PAM COATS: Hi. You're now listening to the audio commentary
of the picture we had the privilege of making, Mulan.
My name is Pam Coats, and l was the producer on the movie.
And l had the opportunity to work with two great directors on the project.
I'm Barry Cook, one of the co-directors.
And l'm Tony Bancroft, the other co-director.
This is one of my favorite parts in the film, starting this way.
COOK: lt was a simple painting Hans Bacher put together,
sort of watercolor on rice paper.
But getting it to animate,
I think Jeff Dutton was the genius behind that.
BANCROFT: As our artistic coordinator, he worked out a way to reveal the lines
through a series of complicated mattes,
so it Iooked like it was being painted on,
and then created a system of bleed
so that it gave a feeling of bleeding into the rice paper.
COATS: We took a research trip to China, and I remember the first day
when we got to actually go to the Great WaII.
lt was a beautiful day and there were flags all over it.
That inspired that shot, because we sat on the Great WaII
and heard that sound of flags.
COOK: Flags flapping, high in the mountains.
COATS: We took a lot of video.
The Great WaII is big enough to get six horses across it at one time.
lt's really nice.
BANCROFT: Were there falcons on any of the flags?
COOK: There were birds.
(MEN CHUCKLING)
COATS: Remember how many times
we taIked about this opening sequence?
We went back and forth severaI times
about how much of our viIIain, Shan-Yu,
we wanted to reveaI in this first shot.
For a long time, we didn't even see his face.
COOK: We kept him dark and mysterious.
COATS: This guy's about to go do something that we got inspired by
with some of our research.
The towers were really far apart on the Great WaII,
and they actually used to light signal fires along those towers
to let people know what was going on, so that inspired the sequence.
Now all of China knows you're here.
BANCROFT: We had different versions,
where we showed aII of Shan-Yu's troops
on the other side of the wall,
but we decided it was more mysterious
to introduce just Shan-Yu as the leader of the threat,
and then reveaI the amount of Huns that he has later on, as a surprise,
in the avalanche sequence, to great effect, l think.
Shan-Yu is leading them.
We'll set up defenses around your palace immediately.
No.
COATS: Now this is the sequence you meet Chi Fu.
Chi Fu.
Yes, Your Highness?
COATS: We had a Iot of fun with Chi Fu,
because we could really push him into the real comical, cartoon mold.
. . .but I believe my troops can stop him.
COATS: Pat Morita's The Emperor. He was a Iot of fun to work with.
COOK: And James Shigeta pIayed the GeneraI.
lt was funny, we have two Japanese actors
pIaying the two Ieaders of China.
"Graceful. Polite."
COATS: Now this sequence, this introduction to Mulan,
we struggled with this for a really long time,
trying to figure out how to introduce her.
COOK: But as aIways, Chris Sanders pulled us out of the fire.
BANCROFT: Chris Sanders is our head of story,
and he just really nailed who she was
and defined her personality,
because if you didn't fall in love with this character,
there was no reaI use going on in the story.
And he nailed her quirky qualities.
-He's pretty quirky himself. -(COOK CHUCKLING)
COATS: Didn't Chris name the dog LittIe Brother?
COOK: l think so. COATS: Which we loved.
BANCROFT: Matter of fact, he not only did
the character design for Little Brother...
We loved the drawing that he created for it in his storyboards.
We used it as the finished design.
He aIso does the voice of LittIe Brother.
He did this funny yappin' down the hallway,
and we said, "That's so funny, we gotta get that in there."
And it's still funny.
COATS: Now this sequence here, too, we battled back and forth with this,
about how much humor to get into it.
COOK: l love this. lt's my favorite.
COATS: But he's in there praying to his ancestors.
We wanted to put humor in there,
but make sure we weren't crossing the line.
BANCROFT: Tone was something we always battled with on this,
because it's a comedy, it's an action picture,
it's a drama.
There's many different elements, juggling different tones
and where to aIIeviate the audience with a funny joke
was always something we battled with, trying to get the right balance.
COOK: And throughout, there was always the real need for comic relief
after certain dramatic parts.
We'd go between a very dramatic section, very serious,
and then sort of lighten it up.
Fa Li, is your daughter here yet?
The Matchmaker is not a patient woman.
Of all days to be late. . . I should have prayed to the ancestors for luck.
How lucky can they be?
COOK: Joe Grant was really a champion
of this character of the cricket.
COATS: They are a symbol of good luck.
We bought cricket cages when we were in China.
COOK: And Joe did the first drawings
and sort of suggested that we put the cricket in.
And all throughout production, we would come into work,
especially in development, and we'd always find a little sketch
Joe had slipped under the door of Cri-Kee doing something.
BANCROFT: Joe Grant is one of the oldest living animators and artists
stiII empIoyed by Disney Studios. He worked on the first Snow White.
COOK: He was a character designer on that movie
and designed the OId Hag or Witch.
BANCROFT: So he went from designing the Old Hag or Witch in Snow White
to Cri-Kee in Mulan.
He's a very talented and charming guy.
Well, honey, l've seen worse
We're gonna turn this sow's ear
(MULAN SCREAMS)
lnto a silk purse
COATS: The overall story purpose for this song sequence
was to set up the norm that Mulan is trying to fit in with.
So, this sets up the society
and what they expect of a woman in that timeframe.
. . .what's this?
COATS: Wait. What did the writing on her hand say?
-Can you remember? -COOK: lt was the...
COATS: lt's literally what she was writing down in the beginning?
BANCROFT: lt was the principles of being a good wife or a good daughter...
COATS: That's right.
COOK: lt's like a finishing school.
Things that would hang on the wall of a finishing school for girls.
COATS: Didn't David Wang, who worked on Mulan
in our background department in Florida,
do that transIation for us?
COOK: David or Chen-Yi.
COATS: David Wang actually taught in Beijing. Was it Beijing?
And then Chen-Yi Chang is from Taiwan,
and they helped a lot with translations
and cultural research, things like that.
COOK: Chen-Yi is just so versatile. Phenomenal.
A lot of the character designs are based on his work.
COATS: We eventually gave him the title
of character designer on the movie,
but he was so much more than that.
COOK: He did lots of stuff. COATS: He did everything.
COOK: Designs for the temple...
BANCROFT: Researched costume design accuracy.
What dynasty those costumes wouId be in
so it was as accurate as possible.
COOK: And we based the look of the film on the T'ang Dynasty,
which would've probably been the closest period
to where MuIan Iived.
COATS: SupposedIy, yeah.
COOK: The closest that really had a style and an architecture of its own.
Many people look at the architecture in this film,
and it's reminiscent of what wouId be thought of as Japanese architecture,
but the Chinese infIuenced the Iook of the rooftops and so forth.
You see it more in the ImperiaI City, the architecture,
but it's heavily influenced by T'ang Dynasty designs
and especially the palace that was in China at that time.
BANCROFT: David Wang did the Chinese Iine drawing
of the Great WaII that opens the fiIm.
And he had studied that.
It's a reaI art form in itseIf to try and get that line work,
and the elegance of it and the beauty.
So he did a Iot of our Chinese caIIigraphy
throughout the movie.
Whenever you see something in Chinese Ietters,
it usually means something.
Sometimes comic, sometimes not.
Please bring honor to us all
"Fa Mulan."
-Present. -Speaking without permission.
Oops.
Who spit in her bean curd?
BANCROFT: There's tests that Mulan has to go through,
and this was certainly one, the matchmaker test.
She had to pass this, and this isn't totaIIy accurate in Chinese history
that they would have to do this, but we felt it was the best way, story-wise,
to show that she had faiIed.
And it was also a way of showing that she wanted so bad
to make her father proud of her by passing this test,
that she even cheats and writes the notes and stuff.
lt just showed how important it was to her.
And then when she fails, it has a lot more meaning.
Reflect before you snack. . .
Act! This shall bring you honor and glory.
BANCROFT: And you'll see there's a scene coming up here...
Since I was an animator at Disney for years,
I wanted to do a bit of animation on the fiIm.
So I animated this scene of The Matchmaker coming up,
when Cri-Kee faIIs down her bIouse.
lt was a lot of fun,
because it is The Matchmaker and l really liked her design.
COATS: lt took you like, what, four months for this scene?
BANCROFT: Okay, maybe. COATS: So get ready for it.
BANCROFT: Maybe it was four months. Two weeks, four months, one of those.
But it was a lot of fun to do, and it just reminded me
of the fun of being able to lock your room and not be in a meeting
and draw, like you always want to as an artist.
. . .just take that back?
-One moment. -(SCREAMING)
BANCROFT: There... The next one.
There it is. This is my scene, right here.
(BANCROFT EXCLAIMING)
-That is the Cri-Kee there. -COATS: Gone. Done.
