'The Iron Giant', Storyboard Artist, Mark Andrews

0:00Mark AndrewsPicked. I would see storyboard artists from Quest for Camelot get picked and go over to Brad's camp. And I'm all, "What the hell? Does this guy not know cinema?" Right? "Does not know composition? Why is he picking all these other people?" and so I was the last man standing on Quest for Camelot, just doing revisions for the director out of editorial. I would come in every morning, there'd be a stack of his sketches, and I'd just sit there eight hours a day and clean up the sketches and send it back in. That was my life for a couple months until finally I got the word that the, I was wrapped. And, Brad wanted me over on Giant… Iron Giant. So when I walked over to get on Iron Giant, I'll never forget this, I walked in, to the office, the conference room, to meet him. He's all, "Thank God you're here."

0:59Jawad MirThank you so much, man, Mark, for joining, this podcast to talk about Iron Giant.

1:06Mark AndrewsIron Giant.

1:07Jawad MirYeah. And, I'll tell you my very first memory of Iron Giant.

1:12Mark AndrewsOkay.

1:12Jawad MirSo I... It came out, I think, in August 1999, if I'm not mistaken. And…

1:18Mark AndrewsAugust 6th.

1:20Jawad MirAugust 6th, okay. And it was six months after Prince of Egypt had come out.

1:27Mark AndrewsAh, yes.

1:28Jawad MirI remember DreamWorks…

1:29Mark AndrewsI do., huh

1:29Jawad Mir... One of the first DreamWorks films. And it was early in the, in that time when animation was going beyond Disney, right? And I was a huge fan of Prince of Egypt, anything DreamWorks did. And then all of a sudden I see this trailer of this movie with a giant robot, you know, Iron Giant. And I'm like, "Why... It does… this is not gonna do well. It's not gonna do well. Nobody's gonna like it." Like, I was just being very cynical and silly at the time. A little fan of DreamWorks inside me maybe became biased. And when it came out, then a couple of people said, "You know, we should go watch it." I'm like, "Okay, let's go watch it." So I went to see it. I loved it, right? But then the box office numbers came out, and it tanked.

2:14Mark AndrewsYeah.

2:14Jawad MirBut having said all that, the film became such a cultural phenomena that it was in Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One as one of the main characters.

2:26Mark AndrewsYeah.

2:27Jawad MirRight? But I just wanted to share that with you about my context with Iron Giant, and I've seen that movie many times with my kids. I just saw it again this morning, on my anamorphic monitor. What an amazing piece of film.

2:41Mark AndrewsAwesome. Yeah, thanks for sharing. I appreciate that.

2:45Jawad MirHow did you get on board on Iron Giant? The story behind that. Let's start with that first.

2:50Mark AndrewsI was over at Hanna-Barbera, and working on The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest. They were rebooting Jonny Quest. Which was really fun, 'cause I loved Jonny Quest as a kid. But my brother, who's also in the animation industry, and a buddy of mine, Dave Prince, they were both, working at Disney, and one of their mentors was Bill Perkins. Bill Perkins was the art director on Aladdin. So I would go over there and have lunch with them all the time, so I got to know Bill. So when Warner Brothers decided to have an animation studio and get into the game because it seemed like animation was coming back and everybody was making huge money, he called up my brother and I and said, "Why don't you come on over here to Warner Brothers?" And we said, "Okay." So he essentially got us in. No portfolios needed. And so we got in there, and, I worked on Quest for Camelot, which was their first one under Bill Croyer.

3:57Jawad MirI remember that.

3:58Mark AndrewsAnd then they had a director change, and they gave it, gave it to his co-director. And so I worked on that. So in the middle of that, Warners bought Turner.

4:13Jawad MirYeah.

4:13Mark AndrewsAnd I had known Brad because I had a couple friends working on Ray Gun for Brad. And so I was very impressed with Brad. I loved what he was doing. He cursed. He wasn't making animation for kids. He was making a… animation for adults. And I'm all, "It's about fucking time." because I'm a, I'm a PG-13, R-rated filmmaker. I grew up on anime, right? I was a kid with The White Lions, Star Blazers, G-Force, Robotech, Akira. That's what I loved. I appreciated the Disney stuff, and the, and the art of it. But I was more the Warner Brothers, Bugs Bunny, Tex Avery, let's be irreverent, you know? So I re… I really felt already this is the guy. This is somebody I would love to work for, right? Work with…

5:10Mark Andrews... 'cause he's changing. So when I heard that they had, Warner Brothers bought Turner, all of a sudden there was a show and tell in our building where we worked in Glendale at, Warner's Animation. I went in and I saw storyboards for Ray Gun. Now, they didn't wanna do Ray Gun. They wanted Brad to pick from their library of stuff, and Warner's has a massive library. It's one of the biggest libraries of IP there is on the planet. And he picked this little, you know, book called Iron Giant, Pete Townshend, and, that's what he was going to do. And so I started drawing stuff. We had a little pitch of kind of what he was gonna do with it and what it was about, you know, in a big theater that they rented for this big meeting. He's cursing and dropping F-bombs all over the place… And so I'm all, "I gotta work for this guy." So this is gonna be the next one up right after, Quest for Camelot, and so I wanted to be on it, and so I started drawing pictures.

