The production of Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron started with DreamWorks hiring writer John Fusco, to create an original screenplay based on an idea by producer Jeffrey Katzenberg. Almost 700 people (including 15 voice actors) were involved over the course of four years to bring SPIRIT to life. Characters had to be designed and the mood for the movie had to be set. The script was translated into storyboards, which the animators used to visualize the final settings. A score had to be composed and songs had to be written.
Story & Script
The story of Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron started as an idea in Jeffrey Katzenberg's head. After working for Disney for ten years, Katzenberg founded DreamWorks SKG, together with film director and producer Steven Spielberg and music executive David Geffen. They wanted to be different from Disney, with their own set of values and mission statement.
The last big animated movie that was told through animals, was The Lion King (1994), released in the year Katzenberg left Disney and co-founded DreamWorks SKG. "The Lion King in fact was the last one, and so that was really the genesis that started me thinking about it. That then led to creating an adventure story set in the American West of the 1800s", Katzenberg says in an interview with The Herald back in 2002. But Katzenberg had something different in mind for SPIRIT: it had to be told through the horse's point of view. And the horse couldn't talk. "It would have been easy for us to come up with a series of cute, talking animals. But how many times has that already been done. And frankly, it would look sort of ridiculous to see the horses talking to each other but not able to communicate with the human characters", says Katzenberg in an interview with CNN back in 2002. The decision left the screenwriter and co-directors in something of a bind, but they eventually settled with voice-over narration.
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Jeffrey Katzenberg (producer)
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John Fusco (screenwriter)
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Katzenberg's idea of this American West adventure story had to be translated to a movie script. Western movie screenwriter and horse enthusiast John Fusco was chosen for the job. "I still remember the day Jeffrey Katzenberg called me from DreamWorks and asked if I had any interest in writing for animation", Fusco says in a Return to Freedom-video in 2020, "and I said, I haven't in the past, but if you're asking, I'm definitely interested". Katzenberg told him about the story, the horse's point of view, and Fusco was sold immediately. He started writing SPIRIT as a novella, later rewriting it to a screenplay. He incorporated some of Katzenberg's ideas, such as the Colonel, Little Creek, and the railroad scene. But Fusco's original story was pretty different from the final version of the movie. "The original story was much, much darker and had more layers. It was like Animal Farm not only in that the animals talked, but there were some social undertones about it being the end of an era", he says in an interview for the Animal Movies Guide (2007).
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Unfortunately, Fusco's original novelle is not available online, but early concept art for the movie gives us an idea what the first plot was about. Originally, Spirit descended from one bad place to somewhere even worse, going through the stages of horse hell. Spirit would continually be escaping and being recaptured, every time ending up some place worse. He would eventually end up in a mine, a deep, dark place, without sunlight. An escape from the mine would bring Spirit in the middle of a forest fire, where he was saved by a frontiersman (later replaced by Little Creek). This story was deemed too dark and painful to watch, and, according to the Animation Guild Blog, people in the studio began referring to the movie as "Schindler's Horse". Ultimately, the script was changed to a more child-friendly story.
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Early concept art by Paul Shardlow, Richard 'Richie' Chavez, and Zhaoping Wei
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Art by Luc Desmarchelier, Richard 'Richie' Chavez, and Jakob Hjort Jensen
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There are several other remarkables changes that were made to get to the final version of the story. There is a version in which Spirit was tamed by the Colonel, and was used as his riding horse in the US Cavalry. Spirit got branded with the US-brandmark, and some concept art suggests that his body was filled with scars. Another interesting change is that Spirit was supposed to fight a challenging stallion in order to keep his rank in the Cimarron herd, instead of protecting the foals from the cougar attack. Not only is there a sketch with Spirit fighting another horse, there is even a small bit of animation, done by Spirit's supervising animator Jakob Hjort Jensen. A comical relief in the form of a coyote (originally voiced by Cheech Marin) was also omitted in the final version, because it was decided to not have any of the animals talk. Besides, a comical character wouldn't fit in the dramatic direction they wanted to take the movie.
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Concept Art
Another important step in the movie's process was to create characters and set the story's mood. A crew of differently skilled artists was put together to form an art department, led by art directors Luc Desmarchelier and Ronald W. Lukas. Several artists worked as character designers, giving form to the various characters appearing in the story. The artists got various lessons in horse anatomy by experts, including Dr. Deb Bennett from the Equine Studies Institute. DreamWorks went to a ranch in Bend, Oregon, from where they brought 3-year-old Kiger Mustang stallion Donner back to Los Angeles. Donner, who was later renamed Spirit, became the very inspiration for the movie's Spirit. After he was done with his work as prototype model for the artists, he went to the Return to Freedom (Wild Horse Sanctuary), where he still lives to this day.
Below are some examples of character design, from early design explorations to rough sketches and (final) character sheets, used for the animators to perfectly recreate the characters in their final form.
