The Oscars have a long history with the musical biopic: Consider “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” “Bohemian Rhapsody” and even the less straightforward Elton John film “Rocketman.” These staples of awards seasons are ripe for a bit of shaking up. Stepping in to do just that are two films that have created something of a subgenre in which animation and visual effects inject a new creative spark into the all-too-familiar tale of a musician’s rise from obscurity to fame.
‘Piece by Piece’
In Morgan Neville’s well-received animated documentary “Piece by Piece,” audiences engage in a high-energy version of Pharrell Williams’ life and musical output — all told through the magic of Lego animation. Neville, who is best known for his Oscar-winning 2013 doc “20 Feet From Stardom” and this year’s Emmy-nominated “Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in 2 Pieces,” says he was excited when Pharrell suggested they should tell his life story through Lego mini-figurines.
“I first met Pharrell in early 2019, and he told me that he loved my films and could see me doing the documentary about him, but he wanted us to shoot everything, then throw everything out and do it all again in Lego animation,” Neville recalls. “I loved his pitch, because it was so weird. At the time, I didn’t know if it would work, but it just felt like a big swing. We had to figure out the rules of this film: How do you get Lego characters to dance? So we did a 90-second proof of concept with Tongal studio, and everyone who saw it wanted to see more. I know it could have died in so many ways, but it gave us a fresh, new way of treating his story.”
To help realize Pharrell’s animated vision, Neville says he ended up making the film twice. “Before doing the animation, we wrote the film, did the interviews and got the music footage and clips,” he recalls. “We were constantly iterating and soft-locked the movie before beginning the animation with Howard E. Baker and his team at Pure Imagination Studios,” who had worked on Lego versions of “Batman,” “Jurassic World” and “Minions.” “Howard and I worked side by side for a couple of years,” Neville says.
“What I learned is that documentarians and animators come from opposite extremes. Animators have so much control, and documentarians have so little,” Neville says. “We wanted to preserve the language of documentary in a way that’s very fresh for animation. That meant throwing in some of the staples of the genre, such as including rough, handheld shots or featuring a boom hanging in a shot — all in stylized [computer-generated] Lego animation.”
Animation allowed Neville and his team to show what was happening inside Pharrell’s creative mind, as well as providing a cinematic way for the musician and his friends to recall their life experiences. It allowed the filmmaker to time travel and be there when the songs were being conceived. “It also gave us access to this fantasy gear that the music unlocks,” he adds. “That’s when it felt like we weren’t doing a documentary anymore, and anything was possible. One of the biggest joys I had in making the film was the fact that I could be inside some of the subjects’ heads as opposed to just filming their faces.”
‘Better Man’
Writer-director Michael Gracey uses a more realistic type of animation to reimagine the life and times of British pop star Robbie Williams in “Better Man.” The movie, which will be released in the U.S. by Paramount on Dec. 25, depicts the former member of the popular boy band Take That as a very expressive chimpanzee — thanks to motion-capture and CG work by Wētā FX.
The sweeping biopic charts the rise of the pop star, from his days as a cheeky 8-year-old in a working-class U.K. town to his battles with the usual pitfalls of fame and money. The major conceit of the movie came from Gracey, a visual effects supervisor before he directed Hugh Jackman in 2017’s “The Greatest Showman.” “Robbie has all these great stories about his life, and I told him that he should record them before he forgets all of them,” the director recalls. “He has a recording studio in his home in Los Angeles, so during the course of a year and a half, I visited him and recorded these stories, which served as the first draft of the movie.”
Later, Gracey would listen to the recordings and close his eyes and imagine the narrative playing out. “The idea of imagining Rob as a monkey was born out of me trying to come at the story from a different creative perspective,” he says. “We’ve recently had a bunch of musical biopics, and some people feel there’s a bit of fatigue in the genre because of the very familiar nature of the story. For me, what was unique about Rob’s story was the idea of a son realizing his father’s dreams, which is incredibly relatable. I heard him refer to himself as a monkey who performed to please his dad. That’s when I thought it would be great to lens this narrative through his point of view instead.”
The director believes that the audience automatically develops more empathy for Williams as a monkey. “When we watch animals in pain, our hearts go out to them immediately,” he notes. “As we were portraying Rob’s mental health issues, it allowed for a way of showing his self-loathing, and we were able to show him being judged by different versions of himself out in the crowd.”
Gracey praises Wētā visual effects supervisor Luke Millar, animation supervisor Dave Clayton and VFX producer Andy Taylor for their precise, beautiful work. “They created an amazingly detailed, high-res scan of Robbie’s eyes, and blended that with the performance of actor Jonno Davies. You can still recognize Robbie’s eyes in the monkey’s face. It’s incredible to be looking at the digital animal and seeing so much humanity reflected in that face.”
According to the director, Williams was a bit speechless when he first saw the final cut of the movie. “It wasn’t until the third time we watched it together that he could really engage with it,” says Gracey. “It must be very strange to watch your life play out in front of you, but it must be even more surreal to have you played by a monkey! There are not many stars on the planet who would agree to be seen in such a raw way.”