BANCROFT: Don't blink. lt's over.
COOK: This is a real staple of comedy,
seeing the authoritative figure be humiIiated.
CharIie ChapIin used to do that type of stuff all the time.
lt's always fun to watch.
COATS: And Barry does Iove CharIie ChapIin.
COOK: l'm a big, big fan.
(COOK CHUCKLING)
BANCROFT: There's some funny stuff here.
COOK: We thought the worse The Matchmaker
looked by scene's end,
the more dishonor on MuIan's shouIders.
BANCROFT: ls that pudding coming out of her eyes?
-What is that? -COOK: She's got oiI on her eyes.
She's got a Iand spiII.
COATS: lt's like a birthday cake gone bad.
COOK: So something comic goes into something
very emotional and dramatic here,
and that's the tone we wanted.
COATS: One of my favorite shots, right there.
BANCROFT: Mark Henn's animation. COATS: The animation is so beautiful.
BANCROFT: We're coming up now to Mulan's Reflection song.
This was the first song written for the fiIm
by Matthew Wilder and David Zippel.
The songs in a musical
become kind of tent poles that lace the story together,
and that everything's built upon.
lt was really important the first time we heard it,
that it land and it really set a tone of who she is...
COATS: And what she wanted. BANCROFT: And what she wanted.
And traditionally, this is the heroine's "l want" song,
but Mulan doesn't want anything more than just to be allowed to be herself.
So that was the thing we aIways struggled with on this song.
Lyrically, what is she really saying?
COATS: We played around with the lyrics a lot.
Because it was... She kind of wanted two things,
she wanted to be herseIf and to make her dad proud.
And that came in. We struggled with that for a long time.
BANCROFT: Yeah. COATS: To get that playing right.
BANCROFT: But when we first heard it in a smaII music room
in the Feature Animation building in Burbank, years and years ago,
it struck us with the amazingly
passionate and emotional feel of the song,
and we knew, l think, we had something special at that moment.
COOK: There's half and half symbolism there,
yin and yang, sort of, but that she's sort of torn.
You know, which one?
Who am I? Am l who they want me to be?
Or am I somebody eIse who l know l probably am?
BANCROFT: Yeah, that's a great image,
and visuaI icon moments Iike that
are really what, l think, bring the viewer into understanding her dilemma
without a Iot of words.
COATS: This sequence coming up, this exchange,
when it first started in the movie,
remember, they were walking home from town.
COOK: That's right.
COATS: She and Dad were coming from town.
OriginaIIy, the notice that war was breaking out was posted in town,
and he picked a flower from the tree.
It so stuck and resonated when Chris Sanders did it,
that eventually it found its right place in the movie,
but that scene didn't change content very much at all.
BANCROFT: lt's the only scene that we saved.
COOK: We just switched the location to their garden.
BANCROFT: Now in this scene, we did a fun thing here.
A little more Mulan behind-the-scenes trivia,
when Chi Fu is caIIing out the names of people being called to serve,
they're actually names of some of the staff
and artists that worked on the production.
-You'II hear... -COOK: Hsiao and...
-Chang. -BANCROFT: Chang, Chen-Yi Chang,
and Rita Hsiao, who was a writer on it.
. . .must serve in the Imperial Army.
The Hsiao family.
The Yi family.
I will serve the Emperor in my father's place.
-The Fa family. -No!
COATS: About this acting choice.
l remember the meeting we taIked about
having Dad, as an older man, was tricky.
We had a lot of discussion about Dad,
because we needed the audience
to beIieve Dad was too feeble to go to war.
Because if he feIt Iike he could go to war,
we were afraid the audience would never forgive him
for not going after his daughter.
So we struggIed a Iot with what was his disability, and how old was he,
'cause we didn't want him to be so feeble,
you thought he'd expire at any moment.
But that moment of him taking his cane and handing it to his wife,
and the dignity that gave him,
was really one of my favorite parts about this entire sequence.
And the shot of those three women.
BANCROFT: lt's very difficult to animate a limp
or disability like that accurately and well.
lt's easy for it to look like you didn't put in the right amount of drawings,
or it wasn't animated well, and it Iooks Iike a mistake.
That's one thing l think Mark Henn, as the supervising animator of Dad,
brought to the character, because it has the feeling of an actual limp,
which is very difficult to animate.
(GROANS)
(BODY THUMPS FLOOR)
(GROANS)
(PANTING)
COOK: We have to give credit to Tom Schumacher
for suggesting we show the public side of Fa Zhou, of the father,
his public presentation.
That he didn't need the cane to walk, that he was able and capable.
lt also built upon the idea of his pride,
which is what this scene is aII about.
He's so prideful, he's willing...
And so devoted to this idea of honor,
-he's willing to sacrifice his life for it. -COATS: His life, right.
COOK: And Mulan thinks it's the stupidest thing she's ever heard.
And she tells him that right there, which is pretty forward.
BANCROFT: Mulan is...
That's a good point, Barry, because honor is an eIement of...
You'II hear the word "honor" throughout this movie.
To American audiences,
we don't quite have the same understanding,
and we're not raised with a sense of honor
Iike the Chinese are and were.
So, we reaIIy needed to get that across,
because a lot of why she did it hinged upon it.
To American audiences,
she does it because she Ioves her father.
But more than that, we tried to show that it was to honor her father,
to honor her family and her ancestors, that she did all the things she did.
And when she comes back and presents all the honors
that were bestowed upon her by The Emperor to her father,
that that had meaning, because those were physical honors.
COOK: This is one of the first sequences
we approved into production and animated,
the scenes of Mulan sitting on that statue of the Great Stone Dragon.
COATS: lt was boarded perfectly by Dean DeBlois,
one of our story artists.
He ended up being the second lead in story for us,
but this sequence just got approval right away.
lt was so good.
COOK: The sequence had a pretty big history.
I had done some thumbnaiIs.
Chen-Yi Chang had boarded an entire version of it once,
and then Dean brought it all home.
BANCROFT: lt's a pantomime sequence,
so the visual icons represented here are so important.
And one of the things that Dean brought into the boards was,
every time you see her in action,
or doing something different throughout this scene, making choices,
you'll always see a face looking at her.
We always cut to a face, whether it be a dragon face...
And you'll see throughout almost every scene and new location,
there's a face looking at her.
Those faces represented the ancestors.
Again, it's a feeling that she's being watched,
that the ancestors know what she's doing,
that she's breaking the family rules.
COOK: And that was a huge contribution.
BANCROFT: We use that now, coming up here with Grandma,
because she represents the spiritual side of the family.
COOK: She's the closest one to becoming an ancestor.
(ALL CHUCKLING)
BANCROFT: So she can communicate a IittIe bit
with them, or they through her.
She has this spirituaI connection
and instantly knows that something is wrong all of a sudden.
COATS: l wanted to talk a bit more about...
"Mulan's decision," is what we called the sequence.
We found, and you'll notice when you look at the sequence,
in which MuIan decides to Ieave to take her father's place,
she stands and Iooks at them in bed
and Ieaves the fIower by their bed stand.
And a Iot of Western audiences wanted more than that.
-They wanted... -COOK: A kiss.
COATS: ...or a hug or something, and that's not a cultural thing.
We got a lot of notes at the very beginning,
"That is so cold," and, "Why isn't this happening?"
Because she, in a Chinese famiIy, wouIdn't have done that.
She was showing her father honor and respect,
but she didn't necessarily need to kiss him goodbye.
COOK: Mark Henn was able to pull it off with just a look from Mulan.
lt's easier in live action, for an actor to do that, the subtleties.
But to be abIe to do what he did there in animation is pretty astounding.
l don't know if people realize the level of talent and ability
it takes to pull off a moment like that, subtly.
(CLANKING)
I live!
So tell me what mortal needs my protection, great ancestor.
-You just say the word and I'm there. -Mushu. . .
BANCROFT: Here's the first time we see Mushu,
who's animated by my twin, Tom Bancroft.
COOK: And great stuff, a really fun character to work with.
BANCROFT: Mom said she was always most proud of him.
(LAUGHTER)
COOK: Why shouldn't she be? That's good stuff.
BANCROFT: lt's good animation. You're right, Mom.
COATS: You know the animals he's pointing to at the top of this temple?
-Aren't they the zodiac signs? -COOK: They are.
COATS: Those are the Chinese zodiac animaIs.
COOK: Chinese zodiac symboIs.
Of which I'm a dog.
BANCROFT: And all that glowing Chinese caIIigraphy,
another Mulan trivia number 236,
are names of artists that worked on the production.
COOK: Our writers, Eugenia Bostwick-Singer
and her husband, Raymond,
were writing partners, and they did the voices for these two ancestors.