Early explorations: design sketches by Carles Demiguel through Grangel Studio
Rough character sketches by Carlos Grangel
Character sheets by James Baxter (Spirit), Pres Romanillos (Little Creek), and Alex Williams (cavalry trooper "Johnson")
Besides the creation of characters, the environment and backgrounds of the movie had to be created. The production team, consisting of Kelly Asbury (director), Lorna Cook (director), Mireille Soria (producer), Jeffrey Katzenberg (producer), Kathy Altieri (production designer), Luc Desmarchelier (art director), Ronald W. Lukas (art director), and Ronnie del Carmen (story supervisor), took a four-day trip to the western United States to view scenic places they could use as inspiration for locations. Spirit's Homeland was based on Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park, and the Teton Mountain Range. The cavalry outpost was based on Monument Valley.
Below is a small selection of the stunning visual developments and backgrounds done for SPIRIT.
Concept art by visual developers and background artists, from left to right, top to bottom:
Richard Daskas, Luc Desmarchelier, Nathan Fowkes, Seth Engstrom, Yoriko Ito, Paul Shardlow, Bill Kaufmann, Christophe Lautrette, and Ed Li
Richard Daskas, Luc Desmarchelier, Nathan Fowkes, Seth Engstrom, Yoriko Ito, Paul Shardlow, Bill Kaufmann, Christophe Lautrette, and Ed Li
For more official concept art, created by the amazing SPIRIT-crew, see the CONCEPT ART page.
Storyboards
With storyboarding, the creators make a graphic organization that consists of a set of illustrations of images, the storyboards, displayed in a sequence. This sequence is a pre-visualisation of how the final movie will take form. The storyboards give the first life to a scene; the storyboarders set the mood by using different angles, expressions, and surroundings. After acceptance from the production team, the storyboards are used by the animators and background artists to to create the final drawings, that are used in the movie.
Below is a selection of storyboards. The storyboards for SPIRIT were drawn by Simon Wells, Larry Leker, Jennifer Yuh Nelson, Jurgen Gross, Sharon Bridgeman, Denise Koyama, Athanassios 'Nassos' Vakalis, Anthony Stacchi, and even by directors Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook, who used to be storyboard artists themselves.
From storyboard sequence Spirit's Capture: storyboards by Simon Wells
Storyboards by Larry Leker
Storyboards by Vakalis Nassos
For more interesting storyboards, created by the amazing SPIRIT-crew, see the STORYBOARDS page.
Animation
For more information and pictures about the animation process, see the ANIMATION page.
From here on, this page is still under construction
The Animation of SPIRIT
Narrator The filmmaker's journey to bring Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron to life began over four years ago with a decision to make a different kin of animated film- an unprecedented blending of hand-drawn animation with 3D-computer animation, creating the most technically complex animated movie made to date.
Jeffrey Katzenberg (Producer) This is, as far as I'm concerned, a redesign, a rebuild and reinvention of traditional animation. The goal for this movie was to create a film that uses what is unique about traditional animation, but creates a world and an environment that audiences now expect and have seen in 3D movies. I believe that marrying the best of those two worlds together, will create a new kind of animation. It's not traditional anymore. It's not digital. So I've been calling it "tradigital".
Ed Leonard (Head of Technology) The tools and technologies developed for SPIRIT are some of the most advanced that have ever been created for animated filmmaking. So now we have very powerful machines in the hands of animators and the result of that you will see in SPIRIT.
Narrator Spirit's Homeland is revealed in a breathtaking, ground-breaking opening sequence, a single, continuous three-minute shot that redefines the artistic and technical capabilities of animation.
Kelly Asbury (Director) From a technical standpoint, it's got it all- the camera going through those canyons and over that river, and flying with that eagle, things that were virtually impossible before we were able to do that. It is everything that can be done in animation.
Doug Cooper (Digital Supervisor) We actually spent almost nine months just designing the camera move for the shot. There's no cuts, nothing to bring you out of that world, where we fly through all of the major landmarks and places of nature within the Wild West. And almost all of the environments are done using 3D-techniques, but then we've integrated 2D characters and other elements into it to make you feel like they're all part of the same world.
Kelly Asbury (Director) When you see Spirit running with his herd, and they go up onto this bluff, and the camera does this 360-degree camera move around Spirit, some of that is computer-generated and seamlessly moves into James Baxter's animation. I really challenge people to be able to point out where that happens.
Wendy Rogers (3D Effects Supervisor) In SPIRIT, the effects were very naturalistic, so there's a lot of organics- water, fire, dust.
Jane Gotts (2D CGI Supervisor) Most of our work was creating natural phenomenon- mist, snow, star twinkles- where it just adds a little bit to the traditionally drawn animation.
