“Shark Tale” is an undersea comedy that gives new meaning to the phrase “sleeping with the fishes.” Executive producer Jeffrey Katzenberg remarks, “‘Shark Tale’ shares the same kind of sensibility as ‘Shrek’ in that it’s a little irreverent, a little subversive, and very much a play on a genre. Just as ‘Shrek’ was a send-up of fairy tales, this film takes on the classic mob film genre, turning it upside down and inside out and just having a lot of fun with it.”
Director Vicky Jenson came to “Shark Tale” with more than a passing familiarity with “Shrek’s” sensibilities, having been a director on the franchise’s first Oscar®-winning blockbuster. She observes, “In much the same way as ‘Shrek,’ ‘Shark Tale’ had both great comedic possibilities and great heart. I thought it would be fun to do a mob comedy spoof with an urban backdrop, but put it under the sea.” Director Rob Letterman, who also co-wrote the “Shark Tale” screenplay with Michael J. Wilson, acknowledges, “It has elements of a pop-culture parody, but it’s also a romantic comedy and an action comedy and also has moments in which we root for the characters and believe in them. I think it has something in it for everybody.”
“‘Shark Tale’ is the story of a little fish who tells a big lie so he can get what he thinks he wants in life—fame and fortune and respect…and even love,” director Bibo Bergeron offers. “But all he has to do is open his eyes and see that everything he wants was there all along. The good life is right in front of him; he just doesn’t see it. I think that’s something anyone could relate to in some way.”
Jenson, Bergeron and Letterman teamed to helm the computer-animated project, with each spearheading a different facet of the production. Producer Bill Damaschke expounds, “Vicky has a remarkable ability for directing actors, and brings her unique sense of humor and point of view to the story. Bibo has a tremendous animation background and had his own animation studio, so he was the one out there every day directing the lighters, animators and effects artists. He has tremendous vision where those departments are concerned. Rob, who co-wrote the screenplay, was part of our brain trust of people crafting the story, and we discovered early on that his sensibilities about the movie were very much in line with what we wanted to achieve. We were very fortunate to have three such passionate people with different specialties, so even though there was a lot of collaboration, they each had a different focus.”
The production of “Shark Tale” marks a milestone for DreamWorks Animation, in that it is the first computer-animated feature to be produced entirely through a new state-of-the-art CG pipeline at the studio’s Glendale, California campus. In fact, it is the first high-end, all-CG feature film to be produced entirely in southern California, as northern California had been the predominant base for computer animation for more than a decade.
“We set out to build the first new CG pipeline of the 21st century from scratch, and we picked HP to help us achieve it because there is no one better,” Katzenberg says, referring to DreamWorks’ ongoing technology partnership with Hewlett-Packard. “We had enormous technological hurdles to overcome and, together, we solved those problems. It’s been an invaluable collaboration.”
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