They had come from an acting background, as well.
Everybody's probably seen Raymond.
-He always played somebody's dentist. -(BANCROFT CHUCKLING)
This is the character l did the voice for, the American Gothic setup.
We can't all be acupuncturists.
COATS: So again, going into the story on this sequence,
we wanted to be careful,
'cause we didn't want to offend anyone.
Because a Iot of Chinese do worship their ancestors,
so we wanted to baIance what they did with humor.
We had to place Mushu in a bed of humor
or else he was really going to stick out Iike a sore thumb.
COOK: Well, this time period that we sort of...
During Mulan's time, when the poem was written,
Buddhism had not come from India into China.
Really, the only religion was a reverence
and a worship of ancestors.
And then, of course, Confucius thought,
which is not exactly religious thought,
but it came in, and it was there at the time, too.
ln fact, the poem is based on the five tenets
of Confucius' phiIosophy or teaching.
. . .awaken the Great Stone Dragon.
COOK: That's it! BANCROFT: Oh! That was my scene!
Did you see that? Wasn't that funny? This is a scene I animated.
Tom was good enough to let me do a Mushu scene l really wanted.
l love comedy characters, so it was a Iot of fun to do.
He went over each drawing, because he didn't Iike them.
COOK: He relished doing that.
BANCROFT: To this day, he won't Iet me draw Mushu.
Thanks, Tom.
COOK: Eddie Murphy was phenomenal to work with on this.
We expected that he would ad-lib a lot more in recording sessions,
but what we found was instead of that,
he did a great deal of homework preparing from the script,
but preparing ideas he'd bring in and trying things.
lt was really great to be abIe to work with him.
COATS: l think he was probably our fastest person recording,
because he did his homework and had
two, three or four different ways of trying it.
We would get in, record him and be done very quickly.
COOK: Tons of energy.
ln voice casting, that's one thing you look for,
is the energy the character brings.
lt's not necessarily speed, but it's life...
COATS: Different patterns to their voices.
'Cause you have to divorce yourseIf from their physicalities.
BANCROFT: Every time we'd see Eddie,
he'd be working on a different movie,
-so he'd Iook different. -COOK: Different haircut.
BANCROFT: Or a little goatee. Once, we recorded him
in Florida, and he was stark bald!
He was doing Holy Man at the time.
So, it was funny to see him Iike that.
We made fun of him as much as we couId.
l think Tom did a great job in capturing the quality of Eddie
without actually looking like Eddie through the performance.
After this Great Stone, Humpty Dumpty mess,
I'd have to bring her home with a medal to get back in the temple.
COATS: We did this sequence, what, 30 times?
COOK: Over and over.
COATS: At least 30 times.
COOK: Mushu had to be motivated to go with Mulan,
but we wanted him to be selfishly motivated,
so he's not helping her at first, he's making good for himself.
So, when he gets back to the tempIe, the ancestors will be impressed
and he'll get his promotion.
-Then who's the loser, me or you? -(CHIRPS)
(SCREECHING)
BANCROFT: We were talking about tone earIier.
The great thing about the Shan-Yu sequences,
it gives the audience a sense of impending doom.
And you wonder, from the very beginning, how we open the picture.
We start with the world at large, China, and there's a probIem.
Shan-Yu's coming in and he has a vendetta with The Emperor.
We don't know quite why yet.
And then we cut to the one... The Emperor even says,
-the one man who can... -COOK: The one grain ofrice.
BANCROFT: lt was a great speech. COOK: l wrote that line.
-The only line l wrote. -BANCROFT: l love that line, too.
It's, "One grain of rice can tip the scaIe,
"but one man may be the difference between victory and defeat."
The Emperor was talking about something else at the time,
but symbolically, he's talking about Mulan.
So when we cut to MuIan, we see that, even though she's not a man,
she represents that one man, so it's a great dynamic of this film.
You get a feeling that every time you cut back to the eviI Shan-Yu,
that's part of the larger story.
You always wonder, how does this character, this little girl, Mulan,
how is she going to affect the outcome of the larger story?
And ultimately, she does.
COATS: l prefer woman, by the way, the woman MuIan.
BANCROFT: She's a girl, Pam. She's 1 6.
COOK: She's 16. She's not a woman yet.
l think by the end, she's a woman. But l think she starts as a girl.
l think she matures, not physically, but as a person.
They're very manly and tough.
(NEIGHING)
COATS: We didn't talk about Khan. Khan's the horse.
Khan is from a cIassic T'ang Dynasty design.
Down to the tiny legs and the really defined snout area.
COOK: Yeah, long snout.
lt's really close to Chen-Yi's originaI design.
Beautiful, beautiful work.
Get ready, Mulan. Your serpentine salvation is at hand !
For I have been sent by your ancestors. . .
COOK: Ah! Cri-Kee doing shadow puppets.
COATS: We should talk about this whole sequence
and the history of Mushu's song.
COOK: We thought we might put a song in here,
and we wrote a song or two.
COATS: We wrote three songs. We didn't write them.
COOK: We didn't.
COATS: Matthew and David wrote them.
ln our minds, from the very beginning,
we thought this would be a song sequence,
where we wouId Iearn about Mushu through a song.
And they wrote some great songs.
And every time we did it, it seemed to haIt the movie.
BANCROFT: lt really did. COATS: lt did.
lf you gave it enough screen time to be a real song,
-it just stopped the movie. -BANCROFT: Right.
I don't do that tongue thing.
COATS: lt ended up not working for the story.
lt was really hard on Matthew and David,
because they wrote so many songs in this area.
If I was my real size, your cow here would die of fright.
BANCROFT: lt's one of the things we've always talked about.
Once you start to get in tune with the movie,
the movie actually takes on a life of its own and tells you what it needs.
We'd go to screenings with the song in there,
and it was the first thing that would jump out at us, the movie saying,
"l do not belong here. Take me out."
COOK: Like rejecting an organ transplant.
It didn't fit.
BANCROFT: lt was an emotional thing, as fiImmakers.
You get in tune with it so much that it just doesn't feel right.
So, it was a gutturaI choice there.
COOK: But we did get the idea across.
Mushu saying, "You've got a problem and l'm here to help."
Sort of seIIing himseIf to MuIan.
Shoulders back, chest high, feet apart, head up and. . .
COATS: This sequence was aIso one of the first
sequences going into production.
And when you first start a production, you need to get the wheels greased.
We put this in early,
before we completely had all the characters for the storyline,
so we ended up redoing a lot of this sequence.
COOK: l got that tattoo afterwards. COATS: Did you?
-(PEOPLE LAUGHING) -COOK: lt hurt, too.
BANCROFT: Where is it, though? COOK: Right there, my chest.
In Iieu of hair.
(SNORTING) What are you lookin' at?
Punch him. It's how men say hello.
COATS: We also had a lot of back and forth debate
about how much Ming-Na Wen, who played the voice of Mulan,
was going to change her voice range
between being a man and being a woman.
We played around with it a little bit where she started low,
but keeping her low for the rest of the movie feIt a IittIe unnaturaI.
So, she started Iow and then cheated it back up into her normal range.
Now, this sequence...
COOK: She did a great job, by the way.
We saw her in The Joy Luck Club and feII in Iove with her as an actress.
She does the opening narration in that fiIm.
Just beautiful. Beautiful performance.
BANCROFT: And l think it says a lot about an actress,
for as beautiful as Ming-Na is,
that she can play a man really well, too,
I think it's to her benefit.
-(CLATTERING) -(CHICKENS CLUCKING)
COATS: ln the scene in which she decides what her name is,
it's kind of a little interesting history.
We have a visual development artist,
who helped paint all of our background keys for this movie
by the name of Sai Ping Lok.
So, his name inspired our choice
for calling her Ping when she was a man.
COOK: lt's a great name. lt's sort of funny to us,
but it's actually a reaIIy decent name in China.
COATS: This sequence, again, we try to hold until the very end, really...
The audience doesn't know that the GeneraI is Shang's dad.
COOK: No wonder he got the job.
COATS: At one point, he wasn't Shang's dad.
COOK: That's right. COATS: And we changed that later on.
BANCROFT: lt gave a nice emotional dynamic later on,
when you see the GeneraI's been wiped out
with aII the other troops by Shan-Yu.
So it meant something more to our characters by making that relationship.
COATS: lt also sort of mirrors MuIan's arc and what she did.
She did what she did to honor her father,
because she Ioves her father.
And Shang struggIes with the same thing.
COOK: Right.
COATS: He really loves his father here.
He's nervous. He's trying to do the right thing by making him proud,
and we Iiked that mirroring the theme there.
Leader of China's finest troops.
