September 20th, 2021 
Jackson Murphy 
The next chapter of a popular franchise begins. CG feature My Little Pony: A New Generation debuts this Friday September 24th on Netflix. Co-director Mark Fattibene and production designer Pablo Mayer discuss making this pretty (and pretty fun) film.
Jackson Murphy: My Little Pony is so beloved and has been for such a long time. And what you do with this movie is you take-on a lot of themes, messages, characters and story development that I’m really impressed with. Mark, what were your overall goals going into this new film?
Mark Fattibene: It’s always to… reference the past but also make it current. Make sure that the story resonates with the current day. That was probably our biggest challenge: push things as far as we could, make sure it was relatable but still fun and didn’t lose any of the essence of My Little Pony.
JM: Yeah. It is fun. Pablo, you were also the production designer on Littlest Pet Shop and Transformers series – also in the Hasbro family. How did it feel for you to want to take-on the My Little Pony characters AND with this being a feature film?
Pablo Mayer: It was wonderful. That’s what’s really interesting about working with Hasbro: taking a jump from one project to another… and they’re very different from each other. It keeps things interesting all the time. And my first feature film as well, so that was really cool.
JM: Were you nervous about this being your first feature film or more excited than anything else?
PM: Nervous and excited at the same time! (laughs)
MF: A movie is like a life, so you feel different things at different times. At the beginning, you feel excited. You might feel scared. But in the middle you feel something else. And at the end you feel… at some point you feel like, “We’re never gonna get it done” and then at some point you’re done. You think, “Awh, that’s over.” And still you feel great, “Now I can share it with the world.”
Mark Farribene
JM: Mark, you posted something on your LinkedIn the other day: a clip from the movie that’s very funny. Sunny asks Izzy a bunch of questions that are “Things to ask a unicorn” and things to wonder about a unicorn and what you’d want to ask. I wonder for you: what did YOU want to know about unicorns and ponies and all these different characters that you asked yourself or the crew and you got those answers as you were making the movie?
MF: I wanted to know everything. I still wanna know everything. Obviously, I know about My Little Pony. I was a big fan. I know about that Friendship Is Magic series. I love that message because I think it’s true. When you make a really good friend, that is a bit of magic. Pablo and I have a little bit of magic on the [movie], which was really great. But if I met a unicorn, I would probably want to know… I like the details. I like to know, “What’s your life?” Sunny went a little there with, “Do you like pizza? What do you like on your pizza?” She goes from big to small. I’m kind of like that. I like to know how people spend their day. Do they drink coffee? They better. Do they like cats or dogs? What time do you get up and go to bed? What did you have for dinner? I’m that kind of guy.
JM: You wanna get to know somebody! In this case, some-pony.
MF: Yeah. I wanna know if we can have a meal.
JM: Pablo, let’s get into the design of Maretime Bay. It is gorgeous! The lighthouses and the town itself. What were the biggest challenges for you in crafting Maretime Bay?
PM: We had the three environments at the beginning, and we really wanted to make them quite different from each other. Maretime was always a relatable town for us. But an idealistic town as well… small town with a lot of details with the buildings. We looked a lot at hipster shops and what kind of elements could we bring to the town that would be nice? And every town in the movie has a relatable town in the previous series as well. A lot of the details of the beauty of Maretime come from the beauty in Ponyville in the series. We really wanted to make it very colorful too, which was a challenge with colorful characters. We always thought that the characters tried to make the city overly beautiful to hide their own insecurities.
MF: You just asked me what I wanna know about a unicorn. A lot of it comes from the design of our big locations. We kind of want to tell people how the ponies live there. How do they open doors? Do they keep it up? If you really look at Maretime Bay — and I don’t know if it’s only us and the crew who worked on it — but you can see that if a wall is painted and it’s starting to fade or crack, they paint over it. The paint might not match completely but it just shows that they really take pride. And as Pablo said, each of our pony communities is dealing with their own fear and prejudice. The way they live is a way to mask that or a way to keep themselves calm, whether it’s the nice, pastely seaside town of Maretime Bay (which has a bit of an arms factory) or the celebrity obsessed culture of Zephyr Heights. Or… and I don’t wanna give it away… but maybe we get to Bridlewood. And they LIVE in that space.
JM: Zephyr Heights is so detailed too with the Z-Mobile and lots of little things like that. And Mark, in Maretime Bay with the theater, you have so much fun with all the movie puns. Was that a necessity for you to incorporate those in there, like “Filly Elliott”, “Judgment Neigh” and “Harry Trotter”.