6:19Mark AndrewsI didn't have a script or anything, so I'm just drawing pictures just from his pitch, right? Getting in the mood and sending them over because he wanted to see everybody's portfolio. So I was already laying images of Iron Giant in my portfolio all wide screen, 239, you know, stuff. And I was never picked. I would see storyboard artists from Quest for Camelot get picked and go over to Brad's camp. And I'm all, "What the hell? Does this guy not know cinema," right? "Does not know composition? Why is he picking all these other people?" and so I was the last man standing on Quest for Camelot, just doing revisions for the director out of editorial. I would come in every morning, there'd be a stack of his sketches, and I'd just sit there eight hours a day and clean up the sketches and send it back in. That was my life for a couple months until finally I got the word that, I was wrapped and, Brad wanted me over on Giant… Iron Giant.

7:22Mark AndrewsSo when I walked over to get on Iron Giant, I'll never forget this. I walked in, to the office, the conference room to meet him. He's all, "Thank God you're here." And I'm all, "Wait, what?" And there's his head of story, Jeff Lynch. And they're all, "Yeah, you were the first one we asked for, and we couldn't get you. They were holding on to you. Every time we asked for somebody we're all, 'And we'll take Mark Andrews now. Is he still available?' 'Nope.' And they're all, 'Okay, well then this guy. Is Mark Andrews available?' 'Nope.' 'Okay. Well, then this is our, second pick.'" So they had wanted me the whole time. So I was going over there pissed off.

8:03Jawad MirThat's amazing. What a great stories.

8:05Mark AndrewsYeah. Yeah.

8:07Jawad MirThat's awesome.

8:07Mark AndrewsAnd it was... And it was a, you know, it was a match made in heaven from there on out. I drew real fast, and I was cinematic and the backgrounds was just a… as important to me as what the characters were doing in the foreground and I got it. We seemed to s… speak the same language. And so, you know, I boarded a crap ton of Iron Giant.

8:33Jawad MirRight. You know, Brad Bird, I think it was one of his early films. I'm not sure if he had... He probably had done some before, but that was the first time I think his name sort of started becoming more,.. People started noticing it. But, it's probably impossible ever to find anybody who made a film and it tanked despite the fact how good it was because the numbers didn't reflect it. And he ended up either directing Mission Impossible III next or Incredibles. I don't remember which one he did next.

9:05Mark AndrewsIncredibles came next

9:06Jawad Mir... In… Incredibles.

9:08Mark AndrewsYeah.

9:08Jawad MirAnd then with Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible III, which relaunched the franchise in a completely different direction.

9:14Mark AndrewsYeah.

9:15Jawad MirI mean, it's really unheard of for someone's film to tank and then they go on Disney and Pixar to make this box office hit.

9:25Mark AndrewsYeah. Well, I mean, that's what got him up at Pixar, right? Because everybody saw it and loved the film.

9:31Jawad MirYeah.

9:31Mark AndrewsYou know? And so Steve Jobs started courting him and saying, "Come on up to Pixar. They totally screwed you over there at Warner Brothers. Come on up to Pixar and we'll do it right? And we'll do your stories."

9:47Jawad MirYeah. And was it… Do you think it was marketed wrong, Iron Giant, or was it just too much competition?

9:52Mark AndrewsA hun… 100%. No, there was no competition back then. There's only, there's only three studios. There's no competition.

10:00Jawad MirI mean, I mean, it's like…

10:01Mark AndrewsPlenty of room. Yeah.

10:03Jawad MirI know, like, not animation film, but other films, like, for mature audience.

10:07Mark AndrewsWell, yeah, we opened the same day, Sixth Sense opened. M. Night's first… ... Big movie, you know? So but, you know, animation was doing good. I mean, it was a, it was the return of animation. It was kind of a new golden age back then where lots of people were... I mean, we hadn't hit the, we hadn't hit the level of Beauty and the Beast, right?

10:29Jawad MirRight.

10:29Mark AndrewsAnd Lion King levels. But it, animation was making a comeback, so people were going to see it. I don't think anybody knew it was out. You know, Warner Brothers, to spend… You have the marketing money that people never talk about when they talk i… i… in budgets. And so…

10:49Jawad MirYeah

10:49Mark Andrews... To get the word out, especially back then when you didn't have an online presence, it was strictly advertising and billboards and all that crap. You know, commercials, TV commercials. They charge a lot, the TV, you know? So that's a lot of money. And then they had a big Wild West, you know, with Will Smith…

11:11Jawad MirWill Smith

11:11Mark Andrews... And Kevin Kline that was coming out. That was a huge fucking disaster. I mean, it was such an awful…

11:17Jawad MirYeah

11:17Mark Andrews... Movie. But they spent all the money on that. So where are they gonna siphon the money off of? They're all, "Yeah, we don't really... Quest for Camelot didn't do hot. That bombed. This Iron Giant thing, we can't just shut down the studio. It's gonna cost too much, so we might as well get some money. But then we're shutting down the studio." You know, which was all unbeknownst to anybody. I didn't know that was happening when I was at Warner Bros. We went on to do Osmosis Jones next, and we had tons of stuff in development that was exciting. But, you know, you just don't know what, you know, what they're thinking. But they're a horse trade, so they're siphoning money off and they're putting into that, and it will do what it does. We had A CinemaScores coming out of, our re… our reviews, you know?