COOK: Yeah, you could do a whoIe story about Shang and his dad.
This whole story you could play as a movie,
and it'd be pretty interesting, l think.
It was hard at times to know just how much to get into that story.
BANCROFT: Besides that, that scene was also important to us.
We worked really hard to try and get a sense of where they were going,
the two stories coming together.
There's a lot of strategy talked about and where people are.
Shan-Yu's here, we're going there.
Ultimately, the audience doesn't care. You get it when you just follow with it
and see they're going here, and they go there.
But another thing we did directionally
that we Iearned studying David Lean films
is that we always have a progression of left to right.
When our main character's story was progressing,
as she neared the palace, she was always traveling left to right.
When she was kind of going against her story or against that goal,
then she was taking a step back or going right to left, screen-wise.
And it's a great device, l think, cinematically,
to use to try and always keep the direction
and focus of the story in a visual way.
. . .fix things, cook outdoors. . .
COATS: Again, this is another great Mark Henn scene.
COOK: lt's a very early scene that he animated. And really funny.
BANCROFT: lt probably was one of the first scenes.
COATS: lt was one of the very early scenes.
BANCROFT: lt was one of the first ones that sold to the studio, too,
the idea that the audience will go along with the pretense
that she actually is a man.
COOK: Pulling it off.
BANCROFT: Or that she could play that part.
lt was Ming-Na's performance, Mulan's animation and the character design.
You'II notice that when we represent her or draw her as a man,
she has more of a jawbone and a more angular look to her face.
And when you see her earlier in the film as a female,
she has a very round, more volumptuous
or feminine Iook to her.
COOK: "Volumptuous?" BANCROFT: Voluptuous?
COOK: Lump? Like, vo-"lump"-tuous? BANCROFT: Because she's lumpy?
-ls that what you were trying to say? -COATS: Yeah, he did that on purpose.
BANCROFT: I'II start again. She has more of a feminine, rounder feel to her,
and that's something you can only do in animation.
That's the fun thing of animation, you just don't notice it happening.
It's... That's aII.
-COOK: Little trick. -(COATS LAUGHING)
You know, we have to work on your people skills.
COOK: Oh, l love this scene. Look at how beautifuI that is.
BANCROFT: Not an easy scene to do, though.
We worked on this thing over and over.
COOK: We never got the idea across,
but we were trying to show that she was an outcast
and put out where they kept the pigs, outside the confines of the camp.
BANCROFT: Right, she's the lowest of the low, to start.
COOK: This scene's so pretty...
COATS: l don't think we ever really got the humor we wanted out of that.
Get your clothes on.
Get ready. Got breakfast for ya.
Look, you get porridge, and it's happy to see you.
Get outta there! You gonna make people sick.
COOK: l love that joke of having a little funny face in the oatmeal, too.
. . .and no fightin', play nice with the kids,
unless one of the other kids wanna fight,
then you have to kick the other kid's butt.
COATS: Now, again, you look at the Mulan in this sequence,
and when she wakes up, she looks like she's just woken up.
Her hair's kind of messed up,
and that was a Mark Henn choice.
That's what I'm talkin' about. Now, get out there and make me proud.
(HORSE NEIGHS)
(SNORTING)
-What do you mean the troops just left? -They what?
(MUFFLED SHOUTS)
Wait! You forgot your sword.
COOK: Barry Temple was a supervising animator for Cri-Kee.
Did a funny, funny job.
Jeffrey Varab was our supervising animator for Chi Fu,
and he really captured what we were looking for in this.
COATS: He's really a man you Iove to hate, Chi Fu is.
COOK: But you've met him. We aII know him somewhere...
COATS: You know people like him. COOK: ln our lives.
BANCROFT: We always saw Shan-Yu representing the villain
on the bigger scale of the story.
Chi Fu was reaIIy her day-in, day-out villain
she had to deaI with on a personal level, her smaller story.
So he was an important device to have in the army camp.
COOK: James Hong did the voice.
COATS: The sequence in which Mulan sort of peeks around
and takes a Iook at Shang without his shirt on...
COOK: (WOLF WHISTLES) Baby.
COATS: We added that towards the end.
We had screened the movie, and we got some notes.
Actually, the notes were from MichaeI Eisner.
He wanted a hint of romance,
so we went back and added that sequence.
We had aIready had Shang taking off his shirt,
because he was going to go in and do martiaI arts.
But we added that Iook back in to start to add this interest from MuIan.
BANCROFT: You never heard so many female artists
hoot and holler at a drawing before, too.
You need both to reach the arrow.
COATS: Ruben Aquino was the supervising animator for Shang.
COOK: And BD Wong did the voice.
COATS: Now when we were in China, we went to the birthplace of martial arts.
COOK: The Shaolin Temple.
ln Luoyang.
COATS: And we watched a demonstration.
lt helped inspire some of this stuff.
We've got a long way to go.
COATS: This is a great song. lt helps move the story forward.
lt's not a song just for a song's sake, it's telling a story.
And you see in this song the progression.
No one Iikes MuIan. The Gang of Three hate her.
Everyone's picking on her, she's a complete failure,
and she finally grows in this movie.
By the end of this song,
the Gang of Three have a brand-new respect for her,
and she's started to aIter the way people feel.
BANCROFT: You'll also see, in this song, a visual thing
that was developed by our art director, Ric SIuiter,
and our head of layout, Bob Walker,
which I think was done really masterfully.
When you first see Shang,
he's doing a lot of martial arts with the pole and stick,
and you'll see it was animated and Iaid out
so that whenever you see him,
he's represented in full space,
which gives depth and perspective to the scenes.
And that was purposeful, that we try to show that he existed in full space,
and she existed in limited space or flat space.
So, every time you see her,
we placed her in areas where she had less perspective
and less movement and depth, forward and backwards.
lt was just a subtle thing we did in developing this sequence.
Then, as she starts to succeed,
she becomes more dimensional, artistically.
COATS: We should talk about Donny Osmond here.
He does this song.
He was the first concert I ever went to. l had purple socks.
BANCROFT: You had a little puppy love there.
COATS: (CHUCKLING) l did. A little puppy love happenin'.
When we cast BD Wong, it was like this miracle,
because Donny Osmond was the perfect match
for BD Wong's speaking voice.
I met Donny Osmond in a restaurant in Beverly Hills,
and l got to have dinner with him. l was shaking.
l was so excited to meet this man,
who turns out to be an incredibly lovely human being.
BANCROFT: Great guy, so nice. COATS: With perfect pitch.
He nailed this song.
lt was really great working with him, Iike a dream come true.
And l made my parents so happy because I knew Donny Osmond.
lt was really a lot of fun.
Also, in this sequence, when she climbs the pole...
Something we thought about a lot with Mulan is,
we had to Iook at how a woman approaches things.
A lot of times, a woman doesn't have the physical strength of a man,
so we Iiked her to win with a combination
of not only her improved physical strength,
but also by using her brain.
That's what the ultimate victory is in that sequence.
She's the person who figured out how to use those weights
to help her get to the top of the pole.
When you see her now throughout the movie,
she uses both her physical strength and her mental capabilities to succeed.
COOK: You'll see the same locations in the song revisited
once she's successful, and you'll see, if you compare the two,
although they're the same locations, the color has intensified drastically.
l really think Anthony Michaels came into his own as an animator, too,
doing the animation of her going up the pole.
COATS: He animated on Mulan.
COOK: Chris WiIIiams boarded that sequence.
BANCROFT: Yeah, Chris WiIIiams was the guy
that really cracked that nut for us.
How do you show a character going through all the training
and also get the story across that
she's the lowest person on the totem pole?
And by the end, not only is everybody trained,
but also that they have respect for her,
she's become the best of the best.
COOK: Pres Romanillos was our supervising animator for Shan-Yu.
Did some great stuff.
COATS: He also did the bird, the falcon.
COOK: The falcon. Alex Kupershmidt also helped out,
because the character footage on Khan,
Mulan's horse, wasn't as demanding.
COATS: We struggled a lot with how much footage we needed
of Shan-Yu in the movie.
Because Shan-Yu is a fairly superficial villain.
He wants one thing, right?
He's big, bad, he wants to come in to defeat The Emperor.
So, we pIayed around a Iot
with how much footage we were going to use of him.
We couIdn't have done this movie... You can't do a cross-dressing movie
without your obligatory bathroom scene.
COOK: Right.
COATS: And that's what this is. BANCROFT: Sort of.
You've got to have the character in a naked situation of some kind.
This was what we caIIed "the awkward lake sequence" because of that,
it introduces the problem of,
"How does she bathe with all these guys?"
COOK: You want to broach the subject. BANCROFT: Yeah.
