by Thinus Ferreira
It's so easy to remember: 10/10 at 10:10 - Tomorrow, on Saturday, 10 October 2020 at exactly 10 minutes past 10, the brand-new Ben 10 vs. the Universe: The Movie will premiere on the Cartoon Network (DStv 301) and I got the scoop in a sit-down interview straight from Will Patrick, the supervising producer.
The new Ben 10 vs. The Universe: The Movie features new characters, settings and powers for Ben in his most epic adventure yet - the first movie for the new iteration of Ben 10 that made its worldwide debut in 2016.
Ben 10 vs. The Universe: The Movie features around a "blast from Ben's past" returning to do double the damage on Team
Tennyson and planet Earth itself, forcing Ben to go interstellar to save the
day.
Meanwhile, Gwen and Grandpa Max team up to help protect the world in Ben’s
absence. But when the boy hero is confused for the villain in space, Ben must
figure out a way to get back to Earth to help save it.
I spoke to Will Patrick, the supervising producer of Ben 10 vs. The Universe: The Movie, as well as of the series about the new film.
How is Ben 10 vs. The Universe: The Movie different than the series and also the same?
Will Patrick: We wanted to raise the stakes more.
We wanted to bring back some things from the older series that new viewers will enjoy and that older fans will remember, as callbacks, but the writing process for the film really comprised the full crew and the entire storyboard team of the series worked on the movie and they all brought their own ideas and interaction of course for the initial structure and outline of the movie.
So as far as the process went there were a lot of people involved. We played around with a lot of different kinds of ideas. We wanted it to be distinct but we also wanted to keep it fun like the show but still elevate the stakes and make it feel a bit more important than just another adventure for Ben.
Ben is in a sense removed from the other characters for a while in the film. Is that to bring out story or character development for Ben first, and you also took him much further away spatially than what happens "regularly" to him. Why was it important to almost separate the characters?
Will Patrick: We wanted to raise the stakes and Ben's comfort zone is his family - that's really where his strength comes from.
Ben doesn't always realise that necessarily until he is separated from Gwen and his grandpa. To really, really chase Ben up a tree a little bit, separating him from his family a bit really raises the stakes definitely.
With the world in a Covid-19 pandemic and countries in different states of lockdown, how has impacted the production of the film? I would think that animation would be impacted less because the animation and voice recording can happen separately but how did Covid influence the making of the movie?
Will Patrick: Most of the writing and storyboarding were finished before the lockdown happened, so it didn't impact the movie too much but we did do all of the editing and sound mixing during quarantine.
It didn't impact the movie too much but towards the end with the editing process we had to figure out how editing work and mixing works when I'm home with my personal computer and on my headphones. That was a little tricky.
How difficult is it to come up with new and creative ideas in terms of spacesuits and characters and creatures for Ben's environment and to put the character in or does it write itself? How long do you guys have to think out new situations and how his transformations will impact those circumstances?
Will Patrick: As far as design goes a lot of that comes from the art director.
I mean, designing space suits is the fun part. He was having a blast with that! That's one of his most favourite things to do - designing space ships and different kinds of aliens.
The trailer had 1.5 million views on YouTube so there's obviously such an ongoing strong audience for this character and his stories. People watch it for the entertainment value but what is maybe one or some of the underlying messages you try to convey?
Will Patrick: It really is an emphasis on the importance of family coming together to defeat a strong opponent. It's really about having fun and triumphing over aliens.
How does working on a movie compare to a season of episodes? How much longer does it take to make a movie like this compared to an episode and how is the production process of such a "stand-alone" project different?
Will Patrick: With a stand-alone episode we usually have a single storyboard team working on each episode.
They receive an outline, it's only 2 people so they put their heads together and really make it their own and really put their own spin on it.
With the movie it's 5 board teams all working together, so it's a lot more coordination between them, it takes a lot more time.
We broke it up into sections, so that each board team has sections and it's a lot of talking to each other about making things flow together, setting things up and paying them off later. It's a lot more of a balancing act with a movie.
Ben 10 vs. The Universe: The Movie is broadcast on Saturday 10 October 2020 on Cartoon Network (DStv 301) at 10:10 with repeats over the coming months.