12:06Jawad MirRight.

12:06Mark AndrewsAnd the audience preview. They're all, "Ah," crying in the thea… I mean, I think… When the, you know, execs at Warner saw this, they're like, "We might have a hit here, but we don't know what to do. We don't have any money to do it because it's going to a big bet." You know? So that's what you have to do. It's a business, people.

12:29Jawad MirYeah, of course.

12:30Mark AndrewsIt's a business, and sometimes good and great doesn't matter. That's all subjective, you know? And so that's, that's what you're wrestling with out there, you know?

12:44Jawad MirYeah. No, it's, it's true, and marketing can break or make a movie. I remember around the same time, I mean, Michael Bay is such a big name.

12:51Mark AndrewsYeah.

12:52Jawad MirUp until then he had done, Bad Boys, The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, which was one ri… but he made The Island, with Scarlett Johansson…

13:01Mark AndrewsRight

13:01Jawad Mir... And Ewan McGregor.

13:03Mark AndrewsYeah.

13:03Jawad MirAnd he fought, DreamWorks Marketing, which I think at the time was headed by Terry Press, and I could be wrong, that the trailer is not going to work. They just didn't know how to sell that movie, and a Michael Bay movie opened up with a $14 million, which was even at that time was extremely low.

13:22Mark AndrewsYes.

13:22Jawad MirSo marketing can bre… and Now, The Island was a pretty good movie. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's, it's a pretty good... It's probably one of my s…

13:28Mark AndrewsI've seen, I've seen it. Yeah.

13:28Jawad MirYeah, it's probably one of his better movies. But…

13:30Mark AndrewsIt's super inventive, yeah.

13:32Jawad MirYeah. But again, marketing can make and break, you know. And, you know, going back to your particular work, Mark, what were you… When you came in finally after having this misunderstanding that they didn't…

13:46Mark AndrewsYeah

13:46Jawad Mir... Want you or you didn't want them…

13:47Mark AndrewsYeah

13:48Jawad Mir... What were you given the task of? What were you working on from the beginning to the middle stages and the aftermath?

13:56Mark AndrewsMy first… I think my first assignment was, Hogarth discovering the Iron Giant at the power plant. So it was the very, you know, "I'm gonna sneak out at night. I'm gonna armor myself up. I got my jacket, I got a helmet, I've got a BB gun with a flashlight. I gotta sneak out the house, get up over the roof." See, 'cause he hears a clunk, right? As he's watching the scary movie. So I did the scary movie part, which was really fun. So that whole sequence is he's home alone watching the scary movie, hearing a sound, being all energized from the scary movie, his imagination, him crawling up on the roof and finding giant footprints leading off into the woods, all the way of him hunting through the woods until he gets to, you know, the power plant. That was kind of my transition with the scary movie, off into the woods was my, was my first thing. And so, you know, that's nighttime. And in nighttime, lighting means everything at nighttime, right?

14:57Mark AndrewsSo, and in the boards, we usually don't have enough time to put any kind of lighting or shading. But I'm on the, I'm on the project. It's my first board, right? I'm fast, so, I shaded the whole damn thing. I put in lighting, the glow of the television, lit the thing, go outside with the flashlight, the stars and the moon. I light the thing, getting into all my values. Not to show off, but just to show what I can do, you know?

15:28Jawad MirOf course.

15:28Mark AndrewsBecause I was held back, you know, so I really wanted to impress them and basically confirm that they've got somebody who's good, you know?

15:39Jawad MirYeah.

15:39Mark AndrewsAnd is really into, in… into the story and into the cinema. I mean, that's what impressed me about Brad, is most of the time in storyboards, and I'm not knocking Bill Peet, I mean, he's a legend out of Disney, but there's no cinema, you know? The cinema was left to a workbook artist, in animation and 2D at that time. 'Cause, that was the first step before you go into layout. So they're really thinking of the cinema. The board artist really don't. The background isn't, isn't really a thing. It's a couple of lines maybe just to kind of suggest there. But to me, that image making of visual storytelling is not just about the character emoting in the front, right? It's about what's happening in the background, right? It's the camera angle. It's the lens choice that you use. It's the light. I mean, it's everything. So that was my filmmaker in me just co… coming out in droves. And finally you have a, an animation director. And I'm 25, 26 at the time, right? No.