COOK: Doing it with comedy is really the best way.
BANCROFT: Because story-wise,
we talked about this quite a bit, that story-wise,
there's nothing going on to progress the plot,
other than it shows that now she's kind of "in" with the guys.
COATS: Our underwear gag. You know what?
An underwear gag, guaranteed laugh.
COOK: Especially with hearts. BANCROFT: Kids love underwear.
COATS: Put hearts on boxers and they go nuts.
BANCROFT: Comedy standard.
So aII it is, is humor and character,
but we felt strongly about keeping this in,
because it is so much fun
and it helps you to really love and care for these characters,
-because they care for each other. -COATS: These guys.
BANCROFT: That's what makes Disney films great, too,
is that you make choices like that
purely for the fun of character and the fun of comedy.
COOK: Ling was played by Gedde Watanabe.
I know we were jerks to you before,
so let's start over.
COOK: And Chien-Po was... COATS: Jerry Tondo.
And I'm Chien-Po.
COOK: Jerry Tondo did a very funny job. He's a very sweet man.
COATS: Now, Harvey Fierstein plays the voice of Yao.
And there's nothin' you girls can do about it.
COATS: We struggled with what we wanted
for the voice of that character at the beginning.
We really struggled with who it shouId be.
Once we got Harvey, it just really landed.
COOK: lt was great.
COATS: The humor of the character we needed.
COOK: And Gedde was just so funny.
He would have us all rolling on the fIoor with his antics.
(WHISTLES)
BANCROFT: The other reason why the Gang of Three are great,
we caII them the Gang of Three,
what they represent for us is, not only are they great characters
that we can portray and have fun with,
and they represent the manly side of the film,
but also, in an economic way,
they represent the entire Chinese army.
Because we're making this huge Chinese army picture,
and yet we don't have the budget or the time
to produce thousands of armies.
So a Iot of times, we just use our camera to get that feeling.
We'd cut to them so that you get the sense
of what the army's thinking,
without having to represent and draw 1 00 people.
-They completed their training. -Those boys. . .
BANCROFT: What did it say on his clipboard there?
That actually did say something.
COOK: lt does. l can't remember.
lt was supposed to be a report on how his troops were doing,
or a training schedule.
BANCROFT: Yeah, it was kind of a running thing with him.
He had that clipboard and he was always writing something down.
lt had to do with him being that kind of character.
COOK: Like the office rat or something. BANCROFT: Yeah.
COOK: He's making notes whenever you make a mistake or something.
You're dismissed.
BANCROFT: The office rat that everybody loves to hate.
COATS: Now again, this scene right in here
was yet another subtle layering
of Mulan's sort of growing...
BANCROFT: Attraction. COATS: ...attraction to Shang.
BANCROFT: And Mushu calls her on it.
"You're flirtin' with that boy, ain't ya?"
What?
You like him, don't you?
No!
BANCROFT: Yep. She is Iivin' on deniaI.
-lt's not just a river in Egypt. -COOK: But l like him, anyway.
I think it's time we took this war into our own hands.
BANCROFT: Now this is a great little bit for Mushu, 'cause a lot of times,
Disney sidekick characters, as they're called,
they don't really help the plot too much.
They don't really push it forward so much.
But what I Iike about Mushu and Cri-Kee
is that this is their moment
that they change the course of the story.
By forging this note,
they actively get Mulan and her troops...
COOK: To the front. BANCROFT: ...to the front.
So, it was a great little story plot moment
that we could do in a comedic way,
instead of finding some other boring, non-fun way.
COOK: This typing idea was Alex Kupershmidt's idea.
Before we put a sequence into animation,
we do what we call a turnover,
or handing the sequence over to the layout artists
and invite those who will be involved,
-the editor and... -COATS: The supervising animators.
COOK: Everything's already boarded and approved to go into production,
and we're all ready to go, but we try to keep ourselves open for ideas.
And that's when Alex came up with that idea of the cricket typing.
And it's just so funny. lt worked out so great.
COATS: This panda joke, l gotta tell you...
Who boarded the panda joke?
BANCROFT: John Sanford. COOK: Johnnie.
COATS: When we boarded this panda joke,
we thought it was hysterical.
And Tom Schumacher did not Iike it.
He kept trying to take it out of the movie.
COOK: Oh, absolutely. COATS: Barry and Tony would say,
"Please just let it play for a screening. lt's going to be funny."
So, we battIed keeping that panda joke in for a very long time.
FinaIIy, at the end, Tom Schumacher
actually conceded that it was a funny joke,
and we got to keep it in there.
BANCROFT: And it's another example where we use
an office worker, if you will, as a voice.
John Sanford, who did the storyboards for it, aIso did the scratch on Chi Fu,
so when Chi Fu screams Iike a woman, we had tried a lot of different things
and actually had a woman scream in there and all this stuff,
and it was never as funny as John screaming like a woman.
And to this day, nobody can scream Iike a woman Iike John Sanford.
COOK: This sequence where Ling shows Mulan
the equivalent of a girlie calendar.
Broose Johnson animated some of this really great transitional stuff.
And getting that look we had in the opening shot of the film,
watercolor on rice paper.
StyIisticaIIy, we just departed completely
from the rest of the movie again.
But it was what they dreamt about and, especiaIIy for Chien-Po,
what his wish for Iife was
and what he wanted to get out of this whole experience.
But it's fun to do that, too.
l think it's refreshing for the audience to see another side,
or visually, another look for the film that keeps it interesting.
The most famous sequence like that is the pink elephants
on parade from Dumbo.
-But this was our sort of... -BANCROFT: Little fantasy moment.
COOK: Having a fun moment and using a different style.
BANCROFT: lt was actually animated by Broose Johnson and Aaron Blaise.
COATS: Now, the song A Girl Worth Fighting For,
its thematic is that you see, or hear,
the Gang of Three taIking about what they want in a woman.
And Mulan's strengths and skill sets aren't really what they're describing,
so it creates this interesting dynamic.
And at the end, once they realize Mulan is a woman,
they respect and love her,
and she doesn't have any of the qualities
they're singing about here.
BANCROFT: No, they're these male chauvinist pigs, basically,
singing about what they think a woman shouId be.
l'll tell you, screenings for the studio were tough.
We'd get notes about how non-P.C. this song was.
COOK: Which was the whole idea.
BANCROFT: We were actually happy that we got that kind of feedback,
because that's the purpose.
They look really bad for what they think a woman is,
because that's the effect MuIan has on them.
ln the end, she changes their whole perspective
of what a woman is in society.
COOK: And the abrupt change between this happy-go-lucky song,
suddenly they're faced with the devastation of war.
This was also very tricky to handle.
We didn't want to show dead bodies laying around.
Later, we have one shot where we see
the army as we look over the ridge there,
but we want to show destruction without showing too much death.
But represented by this doll Mulan finds
in the house of some girl that...
I don't know how much the audience gets the direct connection,
but she sees herself as the little girl
who belongs to this doll.
COATS: At this point, we were talking for awhile,
"Do we have to check back in with Dad?"
ln our minds, that relating...
As she picked up that doll, it was thinking of her being back home, too.
I don't know if it ever came across or not.
COOK: Right, and l think here,
MuIan's reaction to Shang just being informed of the death of his father
-reminded her... -COATS: Yeah.
COOK: We wanted to play her reaction to Shang's moment of sorrow here,
so that that wouId aIso cIick back...
COATS: lt takes us back home. COOK: ...to her dad.
COATS: We made the decision and taIked on and off
about whether or not to cut back home.
We decided not to,
because we were afraid that either Dad was going to be so frail,
it wasn't going to be entertaining,
or that the audience would get angry that Dad hadn't gone after Mulan.
BANCROFT: The scene that the camera booms over the hillside,
and you see that the GeneraI
and all of his troops were wiped out by Shan-Yu,
we see that with Shang as he rises over the rise, also.
That scene, that background, was painted three different ways.
Along the lines of what Barry was saying,
the studio was very concerned
about how much gore to show, so we had a small, medium and large.
-And the smaII was Iike hard... -COOK: Body count.
BANCROFT: Yeah, it was based on body counts.
So the smaII represented very little bodies,
and it was mostly debris, but it was too confusing.
Without showing any death,
then it doesn't really nail the idea home.
So we fought for a IittIe more, and l think we settled with the medium,
because the large was maybe a little too graphic.
COOK: l fought a lot to get this idea of it starting to snow.
We were going into a sequence with snow,
so it was practical in that sense.
But there was some calming effect and some sort of healing effect
that this falling snow seemed to have that worked well emotionally.
And, of course, after that we mentioned how important it is to have comic relief
after a heavy or a serious sequence, which that certainly was.
