...Back in 2011, I had the chance to interview Mark Swan, the director of The princess and the pea, an independent animated film that came out in 2002.
How did you arrive on the project ?
Feature Films for Families had collaborated on a couple animated films with Pannonia Studios in Hungary but called Tiny and Tiny Heroes about a little dog and some rabbits. These were very low budget made-for-video movies. Feature Films for Families (FFF) wasn't completely happy with the quality.
The studios, then ,approached me about directing a new film they wanted to do about the famous fairy tale,Princess and the Pea by Andersen. It was an idea of Forrest Baker, the owner of the company.
Forrest Baker specifically wanted to do something like the old Disney pics (a similarity you noticed in your review of the film) and they intended to do this film and others using their connection to Pannonia Studios in Hungary.
How did you feel about directing this project as an independent filmmaker and as it was your first animated film ?
Well, I was excited because it was my first chance to direct a film but I did suggest to them that since nobody in Pannonia had worked on that high level of theatrical animation that it might be better to train and develop the crew on something simpler with animals as the main characters because doing the realistic animation of a princess and prince like Rollo and Daria is some of the hardest animation to do well. But they wanted to proceed with Princess and the Pea first anyway. And I couldn't turn down the challenge.
Could you tell us a little more about the production of the film ?
I spent a lot of time in Hungary looking at portfolios in Pannonia and searching for the best animators and layout artists and background painters we could find. When we had the best crew we could get assembled we spent several weeks in training and pushing their abilities, doing lots of practice animation with the characters.
How do you feel about the fact that people think that you used some of the well-known Disney gags to serve your story ?
That was a sad twist of fate for us. I had boarded the gag with the fish for a sword before Hercules came out. When we saw that in the Disney movie it made us sick but we had already animated that sequence and on a low budget film you don't have the luxury of going back and redoing expensive animation. The same thing happened with the stained glass figures coming to life. It was after we had already done a lot of work that Anastasia came out. I knew people would think we were copying even though we had come up with those ideas completely on our own. Because they came out first it looked like we had copied them.
Why didn't you give the heroine, Daria, a more important role in the story ?
I suppose there would be two reasons for that. She was harder to animate and therefore more expensive but mainly, and I think this happens even in the old Disney films that the Princess character seems to be the least interesting and entertaining even though she is necessary to the story. (We tried in the beginning to suggest that her character should be more spunky and forceful but FFF wanted her to be sweet and innocent like Snow White and Cinderella so that's the direction we went).
When you think back about the project, what impression do you keep of it?
There is much that I can't tell you because it would take way too long about the many hurdles we had to overcome just to finish Princess and the Pea. It was a long hard process and took a great deal of endurance to reach the end. I've often said to people who worked on it with me that anyone who knew anything about animation production would be amazed at what was accomplished.
The biggest mistake we made, that in retrospect I would never do again was this-- the manager of Pannonia said we had to start production quickly or we would lose many artists to other projects in Budapest. So we rushed into production without a finished script or storyboards. Then what happened was we were writing the script and then I was storyboarding,( by myself in the beginning, until FFF were allowed me to add some extra storyboard help to the budget), to keep just ahead of the animators that needed work and trying to direct at the same time. A crazy way to make a film. (It would have been much better to have finished the script and storyboards before starting animation, but that's another discussion).
Of course, that is not the audience's job. They are just supposed to sit back and enjoy the film and it is certain that any animated movie will be compared to the big Disney blockbusters that had budgets over $100 million. In spite of the hard parts, I have very fond memories of the production and especially many of the fine people I got to meet and work with.
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