TRANSCRIPTION BEHIND THE CUT!

-Endgame radio prime is every Wednesday night at 8:00 pm pacific where Evilzug and oizys talk about gaming and gaming culture. we feature interviews, we have a live chatroom, we record a forty five minute to one hour podcast as well that you can download- all this at endgameradio.com. Tune in live or listen. MREH! (giggles)
Hello and welcome to endgame radio, this is a supplemental episode. We’re here with some of the creative and production people behind the new Dragonlance animation that just came out. I’m here with John Frank Rosenblum the co-executive producer. Carl Pr-
John: Hello!
-Sorry, Carl Preusser the composer.
Carl: Hello
-And George Strayton, the scriptwriter
George: Hi
-We’ve got some questions for you guys. The first one just goes out to everyone in general. Where did you guys get the idea to do a Dragonlance movie in general?
John:Well that idea’s been around a long, long time. Cindy Rice, who is the other co-executive producer with myself was a representative of Hasbaro, TSR. She worked at TSR, worked at uh, Magic the Gathering was at Roxy (?) , and then worked for Hasbaro, and basically her job was to set up D&D based movies and D&D based media and Dragonlance is something that people have been clambering for for years. The guy who did our website, his websites been going for like fifteen years and we’ve only been working on the movie directly for like the last three. People love those books, they wanted to see them realized in film, and it’s one of the first things we started on with the D&D properties was trying to create a great Dragonlance movie and luckily we had a true Dragonlance expert in George who was able to work with Margaret and Tracy and make a great script. George?
[1:43]
George: Hey thanks. Uh, yeah, my understanding is that there were several different incarnations of the Dragonlance movie that were never made for various reasons so this is just the latest one. Cindy called me one day, i had worked with her on some other projects trying to get a D&D Greyhawk movie made and some other gaming-related movies made. None of them had gone through and she started working on this and gave me a call and I was just over excited to get even a chance to speak to the powers that be to try to get the job and I had the interview and it worked out and I got a chance to work on it and it was just a dream to be able to work with Margaret and Tracy. Oftentimes when you’re doing adaptations you don’t even have anything to do with the original authors and I really wanted- because it was such a difficult process for me as a fan to have to sort of chop up a book and put it into a different form, into a different media which had different constraints on it. It was so great to have Margaret and Tracy there every step of they way kind of guiding the process and sure a change factored in wasn’t something that was so altering what they felt was the core of the story.
[2:53]
-Frequently writers are barred from the set, that’s one of the things they’re demanding in the current set is more access. And the creators of the material are triple-barred- not to speak to the person who does that adaptations and certainly not to speak directly to us on the set. We did the exact opposite because as gamers and fans of the property we wanted to make sure that the movie was as real to the property as it could possibly be. And so not only did work with- and George is a fan- George worked directly with Margaret and Tracy, but George sat in on all the recordings with us, taking care of any change that needed to be made and we would get Margaret and/or Tracy on the phone for pronunciation issues, for questions, size issues, sometimes it would come up- how big are the disks of Mashakal? Cuz you’d get in the room and the actors like uh Jason Morrison would be like, you know, well how big is my voice around this, how much am I holding, what kind of strain am I under? We didn’t know the answers to that so we were lucky to have the writer right there and that he was able to call on the creators. It makes the movie so much more realistic and we got to choose- you can not possibly tell the whole story.
[4:00]
-Of course
-The whole story of Dragonlance! Dragonlance in an hour and a half and, you know, something has to be cut. When you watch Lord of the Rings, where’s Tom Bombadil?
-Exactly
-Not everything can be in there, so we were very lucky to be able to turn to experts to decide what is critical to the core of the story and what is more color that people can get by going to read the books?
[4:20]
-Well, that’s actually- you guys already touched on a couple of questions we wanted to ask so thank you very much. One of the big questions we wanted to ask was: what were the aspects of the mythos that you felt were the most important in preserving, if you wanna give two or three examples of particular you know, bullet points I guess.