And there it is. That's another thing,
the overall pacing of the story is such an important factor,
coming from a slow, sad sequence, suddenly now,
aside from beginning it with the comic relief,
but suddenly, everything becomes hyperactive.
COATS: To set up this entire sequence, we had a huge model.
COOK: Dean built it.
BANCROFT: Dean DeBlois, the story artist.
COATS: He built this model.
-What, four by five feet? -BANCROFT: Right.
COATS: And probably five feet deep, the entire thing out of plaster of Paris.
Again, Dean DeBlois, one of our leads in our story department,
'cause he had to figure out what was happening, where everyone was,
so that he could get the right effect on the story level.
BANCROFT: lt was the choreography of where they run,
where they're headed,
when does Shan-Yu come up, where do they travel to.
It was effective for that.
COATS: Because there's a lot to keep track of, and Cri-Kee's pretty tricky,
because he is so tiny and the space that he's in is so immense
that it takes a Iot of work to keep track of everyone.
BANCROFT: We used CG arrows
created by David Tidgwell and his effects department
to create a lot of depth in this sequence,
so you'll see we use them to great effect.
Coming towards camera, it gives a lot of depth.
A lot of the backgrounds, otherwise, look very flat.
It's those arrows that add some nice depth to the scenes.
COATS: David Tidgwell is a supervisor of our effects department.
BANCROFT: Those are aII CG fIags, too.
Always blowing in the background.
COOK: This is a great place to mention Eric GuagIione,
who is Iead of our CG department and helped pull off all of this Hun charge.
Sandra GroeneveId modeIed, originally in clay,
some of the horses from Chen-Yi's design,
or bust of one of the horses,
and began doing preliminary animation on it.
lt was neat and very inventive how they managed to animate probably, what?
-Five or six different horses? -BANCROFT: Behaviors, yeah.
COOK: And five or six different Huns on these horses.
But then with color and swapping out shields and swords and hats,
and putting one rider on one horse.
You never really see two that are exactly the same.
You might be if you want to take the time to do it,
but it really feels like a wide variety of...
COATS: Then the thematic that Jerry GoIdsmith captured,
Shan-Yu's thematic is one of my favorite parts in his score.
I Iove the whoIe music in here.
All right. You might want to light that right about now.
Quickly. Quickly!
COOK: From the time the avalanche collapses right after she shoots it,
till they save her over the cliff is one of the fantastic parts of the score.
lt's one of my favorites.
COATS: Now again, on a story point, you've got to go back in
when you watch this sequence, you realize that Mulan used her brain.
lt was really important for us that you see her get the idea of that avalanche
in the refIection of her sword.
She gets the idea and she acts upon it.
She was abIe to defeat a huge army here by using her brain
and a combination of her physical strength,
but mostly she uses her head here.
BANCROFT: You'll see also one of the fun things that we did,
which is very difficult to do in animation,
to try and get the feeling of once the avalanche starts,
we start a hand-heId camera feeI through a lot of the shots,
and this just gives a little sway and tension to a Iot of the scenes.
But it's something that, in the computer,
we could scale up or down,
depending on the importance of the scene
or how much tension the scene had.
We used it to great effect to try to feel like
the audience is actually in the avaIanche.
COATS: Remember Roy Disney sent us some avalanche footage?
This avaIanche...
Our effects department did a reaIIy great job in this movie.
The design of the effects was great, but this avaIanche was a Iot of work.
COOK: Garrett Wren did the fantastic animation of the avalanche as it begins
and ends over the cliff, other scenes too,
but those were two mega scenes for an effects animator
and just major work, all done by hand.
-BeautifuI stuff. -BANCROFT: How long did it take him?
COATS: Oh, forever. He worked on that through
the course of the movie, it seems like.
lt took him a long time.
COOK: That was the sequence he was
more or less assigned to was the avaIanche.
And he made it work.
COATS: This was a tricky sequence
in terms of story 'cause there's a lot going on.
We had to make sure that we got some level of believability,
because there's a huge suspension of disbelief you have to go with.
But we reworked this sequence a lot, trying to make sure...
Where was everyone? What did Mulan need to accomplish?
How did she save Shang?
It was important that the Gang of Three help her.
We wanted them to be a part of this, which they ended up helping her.
We ultimately wanted Mulan to have been in charge,
to be responsible for the success.
BANCROFT: Not only is Yao probably the strongest man in the world
to be able to hold onto that rope
that's holding up a ton of weight with the horse.
COATS: A horse, two humans, a dragon and a cricket.
BANCROFT: That must be a steel cable that it's attached to, also.
COATS: You have to ignore the improbability
of it and go with the emotion of it.
LING: Give him some air.
(GASPING)
Ping?
You are the craziest man I've ever met.
And for that, I owe you my life.
From now on, you have my trust.
COATS: Now this sequence coming up was one
that we tried a lot of different ways,
because we knew from the very beginning
that MuIan had to be reveaIed as a woman.
How do you do that in a tastefuI manner?
BANCROFT: ln a G-rated movie at that.
COATS: A lot of the sequences we did at the beginning got a laugh
or they got gasps because they were too graphic.
Barry, wasn't this finally your solution?
COOK: l thought it was good to show from a distance her in the medic tent.
The scene where they're whispering to each other outside the tent.
The medic and Shang, stiII got a giggle in the final screening.
COATS: lt did.
COOK: But to show that, after the fact,
she had been treated for her injury,
and the treatment of the injury...
COATS: That a medical man was the person who discovered her.
COOK: A doctor, which up until this point, he's not even around.
-He just shows up. -COATS: We had to add him.
COOK: He's a mountain medicine man.
He lives up in the snow, but he's part of the army.
The symbol on the side of his case and the flag on the top of the tent
is an ancient Chinese symboI for a doctor.
Chen-Yi gave us that piece of research.
COATS: When we revealed her as a woman inside the tent,
it gave her some dignity.
Then Chi Fu immediateIy strips it away.
COOK: As we get closer and closer to Shang about to execute MuIan,
the color intensifies in the sky.
As soon as the sword hits the ground, you see the sky has no red in it.
An abrupt mood change.
Hopefully, something the audience would never consciously pick up on.
From a standpoint of mood and tone,
it shifts suddenly when you see the decision Shang's made
to not obey the law himself, to show mercy.
BANCROFT: Then it dissipates, as he's made a concIusion
and it aIIeviates the tension in the scene.
COATS: One of the sub-themes in Mulan
was what it takes to be a great leader.
Great Ieaders know when to break the ruIes.
We see Shang here making an important decision.
He should have killed her, but that wasn't the right thing to do.
He made a really hard choice right there
by leaving her alone in the snow,
which to leave her alive,
but she may have quite possibly perished.
COOK: They're not Chinese characters, it doesn't say anything,
but the arrangement of those little sticks in the fire,
to give you the feeling of Chinese brushwork.
We tried to put things in like that whenever we couId.
We wanted to get the idea from Mushu, like a little marshmallow roast,
but they wouldn't have had marshmallows,
so we used these wontons or pot stickers.
BANCROFT: Little dumplings. COOK: (LAUGHING) l love pot stickers.
BANCROFT: Get me one of those. Those look good.
COOK: lt's close to lunchtime, that's why we're thinking of food.
COATS: l remember talking about this sequence for a long time.
Barry pushed really hard for her moment of seIf-doubt.
lt's interesting 'cause you can talk to people who have seen the movie,
who talk about this sequence.
l remember trying to wrap my head around it
when Barry was pushing for it.
BANCROFT: We all thought he was crazy.
COATS: Because she has a moment of self-doubt and it's the only time
where you see her almost feel sorry for herself.
Other than that, Mulan remains pretty constant.
Everything she does,
she does because her heart tells her to behave that way.
But this moment right here,
where she questions her altruistic behavior,
was a really great decision.
COOK: She had pushed so hard to do this, to make the grade
and to hoId her own in the situation.
Then, when it all fell apart,
she really does question her own motives
and wonder if it was the right decision,
or if she made a big mistake from the very start.
l think a lot of what's underlying too is the guilt of...
(SOFT CHIRPING)
COATS: Betraying all those people? COOK: Some of this might be her fauIt.
The results of what happened, but we don't want to get into that.
BANCROFT: The other value that it has is that it really affects Mushu,
because he sees her lamenting about what she'd done
in such a selfless way,
that it makes him feel guilty.
We do a neat visual thing there too, to bring back the Reflection song,
where he sees his refIection in the heImet.
It's at that moment that he feeIs the need to confess.
So he comes out with the truth that he was a con artist.
He really couldn't help her, but then they discover that they're both outcasts
and they need to continue on together.
COOK: lt's really sort of the first moment we see the big turn in Mushu there,
that now we know he is going to help her in a real way.
