Natalie Nourigat & Ruth Strother Interview: Far From The Tree

Animated shorts have been a staple of Disney since the 1920s, and Far From The Tree is sure to take its places alongside the best of them. Premiering in theaters before Encanto on November 24, it is the perfect companion piece because it's all about family. Specifically, the 7-minute segment is a generation-spanning approach to parenting and how children internalize the lessons of those who came before.

But rather than introduce viewers to a human family and express the intricacies of parents and children in a short amount of time, creator Natalie Nourigat chose raccoons as her protagonists and made the emotions and interactions easy to understand by removing dialogue and instead relying on the natural sounds the animals themselves might emit. Having previously participated in Disney's Short Circuit program with "Exchange Student," she is no stranger to the use of experimental animation or narrative to tell a powerful short story.

Related: Disney's Encanto Trailer & Poster

Nourigat and producer Ruth Strother spoke to Screen Rant about the collaborative process of making the short and shared how important it was for the raccoons to speak a universal language without words.

Screen Rant: I saw this was inspired by the art of Manu Arenas. Was there any specific scene that inspired you, or would you say it was the art style or the narrative that you really took from it?

Natalie Nourigat: When I came to Disney, I had the office kitty-corner to Manu Arenas, and I freaked. I was so scared; I tried not to see him in the hallway for weeks, because I was a fan. I had his comic Yaxin [the Faun] when I was working at HelioScope in Portland, and it was my first year of comics - I just loved the art style.

Eventually, I found the words to go and introduce myself, and Manu became a friend. So, working with him on this project and getting to say, "I love this. Can we try and do this in a Disney movie?" was so exciting.

Ruth, I believe this was your first time working as a producer rather than a specific subset of manager or supervisor. What has that experience been like for you, and how early on in the process did you jump on board?

Ruth Strother: Natalie and I had worked together on Ralph Breaks The Internet, where she was a story artist and I was the production supervisor for story. So, we already had a really great working relationship, which is super important for a producer and director in a film. On a film, you have more time to build that trust. But because we already had that, we started ahead of the curve, which was awesome.

I think she was asked to direct at the end of 2018, and then very soon after that at the beginning of 2019, I was asked to produce. Which I absolutely jumped at, because I knew from experience what an amazing creative talent Natalie is and what her work ethic is like, and that it would be just the best experience ever to be able to produce a film with her.

I learned a lot because, as you said, it was my first time. I feel like I'd sat in rooms with so many exceptional producers over the course of my career that I learned a lot just watching them ask the right questions, watching them know when to step in and when to just let things go, and watching the strategy that they brought to a project. So, I think I was very fortunate to have been able to learn by osmosis, and then jump in and have a go. And I think we did a good job in the end.

One thing I loved was how the emotion really came through with simple animal noises, and I didn't need to hear them speak. How was that decision made?

Natalie Nourigat: Thank you, I'm glad that it came across and you felt that way. I think I always wanted it to be without dialogue. It just feels like with shorts, ideally, you want to touch as many people as possible with the story. You want as many people as possible to walk out of it understanding the emotion.

My husband is French, and I majored in Japanese in college, so I really love the idea of being able to walk into a theater with people at a film festival who don't speak English - and we can all walk out and make eye contact and be like, "Yeah, we all felt that, right?" It makes you feel close to people, and it's so universal.

We tried some versions where they talk with each other with the raccoon noises, but the more we pulled back the better it felt. In the end, less was more.

Ruth Strother: We really did experiment a lot. In some of the boards, they're a lot more anthropomorphic and doing human-like activities. We kind of went both ways, and then we brought in a voice actor to see if we could have someone mimic the raccoon noises in a way that sounded more like talking.

But at the end of the day, raccoons are so funny anyway in their natural habitat that we realized we just needed to lean on the way they naturally act, and that would give us what we needed.

When you are working out the sound design, how do you choose the right sounds for the right atmospheric noises as well as the animals?

Natalie Nourigat: You pair up with an expert. We got to work with Laurent Kossayan, who is an amazing sound designer, and he met with us and consulted and said, "I think this is the right way to go for the raccoon noises. I think this is how hard we should push the beach noises." [He said] when to phase things in and out, so he did a wonderful job.

I think he really went out and collected some of these animal sounds on his own with a microphone, so we're so impressed with what he brought back.

Disney is very known for dead or disappeared parents, so it's somewhat unusual to get to really enjoy a complicated parent-child dynamic here. Can you talk about approaching the story from that angle?

Ruth Strother: Technically, the senior raccoon does pass away in the middle of the film. We talked about whether we should have some kind of death scene for him but felt like everyone would get it.

Natalie can speak more to this, but we started out with human characters. It seemed incredibly morbid to be talking about generations across seven minutes, so when they turned into raccoons, it was a lot easier. But we really had wanted to talk to this theme of parenting, because even if you're not a parent, everyone has parents in some form or another. Everyone understands and sees themselves.

It's so cool to hear that you saw your mother in this in this movie, because so many people say, "That's my story I totally do that to my kid," or "My parents did that to me." It's really humbling how much it's transcended across cultures and generations with people seeing themselves. It's really, really cool.

The fact that it was originally human characters makes me more interested in the title Far From The Tree. At what point did the title come and play, and how literal did you want it to be?

Natalie Nourigat: I am terrified by the idea of coming up with titles. I put it off, put it off, put it off - I'm not good at coming up with titles. Thank goodness we had a whole team to help me out. Ruth and I spent months with a list of possible ideas; we sent out an anonymous form to our whole crew, so everyone could contribute ideas. And as soon as we saw Far From The Tree, I think we were circling around that one. "That's it! They're raccoons, they're in a tree!" because by then we were pretty near the end of production.

It speaks to the theme of: can you do things differently than your parent? Are you doomed to follow in their footsteps? Is it possible to try something new? And is it such a bad thing to understand where they were coming from?

I know that Disney likes to keep a lid on everything all the time. But what can you say about what you are working on next?

Natalie Nourigat: Iwájú is a collaboration between Disney and Kugali Media. I'm serving as Head of Story on that, which is really exciting.

Ruth Strother: I also can talk, because it's been announced. I'm working on a project for Disney+, which is Zootopia+. It explores some of the other characters in the world of Zootopia, which is super fun because Zootopia was the first feature that I worked on at the studio. So, I'm very excited to be delving back into that world.

More: Renato dos Anjos & Kira Lehtomaki Interview: Encanto

Far From The Tree opens in theaters with Encanto on November 24.

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October 01, 2021 at 01:36AM