-I can speak to that I think. We had direct conversations about this topic. And I think the major one we all sort of felt on right away was: Krynn is a world that has lost contact with the gods. So… and one of the most important ramifications of that is that there’s no magical healing. And the entire society is built around this sort of absence in the world. So there’s all these charlatan magic users out there pretending to be clerics. And there are false gods, all the… the high speakers, the theorcrats are all sort of worshipping false idols, essentially. And there’s a disconnect between the races all based around the fact that they each blame the other race for the absence of the gods. So we thought that was the core. That was the core conflict and we had to- the reason why there’s an opening sort of overview section is to address that, to make sure everybody’s clear- Okay, that’s what this movie is about! The gods are gone! Why are they gone? Who left who? Or who left whom, i guess, is a question and do they come back, or how do they come back, and if only one comes back, what does that mean for this world.
[5:57]
-Sure. So then, what collaboration process did you have with Margaret and Tracy in terms of either daily back and forth to larger meetings and things like that? You obviously spoke very highly of being able to do that, so…?
-Yeah, no I think it was a combination of different things so of course they would read every draft of anything I turned in… whether those were outlines or actual scripts, revisions, etc. Then we would also have direct communication about particular questions. Let’s say: music! What kind of music should we have?
-I was just going to mention that, actually. There were a couple times when I was able to go to Margaret and Tracy just regarding a character, you know, the tone of a character. Is this guy comedic, is he a little darker? What are we going for here? it was really a big help. Also, the fans, just working with them.
[6:51]
-Sure
-Well, Tracy wrote a song in the recording section, didn’t he?
-Oh, yeah, he did the lyrics for the Qualenesti Hymn, because we wanted- I think we’re kind of getting ahead of ourselves, but we wanted to have all the, you know, what do you do when you do this type of film and this type of score? Do you do, do you uh.. you can’t really use Latin, you know, because it’s a fictitious world. I got to work with him coming up with lyrics for the various languages of Krynn and that was great.
[7:20]
-For me most amazing thing was how much we were able to accommodate Margaret and Tracy and their opinions. I’ve worked with adaptations, consulted on films where adaptations were done before from New York Times’ best selling authors just like Margaret and Tracy if not better selling writers, and their opinions can not be taken into account after the script is locked. Unlike in our film where we actually story-boarded out the whole film, started the recording process, rather did the recordings- the voice recordings, started the animation process, and then we went to Comic Con, and we sat in the lobby of the Marriott, and watched the film with Margaret and Tracy, watched the storyboards go by with the full audio playback, and they were able to say “no, this is not right. yes, this is right. no, this needs to be changed.” and we actually went back in, did some re-recordings, did some re-animation, and actually were able to make the film conform to what they wanted. Which for me was a dream come true.
[8:15]
-That’s right, and all through the process there were just these minor things that would come up. Like, as John Frank was alluding to earlier, where I’d call them and say “okay, disks of… of mishikel?” Because you know, everybody in their own head has their own way of pronouncing it and i was always like “okay, it’s the disks of mishikil!” and Margaret was like “no, it’s the disks of mashakal!” and it was like… okay, good to know.
[8:35]
-The disks of Mashakal! And [a name I can’t discern] he was, like many of the actors, they were obsessed with calling Bupu (buh-poo) Boopoo. We went back and forth and we had Margaret on the phone going “no: say it JUST LIKE THIS.”
-I think I even saw somebody online complaining that we pronounced that wrong.
[8:53]
-Well we didn’t, now that’s funny.
-Yeah, every pronunciation in that movie came from Margaret- came from the SOURCE, Margaret and Tracy.
[8:58]
-Yeah and that, that’s sort of another related question we have: when you guys, well, when anyone approaches sort of um, such a -I don’t know what word to use, I guess Iconic story, mythos, what have you, there’s always gonna be the rabid fans that sort of are beating their fists on the table and nit-picking. Um, I guess, what do you think has been your reception so far?
