Thor Freudenthal talks about challenging scenes and staying closer to the novel

Thor Freudenthal was born and raised in Berlin, Germany and moved to the US when he won a scholarship to the California Institute of the Arts. He made his feature directorial debut with ‘Hotel for Dogs’ in 2009 for DreamWorks, starring Don Cheadle, Emma Roberts, Lisa Kudrow, and Kevin Dillon.  In 2010, he directed “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” for 20th Century Fox, the box office hit based on Jeff Kinney’s book, which launched a successful franchise.

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters stays even closer to the novels as we join Percy Jackson and his friends on an epic quest to save their mythical world. The Blu-ray edition is the only place you can see an exclusive, never-before-seen animated short introducing Percy’s newest rival, Clarisse, and the only way to experience the thrill of theatrical 3D at home.

In the below interview, Thor talks about what makes Logan Lerman an incredible Percy Jackson, what went into the stunning special effects and the most challenging scenes to shoot in this movie.

How difficult was it to direct a sequel? Is it challenging to take material from another director and make it your own?

It was both difficult and liberating at the same time, because you have a lot of elements pre-established that you get to work with – mostly casting – you know you have all of the very capable lead actors who are already there, but what you get to do is expand on the tone. I saw the movie first and really liked it and then I read the books and the books have a sense of humor about them  – a tongue in cheek, lightness – I thought they were very funny. They have an irreverence to them and that’s what I thought we could bring to the movie to make it stand on its own.

Chris Columbus also helped set the rules and establish everything, which is a lot of hard work to do in a story. To introduce the lead character and have him discover the world he’ll inhabit, you know, with all the rules and all the things and the Greek Gods and all of that. We reestablish that in this movie, but then we move on to what this story is so it’s kind of liberating to have him do the intro or the establishing of the world.

You watched the film and read the books; did you do any other research?

I read the books a couple of times and that was basically it. I read up on the Greek Gods and the story of that family of Gods as a kid. Greek mythology as literature was always part of my life so that was something I had in the back of my mind. A lot of the work on it was how to distill a very big book into a movie-sized story, you know? A lot of work was done to try to accomplish that.

On the DVD, there is a featurette on Deconstructing Demi-Gods, what do you like about the element of the story that features modern day kids who are also struggling with having these special gifts? What do you like about this series?

I like that it’s basically about a young person – a coming of age story – about a person in their developmental years, but it’s hugely amplified because they’re Demi-God and it’s an action adventure. I’ve always loved very visual action adventure films and fantasy as well, but I like that it’s also very grounded in contemporary youthful issues, the life that these kids lead feels very much now. So I like those two elements, either for the fact of having fun with it – the comedy – and for emotional purposes, it was really appealing to me. There are fantasy stories that take place based totally in different worlds, yet it’s totally crystal clear, like Middle Earth, you know. What I liked about this was that it was partially grounded, that Hermes works at the UPS Store, that there’s a secret hidden life to things that we know. That is different.

Logan Lerman is a much bigger star now after Perks of Being a Wallflower, what do you think is special about Logan?

He’s definitely a rising star right now, and rightfully so, I think he’s very talented. You know, he has a kind of an ‘aw shucks’ quality about him. He’s self deprecating. He also has a shyness to him that I find appealing and especially in this role, makes him kind of vulnerable, he’s really unlike any other young actor that I’ve seen. He is able to pull you in without really throwing himself at you, without ever overdoing it.

Usually when you start shooting a movie – day one – everybody’s fresh and wondering what the hell they’re doing, so we’d start with something very easy – like an action moment or something physical, where no one has to emote a lot, so you get everyone warmed up. Not really on this movie. For scheduling reasons, we had to shoot the scene where he’s at the lake and he’s trying to make contact with his father and he doesn’t get a response, so that’s a monologue delivered to no one and it’s a page of text. So I was really worried about starting him with that demanding of a scene, as that was key to the opening of the film and he did it beautifully. Shortly thereafter, I saw Perks of Being a Wallflower because it came to theaters and it sort of confirmed what I thought he was, which is a really fine actor.

Can you talk about the adult actors in the film and the casting process for them?

I always wanted to work with Stanley Tucci. I remember him from Big Night, the movie about the restaurant, but obviously since then he’s gone to so many different places and so many different things. There were a couple of ideas about who to cast as the God of Wine because he’s doesn’t really care, he doesn’t want to be there, to him being at Camp Half Blood is a kind of punishment you know, but he has to be funny and appealing and he has to care enough, to tell us about the stakes of this world and I think Stanley Tucci did a wonderful job. The fact that he said yes to doing this was very fortunate.

Nathan Fillion who plays Hermes, I can’t talk enough about, I was always a huge fan of Nathan Fillion’s through Firefly and Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and now, Castle. I was literally a fan. I’ve never been to Comic-Con, but… my brother, my little brother is as big a fan of his as I am and we were watching an episode of Firefly when there was a strike of lightening, and I thought he’d be so perfect, and he said yes too and we had an awesome couple of days working with him.

Anthony Head is terrific from his days on Buffy. For one reason or another we couldn’t work with Pierce Brosnan, but I think Anthony more than ably takes this role to another level and he’s the nicest, kindest character you’ll meet.

There were a lot of veterans on this movie and with me not being a veteran, it was very reassuring to work with them as the pros that they are.