MF: Yes! It’s super fun to have fun. These movies should always be fun. As many jokes as you can stuff in that don’t detract from the story and the characters are great to have in there. Fingers crossed people will watch the movie. It’s on Netflix so people will watch it over and over and over again. And every time they watch it there will be one poster they haven’t seen before. There will be one little joke they didn’t quite catch. That’s definitely a goal.
PM: Yeah. Loads of Easter Eggs as well in this movie hidden in the background.
Pablo Mayer
JM: Good. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is the “Just Prance” sequence. I think it’s so fun. It’s very well done how you use the mechanism itself for that and the overall environment. Pablo, can you talk a little bit about putting the “Just Prance” sequence together?
PM: Yeah. When the directors came-up with having a dance machine, the first thing we thought was how to do that. We had to come-up with a whole system of how to make that work. As Mark said, we always think of how they make things, and that helps so much when you’re designing. We always think about how they view that machine and how it integrates into the environment.
JM: I think that’s a scene families are gonna watch over and over again and really get into. Mark, one of my other favorite moments in the movie is where Zipp, who’s a pegasus, flies with this wind machine. And she shows Sunny and Izzy, and there’s music behind it. It’s just this brief moment but it really made me think back to Mary Poppins (which is one of my all-time favorite films) and how she flies down at the beginning and back up at the end… and the power of flying. What do you think there is about the power of flying and how you’re able to execute that in animation?
MF: There’s a freedom. There’s always freedom to flight. We live our lives grounded, so if you can take off, then it’s… freedom. And for her specifically, it was a great way to show her inner… She’s tough. She doesn’t offer a lot of information all the time about herself. But in that moment you see her. Sunny and Izzy really see her and get that she is a shared soul. They all want for something greater. They want freedom. They want to break-off the shackles of the prejudice and the pressure of being a certain way in society. If you can get somebody to take to the sky… it’s a big signal to the audience [as well]. We’re not grounded in this world. We can go. We can go bigger. We can go broader. We can go anywhere.
JM: It’s a special moment. This is a mostly CG film. It’s not an entirely CG My Little Pony movie. There are a couple little moments. Pablo, can you talk a little bit about incorporating the MLP figurines?
PM: The thought process was: if we’re gonna do a 2D version of [Sunny’s] movie with the previous ponies, how would we do it? And then we just went to town. (laughs) We really tried to push the 2D animation on that and the feel… that sequence is pretty much what Sunny imagines as the ideal. We really pushed the colors and shapes and incandescence of that. When we got to the figures, we looked at a wood cut design for them. It was really fun to do it, and the modeling team had a blast to model those sculptures.
JM: Good. I’m glad.
MF: We’re still waiting for Hasbro to release them. We all want our own versions – our own toys!
JM: They would be cool! We were talking a little bit earlier about magic and the magical power of making this movie. Pablo, what would you say is the one… most magical moment out of this entire experience for you?
PM: I think it would be…
MF: You can say meeting me. That’s fine.
PM: (laughs) Meeting Mark, for sure!
JM: (laughs) Okay good!
PM: And also seeing the growth of the whole crew. A lot of this movie was made by a lot of firsts [first-timers]. For a lot of the art team it was their first feature as well. And seeing how they grow during the production was great. We ended-up making a really good movie together. And people from all over the world as well. And during the pandemic. Most of the production. Making the movie was the magical thing!
JM: That makes sense. Absolutely. Mark, I’ll be very honest with you: I’ve seen about 300-400 movies at home instead of in the theater over the last year and a half. I would put this movie in the top 10 in terms of feeling a cinematic experience at home. The way you made this movie. The way it looks. The way it feels. You’re getting cinematic quality at home. How does that make you feel, to know that what you’ve created… yes, it could’ve been in the theaters, but you know what? You’re getting that experience really well at home.
MF: That’s great to hear. (laughs) You always set-off to get that, to make that. It’s hard sometimes to know. You get very close to things as you make them and then you start to really care about them. But it’s nice when somebody just watches it and has that experience. I think we’ve all gotten a little better too because we’ve all watched a lot at home. We’ve all gotten a little bit better at how to watch them. How to look at things. Where we’re watching them. Are we far enough away? Are we holding a tablet up to our face or a phone? That’s nice for people to know too to watch it on a big screen – the biggest screen you got! And back up. Because we definitely paid attention to camerawork. We definitely paid attention to composition. We definitely paid attention to texture, to detail. The goal is to be immersed in a world and that’s what we wanted, so it’s great to hear that you feel like we did that. That’s amazing.
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