A new hand-drawn animated feature film adaptation of the classic novel Kensuke’s Kingdom opens in theaters this Friday Oct. 18. Directors Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry take me on an adventure, describing what went into the story, music, visual design and much more. Plus, find out what Oscar winner Cillian Murphy did to enhance his vocal performance. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: Neil, this is an adaptation of a 25 year old novel. How did you feel that animation was an excellent way to take this story, put it on the screen, and make the story truly yours as well?

Neil Boyle: Well, there were boring logistical things which would make this very hard to make… all very expensive and very hard to make… as a live action movie, because of the age of the young man that it’s about, the 11 year old boy Michael. But to be honest, Kirk and I love animation. We obviously work in animation, but we love hand-drawn animation, and it has this kind of classic, timeless feel. And it just takes you straight into the story and straight into the heart of the story really quickly. That’s what’s so terrific about animation, but it also allows us to put the audience inside the heads of the characters.

Neil Boyle: The characters in this film can’t speak to each other using spoken language because Kensuke speaks Japanese, and Michael speaks English. And of course there are animals in the film which can’t speak any verbal language. So it’s all about how people communicate with each other without actually being able to use words. So pictures and music and sound is the perfect medium, and hand drawn animation is the most charming and perfect medium, we think, to tell the story.

JM: Oh yeah, a lot of deep elements when you talk about all of that. And you’re right about the classic feel of it. It is about this family on a boat starting a new chapter in their lives. [After] a massive storm, Michael ends up on this island that changes his life and changes Kensuke’s life forever. Kirk, this movie is an adventure. How was making this film an adventure for you?

Kirk Hendry: A huge learning curve for myself. Neil’s worked in long film form before. I never worked on a feature before. It’s both of our directing feature debuts. But I found it a huge learning process which was a terrific adventure, because I learned so much, but also learning how to tell long form stories. When you make an animated film, I’m sure you know you start off by storyboarding at all. You make an animatic. So you put temporary sound and dialogue and music onto it, just to see if the whole thing’s working before you do the expensive part, which is to get all the animators on board for two years. A couple hundred animators. 2 years is a lot of money. So you don’t want to be animating things you’re not using. So you’d make an animatic to make sure that everything’s working and you lock that. And then you go into production.

So that process of making the animatic… it’s another rewrite. Obviously a script is words on a page. And a lot of people think, “Okay, well, there’s the script. There’s the movie. Just go and shoot it. And that’s it.” But that’s actually not how films are really made. When you have a script, and you think it’s perfect and cooking brilliantly, often when you put down a timeline and editing timeline, a lot of it won’t work, or some of a percentage of it won’t work. It never does. You’re always surprised by what works and what doesn’t. This filmic rewrite, putting the animatic, is really where films exist. And so that thing is really really satisfying. You’ve got 20% but it doesn’t quite work properly yet, and you’ve got a problem solve it and then get it working. And we certainly had that experience when we did it. And that to me was a creatively satisfying thing, but also an adventure in terms of storytelling. The craft that we spent many years… trying to perfect. And so we’re very proud of the final results.

JM: It’s a great film. Problem solving was what you guys had to do to make the movie. Problem solving, of course, with Michael staying on the island and working with Kensuke and meeting the animals. I really loved Michael’s growth and the sense of increased responsibility that he finds over the course of the movie. Neil, how did you want to show that?

NB: That was an interesting process. You tend to pay things off at the end of the film, and you have to set them up at the beginning. So if somebody is going to end up one way at the end of the film, they have to be very opposite at the beginning, and for Michael to really make this journey, he had to start off, to be honest, to be a little bit of a brat. A little bit annoying and somebody who does not listen to the wisdom of some of the older people around him and does the exact opposite. And, in fact, it’s because of that that he gets into this whole adventure and that he’s swept off the side of the boat and ends up being washed ashore, separated from his family.

So that process was really really interesting, but we had to be careful not to make him really obnoxious so the audience hates him. So we were incredibly lucky to find an actor called Aaron McGregor, who is 11 years old. We looked at 50, nearly 60 children with our casting director trying to find somebody new and fresh. And of everyone that we heard Aaron was just fabulous. We thought he was brilliant. He’s just a really naturalistic actor. He could take all of the direction, all the technical stuff that you have to do to work in film. But he still remained a kid at the microphone, just a brilliant voice, and with that voice, and with that performance, we then set our animators the task of doing the drawings and bringing Michael to life.

JM: He’s terrific. The hand-drawn animation is gorgeous, and there is this awe and realism to the nature — what Michael experiences from the creatures that he meets and interacts with on the island. Kirk, how did you want to present those scenes — the attention to detail, and the cinematography, and the look of it all?

