Another year. We were based in London at Dneg, which was the main visual effects vendor for the film, and it was also where we set up our offices for editorial, which meant that we could build out this really tight-knit community of storyboard artists and sketch artists, along with my editorial team and the visual effects artists. Obviously, some of the artists were remote, but with so many people under one roof, it meant that ideas could flow quickly and easily from team to team. So, the workflow was something like this: we would create SketchViz on top of the live-action footage, and then we would hand that SketchViz off to Dneg, who would begin their animation and really pay attention to a pose-to-pose rhythm.
“What was important to us here was to honor the legacy of the original Looney Tunes cartoons and their snappy style of animation, so we really studied that and tried to emulate it the best we possibly could. That meant having strong character poses and making sure that the actions between those poses were very quick and very snappy, and our 2D SketchViz team guided that process. And we had an amazing editor, Carsten Kurpanek, who worked incredibly hard on this for the entire process, from the original animatics and SketchViz and previz version of the film, all the way to final picture. The DI was done at Picture Shop UK, by Sam Chynoweth, who’s a terrific colorist.”
Break down the VFX work for us. Who did what?
“Framestore only worked on the previs, then Dneg did the heavy lifting in tandem with our 2D and SketchViz team. Once we’d done all the prep we brought on artists to do traditional hand-drawn 2D on the film, so if you look really closely at the final product, there are many shots that have characters that are completely 2D-illustrated, and there are a couple of completely 2D sequences. And then in other shots, where various characters share the same frame, you have 3D animated characters done by Dneg artists, alongside the 2D ones. Then Duncan Studio did all the Bugs Bunny shots, and Jellyfish Pictures and Miscellaneous Studios did some additional animation as well.”
The sound design and mix were obviously key elements too.
“They were huge, and we did it all at Warner Bros. De Lane Lea in London with sound designer Jimmy Boyle and re-recording mixers Chris Burden and Jonathan Rush. They were terrific, and it was incredibly fun mixing this movie in Dolby Atmos. We began with the original cartoon sounds that we're all familiar with, like the Road Runner’s beeps, but then we were really boosting and making them feel bigger for the big screen, so that was a great way to stretch the sonic landscape. We really wanted Road Runner to feel and sound like a jet engine running by at 500 miles an hour, and the sound work was a big part of the excitement of bringing this movie to life on the big screen.”
It took a few years, but now it’s finally here. How do you look back on the experience?
“We’re all very proud of it. The overall mission of this project was to make it feel like Coyote’s real, and that he could actually walk down the street in our universe. That's what makes a hybrid film so much fun to create.”