Mike, animated
One of the world’s busiest animators grew up shooting music videos in OKC.
Mike Mitchell needed to get back to work.
The Oklahoma City-bred filmmaker, 46, is short on time these days. After codirecting 2016’s Oscar-nominated hit “Trolls,” Mitchell is tackling directing duties for “The LEGO Movie Sequel.” This clearly isn’t his first animated rodeo. The Okie has earned credits on two “Shrek” movies, “Kung Fu Panda 3” and “Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked.” He’s even directed a handful of live action films such as “Sky High” and “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo.”
Combined, his directorial efforts have accrued a dizzying worldwide box office gross. “Shrek Forever After” alone made more than $750 million and “Trolls’ “impressive draw puts Mitchell’s movies in the billion-dollar range. “Trolls” also landed on DVD and Blu-ray last month.
He has two decades of Hollywood experience, but he discusses projects like an enthusiastic student in a classroom. “I’m always learning,” Mitchell told The Oklahoman. “I was learning when I was making films with my good friends in Oklahoma, and I’m still doing the same thing now.” I jumped on the phone with Mitchell, and he detailed his road from Oklahoma to Hollywood.
Q: What was your life like growing up in Oklahoma City?
Mike Mitchell: It was fantastic and very creative. I had a group of friends, and they were always willing to help me make a film. I started off with an 8 mm camera, and then I purchased one of those video cameras when the time came around. It was gigantic. That was the technology, this was in the ‘80s, so it was a giant camera. It was always attached to the VCR itself, which was the size of a suitcase, and they had batteries in them that were the size of bricks. Q: What did you shoot?
Mitchell: I went from garage band to garage band. A lot of my friends were musicians, and who doesn’t want to see themselves rocking out? So, I would film them, then Mom would make popcorn, we’d go inside, everyone would watch themselves and then they’d help me make short films. In my memory, it was a super creative time.
Two things I loved about Oklahoma: I could ride my Mongoose bike a mile and seem to be in the middle of nowhere, which I miss, and then also the rainstorms and thunderstorms. It’s so flat out there that the whole sky lights up, and it’s something that I miss out here in California because you just can’t have that anywhere else. And of course the barbecue. There’s no such thing as barbecue anywhere else except for Oklahoma.
Q: Small world, we both graduated from Putnam City North High School. I understand you traveled to California right after. What was that transition like?
Mitchell: I have to admit it was pretty scary. It was bizarre because I went to the University of Oklahoma first, and I was there for a year. I did live action filmmaking, and then I jumped to an art college called California Institute of the Arts. (It was) filled with the most amazing people.
The guy who created SpongeBob SquarePants was in that class, the guy who directed “Up,” “Inside Out” and “Monsters, Inc.” was in that class . ... Very different from OU, which is a beautiful, large campus. It has amazing sororities and fraternities. It’s centered around football. Cal Arts is not that. Cal Arts is a bunch of neck tattoos and naked people at the pools. Very hippie.
Q: Was Los Angeles a culture shock?
Mitchell: Oh my God, my little Oklahoma brain exploded when I got there. I think my roommate was a vampire. My roommate was a self-proclaimed vampire when I first got there. That was a little frightening for me. I wasn’t into that.
Q: I understand you got some cool opportunities right after college. You worked for Tim Burton and Spike Jonze. What did you do for them?
Mitchell: I worked on a Spike Jonze feature that was never made called “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” and then I did a few of his music videos and commercials. I was a storyboard artist at the time, so I did storyboards for Tim Burton and Spike Jonze.
One was a Levi’s Jeans commercial I think that won an award. Jonze is the most creative guy in the world and just an amazing storyteller and such a unique filmmaker, and I learned a lot from that guy.
Q: You wear a lot of hats. You voice characters, animate, direct, produce and more. Is that required in the animation world?
Mitchell: It’s not a requirement, but it’s a choice.
When I was codirecting “Trolls,” I storyboarded on this film called “Sausage Party.” ... It was a sequence where the food is tortured to death, and it’s a shocking sequence that I got to work on and storyboard for a couple of weeks. Then I also worked on “Kung Fu Panda 3.” I was executive producing.
I think it’s more of an energy that I have.
I think it helped me work on “Trolls.” These films take so long to make. They take three years to make, and that’s why the animation is just killing it. These films are amazing. They’re going up against “Star Wars” and Marvel and doing really well.
I think it’s because like (“Trolls” co-director) Walt Dohrn and I and all the other directors, we really work it like a play.
It’s like a workshop where we make the film, we look at it, we take it down and we make it again.
We get to keep the good parts and we throw away the bad parts. It’s almost like we’re allowed to make mistakes.
Q: All the major animation studios released popular movies in 2016. It was quite a year. Is it an exciting time to be making these types of familyfriendly movies?
Mitchell: I’m so happy that there’s an audience that still wants to go to the theater and have a good time with their kids. Parents and kids can watch these movies together and enjoy them.
It just seems like the most creative time for animation because these films, again, take a long time and there’s so much creativity woven into such a small community.
They’re really starting to explode, and it’s such an exciting time.
I love it and couldn’t be happier.