-I think it’s been incredibly positive. We’ve gotten very few rabid fans who have had difference of opinion on the way we realized the film. They are vocal, and they do exist, but it’s been much smaller than I’ve come to expect. I used to work for a guy named John Nathan Turner: Dr. Who. John used to always say to me, “well, if the fans don’t like this episode they’ll only buy one copy each.” And that’s just kind of how it goes. When you work with something so iconic, something that people have invested so much time into, they see it in their mind, they know how it’s going to be made, they know what they want to see. They have their favorite bit! They want to see Tom Bombadil. They think he’s more important than other things that were left in or left out. It’s impossible to please everyone. As hard as we try, and we tried so hard to please the fans. But at the same time, you want to make it so that it’s open so that people who haven’t read the books can come in and enjoy it without being an expert on the world. You don’t want it to be like a stereo manual. So I actually have to say that I am pleasantly pleased by the amount of positive feedback that we’ve gotten. The negative feedback has been much much smaller than I’m accustomed to with other branded properties. So I have to say people have been on the whole very pleased with it and are anxious to see another one.
[10:40]
-Yeah, and um from my perspective I just, I know I worked on other stuff where there was a very rabid fan base and we knew that no matter what the episode was we could never please everybody at the same time. So in going to this, something that I revered as a fan, and knowing what I was going to have to do it to convert it to this new format, there were things that I was going to have to let go of that I didn’t want to see go. I just knew i couldn’t really worry about general fandom. I was just concerned with Margaret and Tracy. And then I knew if I could get a story down that they liked and if I could leave out the things that they thought should be left out and keep in the things they thought needed to be kept in, then that was the best I could do.
[11:18]
-Sure
-I think you did a great job, George!
[11:21]
-Well, thanks. Definitely Margaret and Tracy have been very, seemingly very pleased with how it turned out which is great, and that’s all I can ask for.
[11:30]
-I read Tracy’s review on Amazon, he seemed to like it very much: not as glowing as my review on Netflix but still very glowing!
-That’s good.
[11:36]
-Ok, so this question’s for Carl: you kind of touched upon it already but um, what musical inspirations did you draw from when you were composing the music? I know you obviously talked about individual characterization and thinks like that, but if you have any more to say about that.
[11:53]
-Um, thematically we definitely approached it from a very character-driven standpoint. Because much more than a film like Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings is definitely about the characters but more about the struggle and it seems Dragonlance is more about the characters and their development and their change through the books. And so when we originally started talking about it we definitely wanted to approach it from a character theme standpoint. Musically, actually some of the first ideas that we had were choir and medieval instruments and different sounds. We definitely wanted it to stand apart as well. Cindy Rice, the producer, she asked me.. she said she didn’t want it to sound like anything else so I did my best. We definitely had some unique instruments on the score.
[12:45]
-Well, that’s cool.
-Cindy demands a very high quality of the properties that we work on. She cares very much about Dungeons and Dragons. She’s been involved with it for years and years and that’s one of the reasons why we haven’t made a million deals and just licensed out properties left and right. We’re very concerned about protecting the quality of the property because we’re fans first. And that’s one of the reasons that she asked Carl- one of the reasons we chose Carl was because he was a fan of the property and because he was willing to go the extra mile to make sure- rather than just turn in a symphonic on an electric organ performance, he went to the trouble to get an orchestra in Budapest. or was it checkoslovakia? He went to the trouble to get these instruments that have not been used in movies before to record. He flew out to Minnesota and used these ancient instruments to bring an unbelievably incredible tone to the film, and that’s one of the great parts of the film along with Will Minnio’s amazing artistic conceptions and George’s fantastic script is this score which really brings you into the world
[13:45]
-I mean, yeah, I really hope they release the soundtrack
-We are actually
-Oh you are? excellent! because i think it’s just beautiful I just love it
-Yeah, we’re hoping to release the soundtrack in late March or April…somewhere in there.
-Cool
-Uh, and you know, speaking to what you guys just said the factor of being a fan and working on this film. I don’t envy you, George, and having to sit down and cut out parts of it. That sounds completely daunting to me. And for me, I understand how important this is to people and how long they’ve been waiting for it. It’s definitely a different approach to do something like this where you know, rather than being a movie that nobody’s everybody heard the story or nobody’s of it ever heard and then it’s going to come out and be judged and people will like it or they won’t- you know, to have everybody waiting with baited breath and ready to jump all over it either way. As artists and as producers and everybody, we keep it in mind and it kind of is the drumbeat that keeps us going.
