May the Ferb be With You
And Ferb Phineas
Creators Dan Povenmire and “Swampy” Marsh happily engage in corporate synergy and ship
off to a galaxy far, far away for a Star Wars special. By Tom McLean.
number about the ‘Sith-inator’ and Candace gets to sing why she’s in the Empire because it’s sort of strange that she’s on the opposite side of the boys.”
“And we decided Phineas and Ferb were the opposite of Luke Skywalker; they love Tatooine and never want to leave it, so their song is basically a love song to Tatooine,” adds Marsh.
The pair had two guest songwriters working on the project: veteran animation writer and composer Randy Rogel and multitalented performer Wayne Brady, who helped write Candace’s big ode to the Empire.
One thing that surprised the producers was how much interest there was in a Star Wars special, considering Phineas and Ferb is aimed at a young audience and first aired more than 30 years after A New Hope premiered.
“They almost all have seen that original movie; I think it’s their parents. They say: ‘Oh, you like Clone Wars? Well let me show you where that started.’ So there’s a lot of crossover and we’re very happy how just the news of it has been received,” says Povenmire.
A Popular Secret Project
The project proved especially popular among crew members, with many of them just wanting to work on even the smallest part of a Star Wars project. “That was cool and exciting but also a bit of a challenge,” says Marsh. “There’s also been more secrecy on this than anything else we’ve ever had, internally and all, making sure nobody put anything out there that wasn’t supposed to be. It was like this is a whole new level of espionage and secrecy.”
“We had a bullpen that we sort of closed off, our Star Wars bullpen, and all of the art and reference — we had Star Wars toys and everything in there — and we weren’t allowed to take anybody in there until it was actually announced because we didn’t want it to get out,” says Povenmire.
Animating the special required a lot of research to ensure events from the movie were accurately portrayed. “It’s iconic things that we were recreating exactly the way they are,” says Marsh.
“We had to screen grab those and put them into the animatic and then draw over them,” says Povenmire. “When Luke and Leia swing by in the background, we want to make sure that that takes the same amount of time, and that they’re in the right position and the right number of la- even turn against anybody else — usually they’re just such positive characters,” says Povenmire.
“But shooting Ferb with the Sith-inator and making him evil gave us that opportunity to put them at opposite ends of something and actually have them fight, and I think there’s a lot of real oomph in the fight scene.”
With the special sticking mostly to the plot of Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope, the trilogy question is an obvious one to ask.
“I’m gonna ask as soon as this one airs,” says Povenmire. “I would love to; we’ve had such a good time with this one.”