Battle For Terra

• Battle For Terra, On DVD and Blu-Ray September 22nd

  Published on: September 1, 2009

  Battle for Terra is a thrilling sci-fi animated film featuring the voices of Luke Wilson (The Family Stone); Evan Rachel Wood (Across the Universe,TV’s “True Blood”); Dennis Quaid (The Express); Danny Glover (Dreamgirls); and James Garner (The Notebook), blasting its way onto DVD and Blu-ray September 22nd. A visually stunning, action-packed tale for animation fans of all ages, this theatrical wide release received rave reviews from critics.  Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times hailed it as “bewitchingly animated, nicely stylized” USA Today called it “captivating” and “ambitious” and San Francisco Chronicle deemed it “as thrilling as any original Star Wars trek.”  In addition, Battle for Terra has delighted audiences, winning the Grand Prize for Best Animated Feature at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, the Silver Gryphone for First Feature Competition at the Giffoni Film Festival and the Crystal Heart Award at the Heartland Film Festival.
  
   The DVD and Blu-ray discs are loaded with exciting bonus materials including a “Making Of” featurette, audio commentary with director Aristomenis Tsirbas, deleted scenes, original storyboards and more!

   

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• Q&A with Battle for Terra director, Aristomenis Tsirbas

  Published on: May 4, 2009

  By Quinn Bender

  Three years ago, the filmmakers behind Battle for Terra were told that making a sci-fi action-adventure epic outside the studio system was an impossible feat. Undaunted, the team of first-time feature animation producers, along with untested feature animation director Aristomenis Tsirbas, set out to find out if it was true.

  

  The idea for Battle for Terra was born of a kind of reverse inspiration that struck Tsirbas in his youth while reading HG Wells’ War of the Worlds. He was curious of the way invading aliens were often portrayed; with the same imperialistic behavior humans have shown throughout history. However it bothered him their motives were not examined in any depth.

  It gave him an idea to flip these conventions on their head: “If the aliens behave like us, why not just turn the tables and actually make them human, experiencing the invasion from the aliens’ point of view?”

  Tsirbas wrote a treatment for the idea, but it would be seven years before the public would see it on the big screen. In the meantime, Tsirbas threw himself into building a career in short filmmaking and visual .

  One of his projects during this time was the 2003 animated short, Terra, which went on to win several prestigious awards. The piece caught the attention of producer Keith Calder, who in 2004 was in the process of founding the animation and live-action production company, Snoot Entertainment.

  “We were looking through all the festival short winners when we came across Tsirbas’ short, Terra,” Calder said. “We thought that the reverse alien invasion premise was really strong. Visually, it was unlike anything we had ever seen before.”

  In short time, a full-length feature was developed under the Snoot Banner with screenwriter Evan Spiliotopoulos.

  While Battle for Terra is first and foremost a family-friendly action adventure, it also carriers potent underlying social and environmental messages. The very reason the humans take an interest in the planet Terra – a name the humans give it from the Latin word for Earth – is that they have destroyed not just Earth itself, but also the human-colonized Venus and Mars in an interplanetary civil war.

  MovieSet sat down with Tsirbas to discuss the messages of his film, the balancing act of creating intelligent but fun films for children, and the film’s interesting journey from conception to realization.

  Bucking the studio system

  MovieSet: By producing this film outside the studio system I assume you had limited resources. Did this impede your vision?

  Tsirbas: Yeah. I had to adjust my vision because, initially I thought of it as a live action film with CGI characters. When we reviewed that with producers on an independent budget, it just seemed absolutely impossible to do on the level of quality I wanted. At that point we made it into an animated film. The production design, and the set pieces, really had to be modified to fit within the budget. That affected how the aliens looked, that affected the amount of things even like hair on the heads of humans -- in many cases they were just shaved bald. It affected how the end battle played out. But in every situation we tried to be intelligent and cut back in ways that didn't appear deficient when you were watching the film, but rather to feel as though they were creative choices. We had to walk a fine line.

  On the other side, we highlighted the things that weren't as expensive -- for example: camera, editing, lighting, sound. If you concentrate on those elements they really make up for the areas that are difficult to perfect on a lower budget.

