Go behind-the-scenes on Sandcastle Studios and Sunrise Productions’ ‘Jungle Beat: The Movie’ with director Brent Dawes
Among the feature film line-up at this year’s Annecy International Animated Film Festival is Jungle Beat: The Movie. Directed by Brent Dawes, lead writer and director at Cape Town’s Sunrise Productions, the film is the first animated feature to be made on the island of Mauritius and expands on the established universe of his successful series IP Jungle Beat, which has aired in over 200 countries and amassed 3 million+ subscribers and 1 billion+ channel views on YouTube.
Accompanying its involvement in this year’s Annecy festival, the studio has released a behind-the-scenes video detailing their process for animation performance reference:
Jungle Beat: The Movie is a charming, family friendly adventure of epic proportions. One morning, the animals of the jungle wake up to discover that they can speak. They’re even more amazed when they learn the reason why: There’s an alien in the jungle! Little FNEEP has come to conquer the planet and has brought some crazy tech with him, including a translation device that lets them talk for the first time. Unfortunately for the intergalactic Scaldronian empire, but fortunately for the jungle, Fneep is a terrible conqueror: He’s homesick, he’s crashed his ship, and he’s no match for the antics of MUNKI, TRUNK and the gang. Our heroes won’t let a little alien conquest get in the way of a good time or a new friend! As the animals help him on his journey home, he learns that friendship could be the greatest force in the universe. But is it a match for a spaceship full of aliens?
Today also sees the release of the film’s official trailer, featuring the song Together In This by Natasha Bedingfield that will accompany the film’s release on June 26th,
An international production creating jobs across Indonesia, Mauritius, and South Africa, the film surmounted numerous challenges that rose from clashing time zones, cultural/language barriers, working remotely during lockdown and knock-on effects of the global pandemic crisis to stay consistent and true to its intent, which the director describes as “a fun, endearing movie that is intended to leave viewers with silly smiles on their faces, from its toe-tapping intro to its heart-warming ending, and beyond”.
The challenge was finding a way to communicate quickly and efficiently with everyone remotely. Luckily, from our work on the Jungle Beat series we all knew each other, and we had a shorthand that helped our communication. And there was a really trusting team in place. Everyone needed to take ownership of something, and as creative leaders, we had to give things over and trust our team.
We were in the last 6 weeks of production when lockdown happened. Fortunately our producing team were really on the front foot here and had everyone working from home before lockdown came into full effect. The fact that the production had happened across three countries meant we were already used to working remotely so it just meant that everyone was remote now. Everyone embraced this and sprinted to the finish line which was so wonderful to watch.
As far as distribution goes, it changed our plans quite significantly. With cinemas being closed we knew that there would be a backlog of movies vying for release when cinemas re-opened and we didn’t want to get lost in the crowd. Deciding to release directly to the home market led to a whole new marketing campaign which had to happen in such quick time. The marketing campaign, Planet Earth’s First Worldwide Family Movie Night, is such a lovely idea and really fits so well with what I had wanted to create with this movie – a movie that the whole family could watch and enjoy.
– Brent Dawes
Annecy festivalgoers can catch Jungle Beat: The Movie as part of the Official Feature Films selection. The film will make its worldwide debut on digital platforms worldwide on June 26th.