Roger Rabbit: Simon Wells on animating inside live action
Filmmaker Simon Wells joined Kingdom of Dreams to talk about Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a production that had to make drawn characters share physical space, eyelines, and comic timing with live actors. Directing inside that hybrid is less about style than about belief: if the camera does not treat the toon as solid, neither will we.
Every handshake, every weight shift, every glance off-screen is a directing problem before it is an animation problem. The live-action plate has to leave room for a performance that does not exist yet.
Wells's conversation is a masterclass in why the film still plays. The craft is interaction, not novelty, and interaction is directed one matched eyeline at a time.
Go deeper on Kingdom of Dreams
- → EP 147: Simon Wells on Who Framed Roger Rabbit
- → EP 325: Simon Wells on storyboarding The Forgotten Island
- → EP 122: Simon Wells on An American Tail: Fievel Goes West
Browse more director and animation conversations in the Kingdom of Dreams archive.
Original Kingdom of Dreams craft take based on our conversation with Simon Wells (EP 147).