COATS: He finally loses his selfishness 'cause he keeps it...
COOK: He has those traits still throughout.
COATS: He'll never really be a saint. COOK: That's part of his character.
At Ieast he's committed now to her well-being and not just his own.
BANCROFT: This scene is really great.
We fought to keep this one in,
'cause we had a Iot of discussions about,
couldn't you just surprise the audience,
and Shan-Yu ends up, Iater on...
COATS: Do we have to show he survived?
BANCROFT: Do we have to see aII this?
But what l love about it is, it says to the audience
that this guy is so bad, this one's one bad mamba jamba,
that he's going to still go on with his goal
of killing The Emperor with only five guys.
There's no doubt in his mind that he's not going to succeed.
Then, of course, the added value of Mulan seeing this.
She's the onIy one who knows he's stiII aIive
and on his track to kill The Emperor.
That's another added bonus.
COATS: Notice in the rhythm of the story
is that in our traditional end of Act Two,
which was Mulan sitting around in that campfire feeling at her lowest low.
One of the reasons we needed Shan-Yu to emerge there
is she has to snap out of that very quickly,
so that her discovery of him being alive
gets her out of feeling sorry for herself
and immediately continues to push us into Act Three and into MuIan's...
lt gets her excited again
'cause we needed a reason to pull her out of her doldrums.
BANCROFT: This is where technology saved us, because we wanted...
This sequence came about at the end of production,
when we had very little money and time,
but luckily we had the ability and technology
to develop these wonderful crowd behaviors.
Eric GuagIione and his group helped develop them.
They're all hand-drawn, two-dimensional characters,
but the computer is able to reproduce them
so that it Iooks Iike thousands of crowds.
lt gives a very lush feel to this parade,
and later on when we get into the court.
COATS: We couldn't have done that sequence without those guys.
l don't know that we planned it. Did we plan this or did they come up with it?
COOK: Eric came up with this idea to help us out.
Also, l wanted to talk about the art direction here.
Ric SIuiter worked hard on this. We had talked about an idea of,
there's no electricity then, but l just love the magical feel
when we were in Hong Kong at night, the streets, the lights
and the green glow of the city when we were flying in there.
l wanted to try to get these green, almost like neon-feel to that street,
but do it with the traditionaI Chinese lanterns, and it does have that nice...
lt does have that feel to it, like one of those action-cop movies.
BANCROFT: We wanted it to be Las Vegas
without actually being in Las Vegas.
COATS: We are historically accurate. The Chinese did invent fireworks.
So we are accurate in that regard.
Just to see those sea of people that are in a very short period of time,
going to turn around and they're going to honor this woman who has,
according to the "then" laws of society, done everything wrong.
COOK: Of course, we know there are bad guys in that big paper dragon.
BANCROFT: Or do we?
China will sleep safely tonight.
Thanks to our brave warriors.
(CROWD CHEERING)
Sir, the Emperor's in danger.
(HARRUMPHS)
But the Huns are here.
COATS: From a story point of view, we talked about this a lot,
because, remember, we had Mulan feeling badly for herself.
She knew she had to go do something.
lmmediately, she goes in and she tries to get other people to do it for her.
She had Iost the sense of seIf that she could accomplish it.
That sequence was about turning to all these people
and no one would help her.
COOK: And they don't trust her. Shang doesn't trust her.
COATS: She's "a woman." No one trusts her. No one beIieves in her.
You saw that look, right back then, this is a woman.
You see her get the idea.
She's going to make yet another
very smart usage of her brain and her physical ability
to help save the day.
COOK: Of course now, the Chinese army too,
has reduced down to about five guys.
We don't talk about that very much.
BANCROFT: You'll see that we start out...
COOK: With 100 guys in that Iast shot.
COATS: We start out with more of our army than we end up with,
but we're hoping that no one really notices that.
COOK: Now they'll know it. Had to open my mouth.
They'll never reach the Emperor in time.
(BATTERING CONTINUES)
COOK: What's she up to?
BANCROFT: Not only are they saying they'll trust her,
she says, "l have an idea."
Her ideas have paid off for them,
so you see why they would trust her in this,
but the other fun thing about this is...
COATS: Again, men in drag.
BANCROFT: Men in drag are always funny, basically.
COOK: We make it look as if they're giving armor to Mulan,
so that she can now get some armor on and help them fight.
COATS: ln reality, she's dressing them up.
COOK: She's taking their cIothes 'cause they're going to change.
BANCROFT: The fun thing about this is
we're turning the whole thing upside-down.
These ultra macho guys that we heard singing about the role of a woman
are themseIves being dressed as a woman,
and she's more true to herseIf than she's ever been,
because she's not the made-up Matchmaker modeI that we had earIier
that wasn't being true to herself, she's somewhere in between.
COATS: She's not in armor.
BANCROFT: Now you know you have to build
this guy up as being one bad guy
when only just the presence of him
popping out scares thousands of people.
Because otherwise, you'd start to think,
"Why couldn't they get some soldiers up there and wipe these guys out?"
COOK: He's obviously got a reputation.
BANCROFT: We had a great fight choreographer
that worked with us named B.H. Barry,
who helped us choreograph a lot of these fight scenes.
COOK: Stage and screen.
BANCROFT: Very popular in stage and screen
that helped us with all the fight choreography.
We wanted stuff that wouId be humorous and fun
and lend themselves to,
not only the training they had that we saw earlier,
but also be driven by their personalities.
Everybody likes a naked chicken joke.
(COOK CHUCKLING)
COOK: And that banana out of his bIouse.
l don't know what that was about, but l insisted on it and it's stiII in the movie.
BANCROFT: lt's an in-joke Barry thought was funny.
COOK: Nobody else did. BANCROFT: l don't think so.
COOK: l saw that they had a fruit bowl...
COATS: They picked whatever was in the bowI.
BANCROFT: Everybody has round things...
COOK: Except he got stuck with a banana.
l don't know, we had to use it.
BANCROFT: lt keeps Barry laughing late at night.
To this day.
Then you will kneel in pieces!
COATS: There's our great score composer, Jerry GoIdsmith.
BANCROFT: Jerry, the silver fox.
We love him and what he brought to this picture. Boy!
COOK: Holy moly, we felt very fortunate to get someone of his caliber.
(GRUNTING)
No!
BANCROFT: Look at this guy. Oh! That's gotta hurt.
COATS: We talked about this in story a lot,
because the cutting of the rope was symbolic.
It forced Shan-Yu up there
for a one-on-one, tête-à-tête with MuIan.
COOK: lt also got her trapped there.
She knew that to save The Emperor, she'd have to put herself in danger.
BANCROFT: She had to stay there 'cause she didn't
have time to get down and cut the rope.
lt changes his drive,
because he knows he can't get to The Emperor anymore.
COOK: He pulls out this dagger, which is supposed to look cool,
but it always got a laugh.
COATS: lt looks so tiny, and in scaIe, compared to Shan-Yu.
COOK: It's Iike, "Oh, gosh."
You bringing out a butter knife?
-You going to butter him to death? -(ALL LAUGHING)
BANCROFT: Now he's focused on revenge.
He's going to take out the person that's responsible.
She says, "I'm the one responsibIe, so don't hurt Shang."
lt's a great moment where she's selfless,
and it changes his direction.
COATS: Now this sequence was boarded
by our head of story, Chris Sanders,
who worked hard at trying to
find a baIance between MuIan and Shan-Yu,
because Mulan is a tiny thing and Shan-Yu is a very big guy.
He struggled a long time with,
"How am l going to have her believably defeat him?"
You'll notice it's a combination of using her brain and her physical ability
in order to get rid of the villain.
COOK: Who are those two buffoons in the fireworks tower?
BANCROFT: Why, l think that was you and l, Barry.
COOK: We dive to our deaths, just for fun.
BANCROFT: l didn't think we died. COATS: You dived...
COOK: We dive to our death. BANCROFT: l wouldn't die, though.
COOK: lt was symbolic for the need for some rest.
-(GRUNTING) -(GASPING)
COATS: Remember, guys, we really didn't want
our villain to die by falling to his death.
-So we made sure... -BANCROFT: So we exploded him.
COATS: ...that he didn't die by falling to his death.
BANCROFT: lt's a Disney tradition that viIIains faII to their death.
We were adamant about not killing off Shan-Yu in that way.
We weren't sure how he was going to die
until we came up with this firework thing.
(GASPS)
(SCREAMS)
Get off the roof, get off the roof, get off the roof.
(SCREAMING)
BANCROFT: That was a little lame.
Shang just running from the castIe.
COATS: Okay, it was a IittIe convenient.
BANCROFT: Shang just running from the palace
and Mulan falling on his head.