16:40Mark AndrewsI th… yeah, I'm close to 30s or in my 30s. And so but, you know, just a few years out of school into animation. So still a newbie, not a vet, but that was the one thing that was pissing me off about being in a G-rated industry, you know, is that this stuff wasn't thought about upfront, you know, where it should be in the boards. How do I evaluate? So that was my first sequence, you know. I did it, and, you know, Brad liked it, and he got in with his persnickety notes, which is always great because he's also very visual. But I really, you know, could appreciate that about Brad. And then I went on to do the opening with the lighthouse where the Hogarth was, gets, mistakes it for a lighthouse. Again, night. So I'm shading it, you know. I did the interrogation scene, which was in the dark, and I did it all with, big black Sharpie markers.

17:41Mark AndrewsI colored it to make it absolutely black so the light on the desk was the only thing lighting up so Kent Mansley could come out of the darkness, you know? But, that stuff's important in visual storytelling, and Brad really appreciated it. So I felt, I felt under kind of Brad's wings and, Jeff Lynch's wings, who has taught me so much about filmmaking, and cinematography, that I was just eating it up, you know? It was, it was a joy to be at work and to be working really hard under the pressures… But, getting just, full doses of an education at the same time, and to be able to turn them right back around at my desk and draw and deliver.

18:29Jawad MirWow.

18:29Mark AndrewsAnd then all the action scenes. I did all the action scenes. The final battle, Brad gave me that, and I had a... Remember I had a big James encyclopedia sitting on my desk, 'cause I'm into all that stuff, and I just pulled it off. I'm going, "Okay, page one, artillery." And so I made a whole little vignette of... 'Cause, 'cause the sentence that Brad put in the script was the biggest, most exciting battle sequence in animation history. That's it. That's all he wrote. He wrote one single line and the… he's all, "I just want this thing to be amazing. Go." And so it was, it was a huge undertaking, which once we finally got there to the big action scene, and I'm a military buff, so it was, it was fun for me. But during this time, listeners, we had, these gigantic storyboard boards that we'd pin up storyboards on to look at.

19:30Mark AndrewsAnd a board can hold, if you stack, it can hold about 100 panels. Okay? And a sequence was usually two to four boards, right? These eight by fives, eight by fours boards. Eight feet long, four feet tall. And we hang them in the room, right? The room has four walls, so the most you can get in there is eight. I had eight more boards sitting outside in the hallway that people, the assistants would roll in as I was pitching the final battle. That's how big it was. It was massive.

20:04Jawad MirWow.

20:05Mark AndrewsI had PT boats, submarines. E… I mean, every division. I had the Stratofortress trying to carpet bomb, you know, Iron Giant and hip... I mean, I had everything. Zip packs. Ev… everything was in there. And Brad looked at it, my first pitch, I remember doing it. Brad looked at it. After I got done pitching, he's all, "Great. Cut it in half," and then he left. That's it. And so I'm all, "Crap." So it's just me and Jeff Lynch sitting in there going, "Okay, lose this part." So we whittled it down till it almost fit in the room. Pitched it again. Brad goes, "This is fantastic. Cut it in half." And I'm all, "Damn." Wasn't. And so we went through the process again. And so it was about four weeks of just editing this thing down until it was, man, super tight, and getting all the stuff that Brad wanted in there, you know, in the, in the final battle. So that was, it was, it was really...

21:07Mark AndrewsIt was frustrating, but it was really fun.

21:10Jawad MirThat's really good to hear. No, y… you know, I'm so glad you're talking about the backgrounds and the night sequences. So again, when I was watching it this morning, the opening was fantastic, you know, in terms of the raindrops, the…

21:24Mark AndrewsYeah

21:24Jawad Mir... The waves, the lighting, and it kinda reminded me of Godzilla, you know how Godzilla comes out of water.

21:32Mark AndrewsYeah.

21:32Jawad MirBut in a different, you know. And then also the backgrounds. Normally in traditional animation, maybe in the late '90s it was changing, but still, you know, you would have not much focus on the background. It was just kind of there.

21:45Mark AndrewsYeah.

21:45Jawad MirI think Prince of Egypt was one of the films that did that really well. And Iron Giant did it really well. But the great thing with... The challenging part of The Iron Giant was you have the, you know, in the forest, you have trees, you have sky, you have this giant 3D robot integrating all that with 2D. So it just was so... I can't tell you, when I saw Ready Player One in the theater, I'm a huge Spielberg fan, right? For me, that moment when Iron Giant is shown, it was, like, one of the most amazing feelings I ever got.

22:23Mark AndrewsYeah.

22:23Jawad MirThat's how impactful that film is to people.

22:26Mark AndrewsYeah. Yeah. No, it was a, it was a really special kind of moment when you saw that. It's like, yes, Spielberg is a fellow nerd. Of course, he puts that cultural icon in there because of course he would be there. It's all about nerd dom, you know?

22:44Jawad MirYeah.