You’re German – born and raised in Berlin – is it an option for you to go back to Germany and do some German work or are you in Hollywood permanently now?

You know, I’ve lived in America for 17 years including school, so you’re right I jumped over doing anything in Germany, except for commercials. I did a lot of European ad work. I would love to go to Germany and do something. I think once you’re in Hollywood, at least myself, I always look at what everybody else is doing and I’m inspired a lot by foreign films and people working in Europe. As long as I knew in German terms what I was still talking about, because it’s been awhile!

So after 17 years is there still a bond to Berlin and to the scene there?

You know, I wish I knew the ins and outs a little bit more. There’s definitely a bond from high school and early college days because my friends are there and we keep in touch and I’m going there shortly. I haven’t been there since 2008 so I’m really looking forward to getting back.

What was the work that went into the special effects? What was the process? How many people were involved?

The interesting thing was that the entire movie from start to finish was storyboarded. It looks like a comic book. Every shot of the movie is drawn first by an artist. I think we had four of them on the movie. I did my own storyboards because I draw, I’ve always drawn.

So, first you write the script and then you storyboard?

Yes, I almost treat the storyboards as another version of the script because suddenly you see it in front of you and you go ‘he should say this’ or ‘why isn’t he reacting?’ or something like that. More than on a script page, with storyboards, you feel the rhythm of the scene, you can almost hear the music in a way, from there, once you’ve solved that, you do what is called a pre-visualization, so for really complex scenes like the bull attack, or the scene going into the sea monster, or the finale of the film going up against the main villain, that was all pre-visualized. Think of it as almost looking like a video game, a little computer model of Logan, you have all of the actors as avatars, and then you create the set of the film in the computer, and then you stage your scene and you can move shots, move the camera pretty much down to the width of lens that you’re going to shoot this shot in and know everything. That’s a team of quite a few artists, working around the clock to pre-viz the scene.

And all of this happens before any actor steps on to the set?

Yes. Although on a movie that is sometimes pressed for time, like we were, some of these processes go on concurrently, meaning that you shoot an actor on a scene that you’ve already figured out, you know what you’re doing, and then at lunch you go to the artists and you look at a scene that you might shoot in two weeks. So it’s like a freight train that’s on fire, moving forward and you’re constantly catching up with it. Then we shoot the scene, so in the case of the bull, there’s no bull there, you might just have a paper cut out that you can put in the frame and that tells everyone what you’re looking at and tells the actors what they should look at. So the first time you cut the scene together, there’s no monster in it. It’s actors being pulled on strings, riding little green bucks. It looks kind of funny in a way and then you do post-visualization, then you put little simple computer models into it – a very simplistic model of the bull into those shots and for the first time you see it as you pre-visualized it but with real actors. It’s a long, complicated process.

Do you think Percy Jackson could get darker in tone like the Harry Potter films as it progresses?

Percy Jackson never loses some of his lightness if you’ve read the books, but the themes get darker and darker – with heavy themes like self-sacrifice, they can definitely get darker.

Do you think that Percy Jackson carries any particularly American values or themes?

You know it’s interesting because it combines the oldest European ideas or traditions like Greek mythology with something very American. We’ve been to London with this, and I know that talking to Fox the reception of the film did well with internationally.

And the books?

Well to me, I hope it’s universal. To me, it’s universal, you know I’ve lived so long in the States, that that’s what my idea of universal is. Sad. I think that the themes and the content travel across the globe, I hope. Something American in it? Maybe the environments and the attitudes in it, like the fact that you can access Olympus through the Empire State Building, that’s very American to assume that the seat of power of the Greek Gods now rests in New York City (laughs), but I think that’s fun and tongue in cheek.

They say that you shouldn’t work with kids, water or animals and now you have done all of them…

I have. My resume’s complete.

Is this the highest budget you’ve worked with?

Yes. It was a lot of elements to work with. I started with animals, moved on to kids and now water.

What was the most challenging part of directing this film?

We were stuck on a luxury liner yacht off the shore – Luke’s boat – and I was always a big fan of the idea of yachts until I was on one. In the heat of Louisiana with a crew of 60 people on this boat, always going ‘excuse me, excuse me’ going past people. I think we made it look as big as we can on screen with a couple of spatial cheats. I wanted to get off that boat after two weeks!

What is it that you love about directing family movies?

At this point in my life, what I like about family movies, might have to do with my upbringing and the types of movies I saw as a kid. Two things – deeply felt emotions felt by the characters, worn on their sleeves, very honest and at the same time you have fun and a sense of humor and in the best case scenario, you get to create a little bit of a world. Percy Jackson and Hotel for Dogs have a bit of a fairytale aspect to them and I like that as well, so it’s the sense of humor and the inner life of a character and the ability to create worlds that I guess attracts me to family movies.

Would you like to do other types of films?

I am definitely interested in dramatic things and older, darker subject matters as well. You know, to do a movie that was technically complex as this was such a great training – although you shouldn’t kid yourself thinking ‘well, now I can do anything’ – but I will always feel somewhat at home in the family genre, but I’d also like to venture into older things as well.

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters Film Page | Win Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters on DVD

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters is out no on DigitalHD, and will be released on Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray and DVD on 9th December 2013