[14:52]
-I’ve been a Dungeons and Dragons fan for over thirty years. This is not the first Dungeons and Dragons movie I’ve had the pleasure of working on and this one is the best received one of the bunch by far.
[15:03]
-Ok, so related to that you guys had touched upon the other producer was very involved in Wizards of the Coast- how much did Wizards of the Coast get involved with the production – were they shoulder watchers or how much were they in the trenches?
[15:22]
-No, no, they’re very involved. Wizards of the Coast protects their properties and brands very closely. First off, Cindy Rice was both working on this film and their employee, and she was there to protect their interests at every turn and every stage. They approved all the characters, every version of the characters as Will would design them each way. We went back to some of the comic books that had come out earlier from Devil’s Do and we used some models out of there because they were a little bit pre-approved. But even then, we still had to tweak them to what ‘Watsy’ [Wizards of the Coast] a saw the image of Dragonlance being now. As well as Margaret and Tracy had connections to Watsy. So, they were right on it- they were on it with the script, they were on it with the score, they were on it with the images, they were on it with the cuts. They protect their properties and they were very concerned. They assign people to specifically handle those kinds of approvals and to oversee their properties. They care about Dungeons and Dragons, it’s one of their core brands.
[16:21]
-Very cool. We noticed obviously the voice actors- some very high talent. What kind of experiences did you have working with them? Had they all done voice acting before? Were there any- you had touched upon it previously where pronunciation and those kinds of things had come up. Were there any other stories you’d like to share?
[16:43]
-I would say that we were really lucky in the quality of the actors that we got. We went in two direct- two different directions. On the one hand, we were looking for actors who were iconic in this realm and who were good actors who we thought we could bring in to do voices and would really lend some Credibility to their characters with like [NAME I CAN’T DISCERN], Lucy Lawless, Michelle Tractenburg, and even Michael Rosenbaum who is certainly a voice actor by being the flash but is more know as Lex Luther. So they came in and they delivered great performances as actors. And then we went out and got slam-dunk voice actors to come in and do the additional characters: people like Jason Morrison who has a hundred credits to his name and is unbelievable- I think as Tasslehoff he steals the film, myself. And people like Rena Ramano who was the Batman and Mike Warden and Bill Lamar and Bradly Baker- we went and got great actors. So, for us, that part was done two years ago, a year and a half ago, and that’s when the film started to come to life. When we went into the studio, and we recorded the voices, and we put them together, and the film appeared. The animation process took much, much longer so the film lived in our heads as a radio show much longer longer than it’s been in our hands as an animation- as an animated film. So, I think we really lucked out. Keiffer was our first choice for Rastlin, he was very very hard to get. We had to work at him and work at him. We have this excellent producer, Steve Stabler, who just fought and fought and fought for the film, and fought to get Keiffer, and finally was able to close the deal at the last moment. So we got Keiffer to come in. And Michael Rosenbaum was right at the top of our list for Tanis because wanted someone who was going to be able to be very even. Everybody else in the film is an archetype that is an extreme- The extreme mage, the extreme warrior princess, the extreme dwarf. Where as Tanis has to be so centered and so stable through the whole film, through the whole series that Michael Rosenbaum was the perfect choice for that. And of course, Lucy Lawless- she’s iconic, George had already worked with her and she was great. And then our supporting voice actors: I just can’t say enough about them. How would you describe the process, George? You were there for all of the voice recordings, unlike any other writer I had ever worked with on any other film.
[19:10]
-Well that alone was amazing to me. To be able to sit in there in the room- it was a great experience, and every body- aside from being nice and being professional were just creatively so interesting to work with and there were changes made in the room that were just based on the actors reading of lines. Sometimes, especially with Lucy since I had a previous relationship with her, we would go through certain lines where Lucy would be- she had trouble with the line or she had an idea for a line change, we would do it right there in the room and work it out. So everybody was just incredibly invested in making the best version of this possible- especially Keiffer. He was so prepared, he was especially concerned with getting the magic words pronounced correctly. And nobody knew how those were supposed to be pronounced, I mean even when I read them in my head I sort of kind of mumbled over them. We had to go back to the source for those, too. And he wanted to be sure – how do I say these? Is it slow, or do I do it super fast? And I think, John Frank, maybe you were the one who decided that doing it fast was a better way to go which I think turned out to be great.