22:44Mark AndrewsFrom D&D&D on up. So, and that's one of the biggest, you know. That's top 25 sci… sci-fi films of all time. Iron Giant's right in there in the first top 25. What company to be in. You know, we knew it was special when we were working. We knew it was probably still ahead of its time, you know. If we had waited 20, 30 years, you know, it would've been a huge, you know, kind of s… success. But that's... I love that Brad was pushing, you know, and that he had a message, and he wasn't shying away from his message, you know, an anti-gun message. And that he was taking on something that was a little bit more serious and not so romanticized and, you know, talking animals and…

23:34Jawad MirYeah

23:34Mark Andrews... You know, kids and magical. You know, this, it was harder. You know, a working mom, a kid that's off on his own. There's, you know, there's a picture of his dad that I did climbing into an F86 Sabre, right? Which I put in the movies 'cause it was that time during the Cold War.

23:58Jawad MirRight

23:58Mark Andrews... So saying that maybe his dad was a pilot and died in Korea, you know? You know, that was... We didn't, we didn't dwell on it. We didn't say anything. It was that immaculate kind of reality or it d… it wasn't about the, you know, the woes of depression of losing a parent or losing a husband, you know? It was like, no, this is practical. This kid is on his own… And he sees something and encounters something that kind of follows him home, you know, that he wants to keep, you know? Just so honest and real. And he's sharing…... His comic books with it, which was a, you know, great scene. And we get the Animo evil, you know, robot, and it's like, "Ugh," you know? One thing that we worked on was that dream sequence, you know, where it touched on Iron Giant's origin. That was me and Kevin O'Brien did that ended up getting cut from the movie 'cause they didn't have the money anymore to produce it.

25:02Mark AndrewsSo in the re-release, they, we did it, you know? Brad got the money. They, board wanted to do it, so we did it. It finally is in there, and that's, that's the movie version Brad actually wanted out there, you know? That was the final piece that we didn't, that we didn't have. We just got a little bit of, a little bit of it, you know, in a TV. We didn't get to do the whole thing, but that he came from outer space, and there's a whole bunch more Iron Giants that will destroy planets. It's like, "Wait, what the hell?" You know? But it's huge. It's a, it's a, there's a bigger idea out there, you know, from where Iron Giant come from, and he's just kind of stranded on Earth and meets this kid, you know? It's a nice intimate epic. Brad loves doing them.

25:49Jawad MirYeah, no, 100%. And, you know, you talked about that you guys knew it was something special when you were working on it.

25:55Mark AndrewsYeah.

25:55Jawad MirTell me, when the numbers came in or the weekend started off, projections and all that stuff, like, how, what was the mood like, if anything, if it affected you guys or not?

26:08Mark AndrewsI, it totally did. I thought there was gonna be lines, you know, like there was for everything else, you know? Go The Little Mermaid, there was lines, and Prince of Egypt, there was lines. And, you know, people are going to see animations in the theaters were packed. I remember going to see a matinee on opening day with my girlfriend, and we walked in, and we were one of a dozen people maybe. And I'm all, "What the f is happening?" And so we watch it. Everybody's having a good time. We get out. I'm all, "It was a matinee. It was a matinee. Nobody comes on matinee, right? Every, you know, of course it was a matinee." Went and saw it the next day at an evening show, like a 7:00. 12 people maybe 16. And I'm all, "No, what's happening? What is this? Did nobody see the commercials? Was it, was it not advertised?" I mean, I don't remember seeing a poster or anything. I saw a awful commercial that showed off that he could fly with The Scorpions' soundtrack going, "We'll rock you like a hurricane."

27:16Mark AndrewsI'm all, "Who is getting fired at Warner Brothers for this? This is insanity. Who is this being marketed to?" You know? So yeah, I don't think they knew what to do with it, and this was kind of the first, for me, being kinda still a newbie in the animation world, understanding that it's, it's a business, but that marketing is a big deal, you know? That, oh my gosh, nobody knows it's here. Nobody knows what it's about. Nobody knows that it's special, like everybody who worked on it knows it's special. I thought it'd take the world by storm and, you know, be up there and see Brat, Brad on the stage accepting an Academy Award for Best Animated, you know, Feature, because it was so different from everything else. Nope. And there's lots in cinema history, there's lots of movies that have come out that were before their time that are just gold, that just didn't land with audiences at the time for different reasons, you know, whether it was marketing or whether they didn't get it or it was too advanced or whatnot.

28:23Mark AndrewsAnd this was that real big slap in the face, right? And if my cynicism in the industry started, it was August 6th. That's when my cynicism in the industry started.

28:37Jawad MirIt's interesting you talk about a movie being ahead of its time. I, have you seen Steven Spielberg's AI? Right. So which is Stanley Kubrick's project after he passed away.

28:48Mark AndrewsYep.

28:48Jawad MirSo I remember, w… going in the theater, watching it. I'm, like, hooked, right? Everything is going fantastic. And then when the scene comes in where he goes, underwater…

29:01Mark AndrewsYeah

29:01Jawad Mir... And the camera starts pulling out, I'm like, "This is gonna be an amazing film. It ends right there." And then there's a whole act right after that.

