Production
The book series by Cressida Cowell began coming to attention to the executives at Dreamworks Animation in 2004. Coming off her success to Over the Hedge, producer Bonnie Arnold shortly became interested in the newly acquired property. She kept focusing on the project as time went on, and when DreamWorks Animation co-president of production Bill Damaschke asked her what she wanted to work on next, she chose “How to Train Your Dragon”.
In initial development, the plot followed the original novel closely but was then altered. About halfway through production, Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, the writer-directors of Disney's Lilo & Stitch, took over as co-directors. The original plot was "heavily loyal to the book", but was regarded as geared to a too-young demographic and too "sweet" and "whimsical", according to Baruchel. In the novel, Hiccup's dragon, Toothless, is a Common-or-Garden Dragon, a breed that is equivalent in size of the Terrible Terror breed in the film. In the film, Toothless is a Night Fury, the rarest of all dragons, and is large enough to serve as a flying mount for both Hiccup and Astrid. Elements of Toothless's behavior were inspired by a domesticated mountain lion owned by Dean DeBlois's uncle. The filmmakers hired cinematographer Roger Deakins (known for frequently collaborating with the Coen brothers) as a visual consultant to help them with lighting and overall look of the film and to "add a live-action feel".
Read more about this topic: How To Train Your Dragon (film)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“... if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but it can not do without that life.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)