Doug Cooper (Digital Supervisor) One of the dramatic high points of the film is a sequence we call "Saving Rain". Both of the main characters are swept down the river rapids. While characters in the sequence are hand-drawn traditionally, a lot of the environments and the effects are produced using digital techniques and then made integrated with traditional 2D-work as well.
This is another traditionally-drawn effects animation. Kind of like a splash from the top down. And that's actually what we used to get all this real soft-looking foam on the surface.
Doug Cooper (Digital Supervisor) And in order to kind of pull the audience into that, we took a cinematography style, which is very kinda live action. We used all digital sets, so that we could get in there and move through them in a three-dimensional way, and try to put the camera right down on the water, like the whole thing was being shot by a raft that's floating down the river with them. So it all has a kind of a hand-held feel to it. It's all very dramatic.
Wendy Rogers (3D Effects Supervisor) Being able to create effects that fit into some of these beautifully painted backgrounds and some of this amazing animation, to just know all of the people that are crafting all of this and putting it together and how much thought goes into every scene, it's quite awe-inspiring, actually
Narrator SPIRIT presented other challenges to the filmmakers, such as realistically rendering the complex movements of a horse.
Jeffrey Katzenberg (Producer) Animating SPIRIT is the most difficult animation assignment ever given. There's nothing more difficult than to animate a horse, and we are very, very lucky here at DreamWorks that we have one of the greatest animators working today, James Baxter.
James Baxter (Senior Supervising Animator) It was quite daunting in the beginning, because when I first started to draw horses, I suddenly realized how little I knew. So we went to experts, anatomy experts, anything that we could get our hands on, to figure out what makes these animals work.
Dr. Deb Bennett (Director, Equine Studies Institute) And it's a huge achievement to be able to show a horse gallop correctly, because there's a lot of parts. Every frame and every cell in the animation has to be seperately handled, and there's a neck and there's a head and there's a flying mane and there's two ears and there's four legs. That's terribly complicated to control that from one frame to the next to the next.
James Baxter (Senior Supervising Animator) So we had to design his face in such a way that it still felt like a horse, but it had elements to it that you could convey emotion with, like eyebrows. Real horses kind of don't have eyebrows, they have eye ridges. But not a big, dark eyebrow like we have. A very useful device in animation, your eyebrows, to convey emotion.
Dr. Deb Bennett (Director, Equine Studies Institute) The single most overriding thing that is not just that the anatomy is technically correct. But what drives the animator's pencil is what's in the animator's heart.
Jeffrey Katzenberg (Producer) There is nothing that takes the place of what happens when an artist, an animator, gives life to a character with a pencil onto a piece of paper. There's nothing else like it in the world. It has so much emotion. So much personality. Computers can't do that. Not yet.
The Music of SPIRIT
Narrator The music for SPIRIT is performed by world-renowned recording artist Bryan Adams, with an original score by Hans Zimmer, Academy Award winning composer. Spirit's unconventional narrative is told through the film's songs and score, which posed an unprecedented challenge to composer Hans Zimmer.
Hans Zimmer (Composer) Jeffrey Katzenberg (Producer) phones up and says, "I want to make a movie about a horse in the Wild West. Oh, and by the way, the horse won't speak. And oh, by the way, the music has to be its voice". Jeffrey basically said to me that this is going to be an experiment. And I'm always into a bit of an experiment. You know, the impossible is always the fascinating thing.
Spirit's Leap (Orchestra)
Hans Zimmer (Composer) I always come to a movie with a point of view and a plan, going "This is what we're going to do". And I had a really great plan on this one. After all, it's the American West, so I hired every great guitar slinger in town. I was supposed to tell the story from the horse's point of view, and as soon as you heard somebody go "plunk" (on a guitar), you knew there was a human being somewhere in the shot. That idea didn't work, so I threw that away. And then I went, "Okay, let's go totally abstract. Let's go electronic". I did that for about a year, and that was really boring. Finally I realized, you know, just try to write good melodies. Ultimately, you know, it has actually become this metamorphosis of all these different styles. You know, there are guitars now in it. There's still lots of electronics in it. And there's an orchestra. It's got everything and more.
Canyon Chase (Orchestra)
Kelly Asbury (Director) Well, Hans is such a genius on so many levels musically. His music conveys emotions and attitudes like no other, which is really what the best musical scores do. They help tell the story.
Here I Am
Hans Zimmer (Composer) The first time you meet Spirit, you hear a song that Bryan and I wrote called "Here I Am". We gave Bryan very strict instructions about the lyrics on the song, which was really, "Be very metaphorical. Don't be specific". So the first line he gives us is "here I am". Then we went, "Okay, let's change our minds. You're right. We go with that". So you see the character, and you hear the words "Here I Am". And there's no doubt about it.
Don't Let Go
Narrator For the SPIRIT soundtrack, Bryan Adams sings a duet with Sarah McLachlan called "Don't Let Go".
