A general criticism that has come out of the release of the trailer for Wes Anderson’s “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” has been that the voice contributions from actors seemed “phoned-in” and uninspired. As Jason Schwartman explained though, this is despite the fact that Anderson and co. went to great lengths to avoid exactly that.
“It was really fun to be a part of it because Wes tried as hard as he could to not have all of the actors recording their voices separately in studios at various times. He really made an effort to get the actors together in groups, and literally act out the scenes with each other. To have overlapping [dialogue], and just weird exchanges. He’d have a gentleman with a boom mic running after us, following us doing it all. So, for example, the scenes in the movie where we dig? That’s actually all of us on the ground digging – like digging in the real dirt. And if we were eating, we’d go “Rawr!” and have real stuff in our mouths. I play George Clooney’s son, and there’s a scene where we’re talking to each other or having an emotional scene, and those scenes really are the two of us in a room acting and looking at each other – as opposed to being done separately and pieced together later. Of course, there are exceptions. Meryl Streep is in it, and I never got to act with her. But for the most part, most of my scenes were done with the actors I’m working with.”
Though Anderson himself wasn’t always physically present when he wanted to tweak scenes.
“I’d get a call from Wes where he’d say, “Would it be at all possible for you to record some new lines tomorrow?” So I’d go to the recording studio, and Wes would be on the phone – because he lives in France. So he’d be on the phone coming through my headphones, and I would talk into the microphone, and… in front of me on a music stand would be five or ten lines I was supposed to say. But out of context, and not in script form. So he would explain it to me verballly. ‘This is a scene where you’ve just come out of a tree’.”
Suppose we’ll have to wait for the release to judge to the full extent. [AICN]