KH: Well, we felt that the island itself needed to be another character, essentially, so it needed enough detail that the audience themselves felt that they were going somewhere different. They felt that they were on the island. Most people seeing it will probably be people who are urban dwelling people at the cinema. So, in a sense, we want to put them on the same journey that Michael’s going on going into this other world. And the moment he’s washed overboard, and gets sort of sucked down into the ocean, and it almost seems like he must die from that… that’s a deliberate element. And then he wakes up, and it’s all gray and white, and you’re not sure where you are. Is he dead? Is he in Heaven?

It is that sort of transitional storytelling beat of you got a transition over to the other side… your life’s about to be transformed. It’s a bit like Dorothy going from black and white into Oz in color. You’re making that kind of journey for the audience and for the main character. So it needed to feel lush, and it needed to feel detailed enough, but not so detailed that it was photoreal. But yeah, we spent a lot of time with the fauna as well. So the animals on the island, just making sure that they had their own little moments, because one of the underlying themes of the whole piece is what is a family and our need for families?

JM: There’s a lot of intensity to that third act and emotion to that third act — when you get into those scenes. One of the other things that I think is so classic and timeless and very appropriate of what you guys do, Neil, is the score. The score feels just on point.

NB: Well, one of the first creative decisions that Kirk and I made was that we more or less, you know, demanded and said, “We want to work with Stuart Hancock”, our composer, because I’d done a short film with Stuart before, and Kirk had done some projects with Stuart before, and we had a great working relationship. He’s a wonderful composer, not very well known yet, but he’s going to be, because he’s so so good at what he does, coming up with melodies, turning emotions on a penny, making a coherent, beautiful piece of music that you can then listen to through earphones and enjoy separate to the film as a concert piece. What we did was as soon as we had the script, and we started doing the storyboarding, as soon as we were doing sketches, we were showing Stuart.

JM: It’s a fantastic score, especially [in] the last section of the movie, those final couple scenes when the music is so key, and that all is handled really, really well, which I’m sure was very challenging, Kirk. Really beautiful and moving with all the components involved.

KH: That’s very, very well observed, Jackson, because that ending scene we spent by far the longest time working on how to develop that. We spent 12 weeks just on that one scene storyboarding it because of the ebbs and flows of what it needs to do throughout that six minutes. And [there’s] almost no dialogue in it, so music becomes very crucial to it and getting to music to work in that scene. It wasn’t so much the most challenging, I don’t think, but it certainly was one that we spent the most time on. We knew how important it was. We’re really, really thrilled with the result of it.

JM: Have to mention some of the other cast members: Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, and our reigning best actor, Cillian Murphy, who was unbelievable in “Oppenheimer”. I’m a Murphy. How was it working with a fellow Murphy?

NB: The Murphys are the best, Jackson. You know that. (laughs)

JM: Yes! Yes!

NB: He was an absolute joy. The dad character has to do a lot of telling off. Michael can be a little bit of a brat at the beginning of the film and needs a bit of telling off. But you don’t want a miserable, angry dad at the beginning of the film. So we wanted somebody who could tell him off, but in a warm way, and that was a kind of casting issue. And they came up with the idea of Cillian, and he was perfect because he has that beautiful accent, and he has that natural warmth. So he could do some of these telling off scenes and yet you still kind of like him. You’re not irritated thinking he’s a moany old father.

There was a line in there where he says, “It’s your mom’s idea”, talking about something and he’s eating a biscuit. And he originally kind of mimed the eating of the biscuit, and he said, “Anybody got a packet of biscuits?” And they went out and got him a pack of biscuits. So he got through pretty much a packet of biscuits, doing this line again and again and again, and Kirk and I were quite happy with these takes. But we figured he just wanted to eat a packet of biscuits, so he just kept doing take after take after take. So he was fabulous. All the cast were brilliant to work with.

JM: That’s the dedication that Cillian Murphy has. That’s why he has an Academy Award. It’s the dedication! Kirk, how would you be in a situation like Michael is in the film? How would you handle suddenly being on an island dealing with new creatures, learning about nature even more, trying to come up with a new home and a new place to be for a temporary period of time? Were you able to put yourself in Michael’s shoes during this?

KH: If there was a lovely old Japanese man on the island I’d be fine. But if I was on my own… the beginning part, the initial few days of survival, I have no idea. I guess none of us have any idea until we’re in that situation — what our mental really is and what we’re made of. Once I’m living in that treehouse, I’m completely fine, and I’ll be loving it. And yeah, with the nature and the animals and the floor and the fauna — and that kind of lifestyle — it would be great.