29:09Mark AndrewsYeah.

29:09Jawad MirAnd I'm like, "What the hell just happened?" And it took me four or five viewings in couple of years to finally understand that how necessary the last chapter was.

29:22Mark AndrewsSure. Yeah.

29:23Jawad MirRight?

29:24Mark AndrewsYeah.

29:24Jawad MirAnd with Iron Giant, when did you... Do you remember the time when you started realizing that despite the tank at the box office and all that stuff, that this is becoming something more special?

29:41Mark AndrewsNo, not until s… several years later. We all know it was good. Everybody in the animation industry. I mean, I came out of Kellogg's, right? There wasn't that many animation schools back then. So all my friends in the industry, we'd meet at, on Thursdays at Fuddruckers, right? They all saw it, right? So everybody in the animation industry was abuzz and going, "Oh my gosh, it's so good. Oh my gosh, it's the best film ever. Oh my gosh." And that's why w… what we were talking about was why did it tank? Why did it tank? Why isn't the world seeing this, you know? And so you just kinda, you have no idea, you know? So you just chalk it up to, "Well, that was that. Oh, well," you know? Are we gonna get another one? Is he gonna get another one? To do, what happens now, I guess we're going back to these stupid movies with these regular magic or talking animals kind of deal. You know, here we go for kids, you know?

30:43Mark AndrewsAnd, but it wasn't until, I think, when it was on the, made that top 100 sci-fi movies of all time, and it was 25, right? This was years, five years later, six years later or something. I think I was still... I was at Pixar at the time. When it came out, I'm all, "Damn straight it's in 25!" You know? That's, that's, that's when you know that... And on cable, you know, when it got to DVDs and stuff three months later, people were buying it. But you never see those reports until way later how much money it's, it made in DVD sales, you know, and all that stuff. And now, you know, streaming, when you can sit there and watch it. So I mean, it's made its money back and then some. But, what a great example of you gotta market. And I know it's hard for the studios, right?

31:43Mark AndrewsBut you gotta market everything as if it's gonna win, right? Because it's butts in seats, people. If you don't get the butts in seats, it doesn't matter how good the movie is, nobody's gonna... That's, that's where you get the cash in, you know? And so how do you horse trade? How do you spend the same amount? Because there is a, there is a number that gets all the butts in the seats, you know? And you can't spend that on every film, so they're picking and choosing, casting their bets. But when it made that list, that was kind of vindication, you know? Or when I met anybody that I didn't know, and I get it, "You know, it's Mark Henn, you worked on Iron Giant." "Oh, my gosh, I love that movie." I never heard anybody go, "Eh, it was okay. I think it's a flop." You know? I never heard that my entire life. It was all, "Oh, my God, you worked on Iron Giant?" So it touched everybody's heart, and that, and that kind of spoke to how good it was and that you, that you knew you had made something special.

32:42Jawad MirRight. And the thing with marketing is unfortunately, a lot of studios, maybe even more so now than even at that time, you know, if it's a Ridley Scott movie, I'm not trying to s…

32:55Mark AndrewsYeah

32:55Jawad Mir... Point names, just for the lack of Steven Spielberg movie…

32:57Mark AndrewsYeah

32:57Jawad Mir... Tom Cruise, like big names. Even if they believe the project is gonna stink, they will still put money behind it because, A, it's star power and whatnot, and B, then because they have so much influence, you wanna make sure the relationship is, you know, sort of balanced and all that.

33:13Mark AndrewsYeah.

33:14Jawad MirBut it, marketing is so important. Like, even now, like, for me, it ha… you know, me and my team, it was really challenging to, distribute our film, on d… different platforms. And Amazon, we got it on Amazon Prime and everything. But okay, it's there. Now what do we do?

33:32Mark AndrewsRight.

33:32Jawad MirRight? Okay, it's, it's amazing that it's there. So who, how are we gonna tell people to... There's social media. There's different ways of... But yeah, it's a daunting task. I think marketing a film is much harder than making a film.

33:46Mark AndrewsBecause it's subjective.

33:47Jawad MirYeah.

33:47Mark AndrewsYeah. Because how do you unlock that thing, and how do you, how do you get,.. I mean, now we're in the, we're in the niche economy, right? If you wanna make a movie about vampire leper lesbians from outer space that drink milk and, it's a comedy, you have an audience for that. They will find that, right? Like, they're like homing pigeons, right? So there's an audience for everything, and now we can cater just to those audiences. I mean, that's what YouTube has shown us, you know, the power of YouTube, that if you have your niche thing that you're into, you can find it because of the keywords. You know, #gothic, #comedy, #vampires, hashtag what. If you have any interest in any of those topics, shoom, you're funneled right to there. Which is interesting. Back then, we didn't have that.