At least we got them together again.
(CROWD CHEERING)
BANCROFT: Everybody loves a good fireworks show,
so it kind of echoes in the triumph of her.
Chi Fu's never happy, though. Here he comes.
They do that particular show over Epcot now.
Stand aside!
COATS: There he goes with the advertisements.
COOK: l know.
I Iive in FIorida and...
BANCROFT: Let's see, who pays your check?
l live in Florida and my check comes from Walt Disney World.
COATS: So this sequence, coming up here, was much debated.
A lot of times when we screened it, just like l mentioned earlier,
where we didn't want MuIan to touch her father when she was leaving.
The sequence in which she hugs The Emperor,
we got a lot of notes from people
that saw the movie before it was reIeased
in the Eastern culture, which is, "That would never happen."
That was precisely our point.
BANCROFT: Or the fact that he bows to her.
-Which is a reason that... -COOK: The bow and the hug.
BANCROFT: We didn't make his bow quite as deep as everybody else's, too,
which was even just the slight nod that he gives her
is enough to say that that's a big deal. So Chi Fu freaks out.
That's my scene of Chi Fu. l animated him bowing.
(CHUCKLING)
COATS: This is really important, wrapping up
what we were trying to say with the movie.
This is a woman who, because she was true to her heart
and true to herself,
she actually altered the way society thought.
COOK: Mushu's even choked up about it.
My little baby is all grown up and savin' China.
You have a tissue?
COATS: We came up with a special technique for that bow.
Do you want to talk about what Jeff Dutton did through there?
COOK: Jeff Dutton did something amazing with traditional animation,
but a way to multiply it using various levels.
lt would have been, in older techniques,
it would have been thought of as a multiplane type shot.
But to create... l don't know exactly how he did it,
but it worked out good.
BANCROFT: He had a lot of witches' brews around at the time.
COOK: When you have a real problem,
Jeff Dutton can usually help you find a solution.
COATS: He's our artistic coordinator on the movie.
The artistic coordinator is actually, in my opinion, the director's best friend.
Jeff Dutton is an enormous artistic talent,
and he's also got a great technical grasp
of what it takes to make one of our movies.
So he works with the directors in helping them get their vision
in the most economical way possible.
BANCROFT: Does things with Elmer's glue
that you've never seen before.
COOK: But we won't go into that. BANCROFT: No, that's another story.
COATS: You're at the end and our goal was to have aII these characters
likeable enough that you needed to pay them off.
COOK: A curtain call.
COATS: We needed our Gang of Three moment.
We needed Chi Fu to get some comeuppance.
You needed to end here with the tension of,
"Will they get back together?"
Because Shang and MuIan's exit was awkward.
We rewrote that scene a Iot of times.
BANCROFT: That was purposeful, because we felt like if you didn't...
lf he wasn't such a geeky guy here and kind of screw up...
He thinks he's giving her a compliment by saying she's a great warrior.
"You fight good."
COOK: Which should be "well," according to
the English teachers and we knew that.
COATS: We got notes on that, too.
BANCROFT: We thought it would be funnier
if it came out blunt and wrong.
That keeps the audience going.
They wonder, "ls that where the romance between them
"is going to end?"
Of course, no, there's more to see.
COOK: Tony West animated that blossom falling,
very much inspired by a sequence
from the original Fantasia.
Again, this is where Chris Sanders brought it all home
with the bookend of the scene where they were first under the tree.
AIso the whoIe idea that we wanted early on
that really got us on track for the story
is how this relationship resolved between the father and the daughter.
BANCROFT: Mark Henn animated this where a tear
comes to her eye and he wipes it away.
ln the storyboards, all that was there was one drawing
that was held for a long time during the dialogue of them hugging.
We thought, "That's going to be boring, acting-wise,
"that they're just holding onto each other
"while they're saying these things."
Mark, in his wisdom, had them pull out of the hug, which l was resistant to.
He pulls away from the hug to do the tear,
and then goes back into the embrace,
and l think it just makes for all the more lump in your throat.
COOK: Shang comes back with his Iame excuse
that she left some equipment behind.
Typical guy.
BANCROFT: For all his skill and athleticism,
he doesn't have much prowess around women.
COOK: No, he's a little nerdy.
And Mushu, the braggart, here he comes, "What about me?"
BANCROFT: We really fought with how to end the film,
and, "Did it have too many endings?"
That's always a big issue on a Disney film, and particularly in this one.
We fought with, "ShouId we end with her?
"The bow moment at the palace?
"Do we need to come back home?"
"We need to resoIve the story with Dad."
"ShouId we end after the moment with the hug with Dad?"
"No, we need something fun with Mushu, too."
lt was a matter of finding...
COOK: "Do we want to see the ancestors?"
COATS: We cut it about five different ways.
We'd cut it different ways and we wouId screen it.
We'd watch it and go, "Okay, that's how it feeIs
"to end with the MuIan and Dad moment under the tree."
We liked the idea of ending it with an upbeat.
-You have aII of this soft stuff... -BANCROFT: lt had to be a party.
lt was important that the audience leave on a high point,
that they're gettin' down with the characters
as they boogie out of the theater.
COOK: Right. BANCROFT: That was fun for us.
COOK: One thing, too, that your audience,
as you start making these films,
as your crew grows and as you get further down the line in production,
your audience grows.
At first, you're just showing drawings to one another,
a small group of people, getting the idea to put a movie together.
Then more artists come on, so your audience begins to grow.
But the way you think about it as you're working is,
whoever Iooks at it is part of the audience,
part of the growing audience for the fiIm.
Any filmmaker wants to please the audience with their movie.
Eventually the audience grows worldwide, which is fun.
You're constantly showing it and trying to make it better
until you have to release it into the theaters.
COATS: Having worked on the movie for five years,
watching it reminds me of why l made that initial decision to go to Florida.
From a female standpoint, l loved the message this movie was sending
to our little girls all over the world.
And this is a movie that you can do anything you want to do,
be true to who you are
and you can accomplish really great things in the world.
l remember after the movie came out, a lot of dads stopped me.
l'm sure you guys got the same thing, but they said, "Do you know what?
"Thank you very much for giving me this movie to watch
"with my daughter and giving her such a positive role model."
Because this isn't a woman who's wrapped up in how she looks.
This is a woman who is completely consumed with following her heart,
doing the right thing for the right reasons.
Actually, that really means a lot to me.
COOK: For me and Tony, too, l know you've talked about it lots of times,
but there really is something as fathers of daughters, which we both are,
this story means a lot to us and along the way meant a lot to us,
to explore that relationship, that's a big part of it.
To see, for me, too, one of the things that l hate the most nowadays
is the casting of most fathers in most film roles, father types,
are pretty big lug heads, and buffoons and idiots, especially on television.
The dad's always the knucklehead.
l thought this was a way to show something, too,
that father and daughter aren't always going to get along,
but to find the understanding of each other is so important.
BANCROFT: l'll say for myself that Mulan meant a lot to me,
not only because of the reasons that both Pam and Barry are mentioning,
about what it meant to give something to my daughters,
who I knew wouId watch this from years to come,
but also as a first-time director, it was an incredible learning experience.
All the things that we talked about in the making of this film were things
that l'd learned from doing them.
I Iearned from the taIented crew that we had in FIorida and in CaIifornia.
I wiII remember this fiIm. l'm starting to get a little verklempt.
I wiII remember this fiIm for the rest of my life.
lt's funny, l think what'll happen and, of course, history will see this out,
but l'll probably look back when l'm 80 and say that Mulan was the best film
that l ever worked on, the film l'm the most proud of,
and yet it was my first directing feature.
COATS: We had such an incredible group of talented people to work with.
COOK: Right. And so much of it is when you're working on a project for so long,
you really have to enjoy it day-to-day.
lt's not so much completing it and what it does after you're finished.
But more important, you find is the experience you had of doing it,
and taking the journey with the rest of the crew and other artists
and the things you went through together.
BANCROFT: Many of us would have given our right arm
to make sure this came out right.
lt's funny how you fall in love with something.
COOK: The whole Florida studio did.
They took a great deal of pride in the fact
that it was their first complete feature to be produced there.
AIthough we had heIp from CaIifornia, we couId never have finished it
without animators and stuff here, but they really took it as their own
and really worked harder than l've ever witnessed a crew work on a film,
at least had more passion about what they were doing.
lt was a great atmosphere in production, a really good time.
BANCROFT: l would like to take this time to thank you
forjoining us on this journey
through what is our history on Mulan.
We enjoyed having you be a part of it,
and l hope you learned something along the way.
COATS: Thanks forjoining us.
COOK: Thanks for taking the time to listen to the audio commentary,
and see you again next movie.