  Is your accomplishment a rare exception, or can you say with confidence that other young filmmakers can now make their own CGI film, outside the studio system?

  I think they can. It's because of the emergence of new and cost effective technology. If you remember a few years back there was a kind of revolution in AV filmmaking; you had a lot of filmmakers coming out with really great work with low-cost video cameras. That's continuing to this day... the same thing has happened over the last few years with digital animation, where you're able to buy off-the-shelf software and use a home computer. When computer animation started, the minimum cost for a computer was about $25,000. Now you can do it with a $1,000 computer -- you can actually make an animated film at home of really high-caliber, if the filmmaker applies themself in an intelligent way.  It's democratizing animation.

  Did you have more license to explore your ideas than if you went through a big studio?

  Yes, definitely. When I conceived this film I knew it would probably only be produced independently, because of the more challenging themes -- which by the way, I think personally children have no problem with; screenings and festivals have proven that, but I think it would scare off the studios.

  The film was even riskier and more experimental when we first started making it, when we had a really tiny budget. But as we continued the producers felt it had potential for real broad appeal. So we kept much of the themes, but we adjusted some of the more experimental aspects of the film. For example, the aliens initially spoke in an actual alien language with subtitles. When we realized the film could probably appeal to a broader audience, we changed them to speak English then added a script device to compensate for that inconsistency.

  Children can thrive on challenge

  There appeared to be times in the story where you held back a little bit, particularly with the battle scenes and the reality of these complex situations. In regards to the battles specifically, did you feel you were holding yourself back?

  Yes, but because I wanted this film to be made for kids. They're the ones who will inherit the world we give them--there's an ecological competent to the film that speaks to them. At the same time, I also didn't want to present war in kind of a GI Joe, cartoonish way, where there's no casualties. I wanted to show there is consequence to war.

  We had to walk a fine line to show this to children, but in a way that's not too extreme.  We do have casualties, we do have conflict, we do have consequences. That was very important for me to put across... we had to hold back on the blood because of the realities of the ratings system.

  When Jim dies it seems like you're walking a fine line politically as well. He sacrifices his own life for the aliens. Some could say he's committing high treason. Were you concerned politically of what the parents might think of that?

  Not in the slightest. If film doesn't provoke some discussion, provoke thought--if it's just entertainment then I wouldn't want to be in this industry. The greatest films do provoke discussion. They hold a mirror up to current thought. I think my choices were relevant and justified. It honors children of today when you give them something to chew on. This film is about difficult decisions. This character, it seems he has one of two choices to make. But he thinks of a third choice, an alternative. And that's what this film is all about: alternatives.

  In order to do that we had to have some kind of exceptional thing for him to do that would raise eyebrows. It's very important to challenge kids, and to show them there are moral complexities to armed conflict, but present it in a way that's entertaining and fun. And why not? Kids are smart. They can understand abstract ideas.

  I have absolutely no reservations about that ending.

  Are you saying kids aren't challenged enough these days, that their intelligence is not appreciated?

  I would say yes. I met a lot of kids and got a chance to know this generation. They're very smart and aware. They're hungry for interesting, challenging, fun, exceptional content. There's an overload of light entertainment for kids. Why not give them something more. It's up to them to go for it.

  I've had multiple screenings now for Battle for Terra, exclusively for children. On the whole the kids loved it, they ate it up. There were spirited discussions afterward in the Q and A. The kids had the most interesting comments and questions. To them it felt very natural to watch a film like this. The only issue seemed to be maybe with the older people, but the kids really seemed to take it to heart.

  Alien sympathies

  Why was it important to put the humans in the role of aggressor?

  I originally wanted to just make an alien invasion film to satisfy my sense of what's lacking in the genre, like with War of the Worlds or Independence Day where the aliens are presented as one-dimensional bad guys. I never bought that. An entire race can't be entirely evil. They must have reasons to want to invade another planet, perhaps for reasons that are honorable--like preserving their own species. The more and more I researched the motives of why an alien race might invade another planet, it because clear their fictionalized behavior is very similar, historically, to human behavior. It became really obvious at that point to just turn it around and explore that.