34:48Mark AndrewsIt was how do you cast the widest net you can? Who are you appealing to? And it was all about most people watch TV, so how do I get those people? Which people are going to see what at the movies? Put up those things, and then it's, you know, newspaper ads. I remember getting a newspaper ad and seeing the ad, you know, for Iron Giant be… beaming, you know. If you saw a billboard for Iron Giant, you were lucky, you know? But it's, it's, it's getting the word out. And then, you know, I, we lived in Glendale, so that's LA, you know, Hollywood. Everybody could spend money on billboards 'cause they're right there, right? I don't know if out in the middle of, you know, middle of America, you know, if there's a billboard. Most of them are gonna be in the cities, you know, not out on a highway going, "What's that Iron Giant? An animated film? Oh, looks interesting. There's a big giant? What is it about?" You know? But yeah, marketing is definitely hard because it's so subjective.

35:53Jawad MirYeah.

35:53Mark AndrewsWe don't know what audiences want. Even we have audience screenings for every movie, and what is that for? Number one, to see if audiences like it. Number two, what did they like about it? And all that information goes to marketing, right? To form that message, right? It's almost like politicians forming their message to go out there to get the nu… the most amount of voters.

36:20Jawad MirOh, yeah.

36:21Mark AndrewsWe got, we gotta do that with stories. It's, it's, it's incredibly different.

36:25Jawad MirAnd with Iron Giant, I'm glad you talked about middle America because it was, it was a middle America story, like a…

36:31Mark Andrews100%

36:31Jawad Mir... Single mom You know, living in the suburbs and no… nobody in New York or the coastal cities would probably relate to it as much as, you know, people in middle America would. You know, despite the fact of its failure and then rebirth and now cult classic…

36:51Mark AndrewsYeah

36:51Jawad Mir... Was there ever… I mean, I would imagine because it, even now its presence in Ready Player One, which was after, what? 20 years or 15, 18 years.

36:59Mark Andrews30 years, yeah.

37:00Jawad MirYeah. Has there ever been a conversation about a sequel?

37:06Mark AndrewsNot…

37:06Jawad MirNot that I want one, I'm just curious.

37:08Mark AndrewsNot that I know of.

37:10Jawad MirI'm surprised…

37:11Mark AndrewsNot that I know of

37:11Jawad Mir... Because if the numbers show…

37:12Mark AndrewsYeah

37:12Jawad Mir... They always wanna make a sequel.

37:15Mark AndrewsTotally. Totally. And if there was a sequel made, I'm, I'm sure it'd have a very different response than the first time, you know?

37:24Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

37:25Mark AndrewsYeah. Who knows? Who knows?

37:30Jawad MirOkay. Well…

37:31Mark AndrewsIs it time for a sequel, you know?

37:33Jawad MirI honestly don't want a sequel.... Just sometimes things are left better as they are. I mean, I don't know if you've seen the most recent movie, Wild Robot.

37:44Mark AndrewsI haven't.

37:45Jawad MirWhich by the way is an amazing film. It had a lot of art from Iron Giant. I mean, there's…

37:52Mark AndrewsRight

37:52Jawad Mir... You c… you… when you see it, you'll, you'll pick on certain things and…

37:55Mark AndrewsSure

37:55Jawad Mir... And everything.

37:56Mark AndrewsYeah

37:57Jawad Mir... But yeah, no, Mark, I mean, your work, thank you so much for this, your work on Iron Giant, and all the amazing work you have done. You've worked… I think you worked on Brave with Brenda Chapman, who I had a pleasure of speaking on one of the first episodes on this podcast. And thank you so much for doing all the work that you do and, you know, what's brewing for you in the next… something that you're working on now or coming up that you're able to talk about?

38:27Mark AndrewsI have, well, several irons in the fire, as you do.

38:32Jawad MirYes.

38:32Mark Andrews'cause you don't know what's…

38:33Jawad MirYeah

38:33Mark Andrews... Gonna hit or what's gonna land, you know?

38:35Jawad Mir100%.

38:35Mark AndrewsTaking all the meetings I can in Hollywood with everybody, because, you know, all the studios have the stuff that they're interested in, as well. So I'm just trying to find my projects that are in my wheelhouse, like that PG-13, R-rated stuff in animation or in live action since I've been in… I've done live action, a gigantic, you know, big blockbuster movie, that also they failed at marketing, at, on John Carter of Mars.

39:09Jawad MirYeah

39:09Mark Andrews... But I'm trying to find those, you know, I have a some projects. I'm very much into this next… there are tools out now, the pipelines, the advent of the Unreal Engine that allow filmmakers in animation to go further kinda faster. And I know…

39:29Jawad MirI've seen, I've seen that, yeah.

39:31Mark AndrewsYeah. I just finished Super Giant Robot Brothers back, a release from Netflix in 2022. And that was all done in Unreal Engine.