Bryan Adams (Singer/Songwriter) These songs are telling his story. And my role really is storyteller, sort of try to bring the emotion through my voice and bring him alive.
Get Off My Back
Bryan Adams (Singer/Songwriter) There's a playful side to Spirit, and that is the side where he's cocky, he's young, he's bullish. He's full of, you know- So I wrote a song called "Get Off My Back", which is like, "You can try and ride me, but you're not gonna get there. No matter how hard you try, it's not gonna happen 'cause you're gonna end up in the dirt".
Lorna Cook (Director) And that pretty much sums up his feelings towards anybody who's trying to ride him. And it's really gutsy and driving, and, you know, a fun, fun song.
Jeffrey Katzenberg (Producer) Bryan's a rock 'n' roller, and so, you know, with that comes a little bit of that bad boy spirit. You know? And we needed that.
Bryan Adams (Singer/Songwriter) And that's why I related to the picture, because it wasn't about trying to be something I'm not. It was about trying to be me in this character.
Hans Zimmer (Composer) If there was a place in this movie for Bryan to express Bryan and be Bryan, that was it.
You Can't Take Me
Bryan Adams (Singer/Songwriter) You have to get an emotional theme, which might mean changing the melody or finding a lyric that works. And sometimes a mumble becomes a lyric. It was really like getting a big jigsaw puzzle and trying to find the pieces that fit together.
Mireille Soria (Producer) Bryan brought this raw energy to Spirit- the rock 'n' roll. The energy he has when he sings- the rawness, the emotion that he brings to it. Bryan brought that to the table in spades.
Matt Damon (Narrator of "Spirit") Bryan's songs, they're incredibly heartfelt and incredibly passionate and they help the audience keep involved in how- you know, in where Spirit is at any given point in the film. They're like his conscience in a way.
Sound The Bugle
Bryan Adams (Singer/Songwriter) The song on the train's called "Sound the Bugle". And, um, he's (Spirit) busted at that point. He's at the lowest possible ebb he could possibly be. It's not a pop song. It's like a piece of music that has a little narrative through it that is full of metaphors and describing his, you know, inner strength.
Jeffrey Katzenberg (Producer) For Bryan it was an extraordinary challenge, 'cause we needed him to be a singer, a songwriter, and an actor.
Here I Am (End Title)
Narrator The first single from the film soundtrack is a remix of "Here I Am".
Bryan Adams (Singer/Songwriter) It's almost like a hip-hop track now, which is great. I think the groove works really well for the song. Up until the last few weeks of making the soundtrack, it wasn't even considered as a song. It wasn't until we got involved with DreamWorks and Michael Austin heard the song. He's the head of the record division there. I was thrilled when I'd heard what they had done, because it was like- Oh, I would never have done that.
I Will Always Return
Narrator Bryan Adams collaborated with Hans Zimmer to compose the film's theme song, "I Will Always Return".
Hans Zimmer (Composer) All the songs in this movie really are Spirit's inner thoughts. Because after all, he doesn't speak. "I Will Always Return". It doesn't matter how far away- Any of us will always go there. There is a place we want to come back to and we will come back to if we just persevere.
Bryan Adams (Singer/Songwriter) I think it's a pretty beautiful song. It is sort of the crown jewel of this picture.
Hans Zimmer (Composer) It's hard to write a good melody. It's hard to write a good song. You know, you write from your gut. You write from instinct. And this was one of the most enjoyable experiences for me, because- Let me be honest. I'm a complete lunatic. I love my work, and I love digging in and just going, "No, no, no, it could all be better. It could all be different. And let's just throw it all out and start again and experiment and go to dangerous places and be reckless about it". Why get up in the morning unless you're gonna have an adventure? As the seconds of our life are ticking away, you have to be aware that it needs to be an adventure.
International Star Talent
Narrator In Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron the narrator is Academy Award-winning actor Mat Damon. And Grammy-winning rock star Bryan Adams is the singing voice of Spirit. For the movie's worldwide release, Spirit was dubbed into over 20 different languages, using the best voice talent throughout the world. Casting the right voice in each country is a challenge. The filmmakers tried to recapture the spirit of the original performance in every language. Such as German superstar Hartmut Engler, lead singer of the rock group PUR.
Hartmunt Engler (Germany) The horse, throughout the entire movie, stands for determination.
Narrator Each international performer brings SPIRIT to life all over again with their own unique flair. It's a labour of love, a feat accomplished through the universal language of music.
Erik Rubin (Mexico) It really is very emotional, so I think the audience will be able to enjoy it from the beginning to the end, because I think it has it all.
Vegard Ylvisåker (Norway) It's a- it's a great movie. I'm enjoying being the voice of a horse. That's quite.. cool.
Narrator In any language, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron is one very well-travelled mustang.