  In honoring the original idea of keeping balance and depth to the concepts, we had to make sure the humans -- who are originally portrayed in the classic, bad-guy way--when you get to know the humans they are for the most part good people who are in a bad situation. So they feel they need to do bad things in order to live. Out of that came the theme of alternatives.

  As much as the bad guys cannot be one dimensional, neither can the good guys -- the honorable aliens. They have a dark past. You felt the need to balance that as well.

  Absolutely. If you look at the film it starts off in a very simple way. The aliens look simple, they look like cartoons. Their world is over-idealized. But you couldn't sustain that for an hour and a half. If we're to have true sympathy for these aliens, we need to feel as though they were real. So underneath the facade of Utopia, there is a darkness, an oppression of a violent past. There’s an artifice, a cultish, political dogma created to suppress this past. There are shades of grey there, and of course that is the key to the Terrians' survival.

  A loveless Utopia?

  Speaking of over-idealizing, I noticed there wasn't a romance sub-plot in this film.

  Isn't that interesting? There is no romance.

  Yet there were plenty of vehicles, opportunities for that. Why didn't you give in?

  I just didn't feel it was organic to the story. I mean, there was a kind of suggestion of romance between the alien girl Mala and her best [male] friend. There's definitely a back story there, and hints to a blossoming romance, which informed some of the action in the film. There was also a warm friendship between Mala and the human fighter pilot, which wasn't necessarily romantic, but it definitely had the tropes of a relationship.

  That was enough. To do any more would have been forced. It would have complicated the story. It just wouldn't have been appropriate for the arc I was working with.

  The Terrian world itself, was that a strict product of your imagination?

  Yes. The Terrian world came as a reaction to the human world, which was very geometric with hard surfaces and angles. I wanted to do the opposite for the Terrian world. In that case it meant a lot of flowing and compound curves, raw materials, to create an aesthetic that was very fluid and beautiful. Out of that came an architectural style that had a lot of tapering involved -- which you see in a lot of the biology and technology of the Terrian world as well.

  We had to work in a vacuum really. To not think of anything from the human world and just see where it would lead.

  Is there any particular reason why you chose to situate their society in the clouds?

  There's a very specific back story for that. I perceived them as once being more like us, land dwelling creatures who had a tendency to take the air in and keep it in their lungs. They filtered out all the oxygen and kept the helium, which allowed them to float. But what happened when there was a big war, I imagined they destroyed their world like we humans did in this potential future. I just imagined there would be a kind of nuclear winter where there is this permanent cloud layer that formed, destroying the planet. But there were these giant structures, vine-like structures that pierced the cloud layer into the sky. The creatures evolved and were able to fly past the clouds and live in these structures to start anew.

  Also, therefore, they would be forbidden to go beneath the clouds and see what's under there.

  Thanks very much for your time. Would you like to add anything else?

  Just how I'm really proud of what the crew helped me achieve. It's a dream come true for a filmmaker to have a theatrical release, and in this case such a wide release. I'm really grateful so many people took a chance on me and this crazy little idea I had.

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• Aristomenis Tsirbas - The Battle for 'Battle For Terra'

  Published on: April 28, 2009

  Science fiction and animation have never been the easiest of bedfellows, especially when it comes to feature films.

  For every sci-fi film that scales the heights of the galaxy, such as Wall*E and Savage Planet, more get sucked into black holes, such as Treasure Planet, Atlantis, Titan AE, and Heavy Metal. Yes, you can argue that Japanese anime has bucked the trends, ranging from Akira to Ghost In the Shell, but on the other hand, anime is more of a home video, niche market success story. Anime doesn't often make a big dent in the domestic box office.

  Still, there are those who keep attempting to buck the trend. The latest is rookie director Aristomenis Tsirbas. His first film, Battle For Terra, hits the big screen May 1, thanks to distributors Roadside Attractions and Lionsgate.

  "...Whether it’s making short films or doing special effects, the difference between them and a feature film is it’s easier to do ten short films in a row than one feature. A feature is exponentially more complicated. There’s a lot more tracking involved. It meant being intelligent in every stage of the production...."

  Read the full interview here.

  

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