39:41Jawad MirWow

39:42Mark Andrews... Final, FinalPixel Render, and we did five hours of content in 18 months. So you can make movies faster. Animation doesn't need to be a four-year process. It's ridiculous, right? The technology has caught up to where it can move now as fast as you can think, and you can have smaller, more flexible crews. The realtime pipelines are very robust, so I can make a movie from zero to nearly finished, within six months and show it to the execs, and you know exactly what you got. And then it's just how much money do you wanna do to finish it, right? To make it look amazing. So there's gonna be changes coming up here. I'm at the tip of the wave, technology-wise, pipeline-wise, but there's gonna be a scene out change coming up here that's gonna be able to, revolutionize animation, drive down costs, and kind of return and get rid of gatekeepers.

40:52Mark AndrewsThat's what I'm all about right now. I'm, I've got a project that I'm developing that we're doing on YouTube to grow the IP through YouTube, to do full animation, to do episodic, take people behind the scenes. I'll be doing interviews and build that fan base that way. And there's business models that are working, that are turning people into millionaires and bazillionaires, you know? So, lots of stuff is happening. We're seeing an inflection point right now, that's going on. You know, I think the pandemic and then we, and then just all the strikes were like the one-two punch to Hollywood coming after the third punch, which was streaming, right?

41:37Jawad MirYeah.

41:37Mark AndrewsThat are really changing the industry. That the kind of old studio kind of system, this executive system, you know, it's all going to be taxed and challenged. So, yeah. I've got lots of projects I'm working on, you know.

41:56Jawad MirYeah.

41:56Mark AndrewsBut who's, who's gonna finally give me the green light and some of the money, even though I'm doing it for, you know, I can boast and say I could, you know, do your $100 million film for $40 million. Yes, and it will look the same.

42:10Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, no, it's important to have as many cans, as many eggs in a basket as possible. It's the same thing with me.

42:17Mark Andrews100%.

42:17Jawad MirYou just don't know when is what going to hit, so just be prepared for the right time and the right moment and see what happens. That's all you can do.

42:25Mark AndrewsYeah.

42:25Jawad MirAnd Unreal, and Unreal Engine is something that i… I've seen a lot of work on it. I… is it something that you can… you have to get licensed for it, or is it something you can purchase online, or is it…

42:36Mark AndrewsYeah, no, you can, you can… I mean, you get it, you buy it, and you have your license, and anybody can use it. Up until just a few years ago, You know, all the source code was available for free and you could, you know, once you know, pay for it, whatever your monthly thing is, your yearly thing is, anybody can use it. Now they started, now that it's, it's becoming more and more, pervasive out there, now they're starting to, charge you. You know, but any engine, it's not, Unreal has just become ubiquitous. Because we're…

43:11Mark Andrews... Entering this age where, for listeners who don't know, what it is you're optimizing your assets, your 3D assets, to run at 60 frames a second. So you don't need big servers in buildings that are air-conditioned, you know, to do these movies. To do drops of sweat and all the grains in the face and the pores, which Unreal can do, highly optimized. But, you can do anything you wanted. It's not gonna look like a video game, right? But that idea of optimization just allows you to render your frames at 24 to 60 frames a second. So when I'm on a mocap stage with my 3D assets, I can drop in lighting, I can change lighting right there. I can see it as fast as I can think. I can rewrite on stage with my mocap actors, driving any manner of creature. I mean, it's, it's mocap is s… one of the most flexible technologies that there is. You can make anything move, animate. It doesn't have to be, you know, a humanoid form.

44:16Mark AndrewsIt can be anything. You can have puppeteers moving crazy creatures. But it lets you get in there and explore and develop and find, like I do with my drawings all the time. I just don't draw a shot and it's one and done.

44:32Jawad MirYeah.

44:32Mark AndrewsYou know? So it's, it's a, it's a fabulous technology that's, that's gonna change everything.

44:38Jawad MirOkay.

44:39Mark AndrewsAnd you can split…

44:39Jawad MirOh, yeah

44:39Mark Andrews... Those assets. If I make an animated movie, those assets can be turned around and used immediately in a, in a TikTok videos or in a video game or anything, you know? That's the cool thing is that it's, it's a hub. The optimization lets you go into anywhere on your phone. You know, daily messages from your characters. You know, following them on their journeys or their stories. So, you, a person can go and say, "Okay, I've got $100 to invest in you. $100 million to invest in you. I want an animated film." I would go, "No, I'm gonna give you three animated films. I'm gonna give you two animated series and a video game." "Wait, what?" That's what you can do. That's what the power of this technology allows you to do.

45:29Jawad MirAnd I would love to chat with you about your other work as well. Incredibles, Brave, and a whole bunch of other stuff that you've done throughout your career.

45:35Mark Andrews100%.

45:35Jawad MirJohn Carter. It'd be an honor to have you again.

45:38Mark AndrewsAwesome. Well, thanks for having me.

45:40Jawad MirThank you so much for your time, Mark. I appreciate it.

45:43Mark AndrewsAbsolutely. It's been a blast.

45:45Jawad MirTake care, sir.

45:46Mark AndrewsThank you. See you.

45:47Jawad MirYeah.