[20:16]
-I had that pleasure which was unbelievable because we had an amazing voice director in Colent Sundermen (????) who worked hand-in-hand with out director of the film who not only did the artistic vision but also got each line the way he wanted it. But Colet would frequently say the line and the actor’s would say them back, but I had the pleasure of feeding Keiffer his lines through the magic. And then it was unbelievable to sit there and tell Keiffer Sullevin what to say, and have him mimic my own voice back to me.
[20:42]
-Well it’s interesting to, because it sounds like you guys worked really hard at getting him. So obviously the fact that he took such care in it and really, cared about it at all that he showed that..
[20:54]
-Yeah, from what I know he actually did his own research on his character. And he just fell in love with Rastlin and he saw that in future books this character became one of the favorite characters of the entire Dragonlance universe. For an actor to go out and do that on top of everything where you really just have to read the script and show up, for a guy like Keiffer who has so much power and we were just happy to have him? I mean, it’s amazing. That just shows, like, he’s so good, he really goes above and beyond the call of duty.
[21:24]
-The day he came in to record for us, he had won an Emmy three days earlier, so he was the hottest thing in town. He still came in and worked with us, which was amazing, and he and Jason Morrison, who’s an unbelievable voice talent, he just stole the show. And if it wasn’t for our amazing cast, as great as Will’s art is, and it is fantastic, if it wasn’t for our amazing cast delivering and amazing performance, we would not have the film we have now.
[21:50]
-Well good stuff. So, speaking of art, interesting decision. The animation features a mix of both 2D and 3D animation. I myself have not seen a lot of that done. What were your motivations for mixing the media?
[22:02]
-Right, so, when we initially saw the 2D test images, we realized that we weren’t getting the feel that we wanted in the action sequences and we weren’t getting the feel that we wanted in the war sequences. At the same time, 2D animation is the traditional way that people expect to see fantasy filmmaking. It’s what they expect and we’re already asking people to make a lot of jumps into stuff they’re not familiar with and part of our goal was not just to tell the story but also to open it up so that anyone could sit down and enjoy it with the least amount of trouble getting into the story. So we felt that it was important to start it in 2D and to deliver the fantasy film in the way people would recognize it and most be able to access it. At the same time, we wanted to jazz up those sequences with the goblins, we wanted to jazz up the sequences with the draconians, we wanted to make the dragons fantastical. And we felt that when we did the 3D test that that was the way to go and that doing the film in all 3D was not right. So we went ahead and split the difference and we told a lot of the story in 2D and we did a lot of the action in 3D. And it is different: most people have not seen that. And in fact, when we were pursuing it we were told by the studio that we were the first one trying to do that. Whether anyone beat us out to the marketplace I don’t know, but as far as Paramount was concerned we were definitely trying something new and different and dangerous as far as they were concerned. And we went through several- we watched it many times to make sure that we weren’t making a mis-move because we wanted to make sure that we told the story right. And I really like the way it comes out and the 3D looks, it doesn’t look like reboot, it fits into our 2D world, and if we had gone all 3D it would not have looked as detailed and as rich. So, we made a distinct decision because needing to combine the action and the traditional storytelling to do the 2D/ 3D mix. That effected the way you wrote it too, didn’t it George?
[24:07]
-Um, you know, actually I think that decision was made after I had turned the script in.
[24:12]
-Oh, sorry. We would’ve included. [UNINTELLIGABLE]
-No, no, no. Yeah, no, it was fine with me, I, in fact when I wrote the script I knew it was Hindi animation but in my head I was thinking live action. I wanted that sensibility, I wanted that feel, that it’s a real story about real people, they’re not cartoons in the negative sense of cartoons. They’re not cartoonish. They are real people, and this could be live action. Hopefully you feel factor even though you don’t get to see into their real eyes and you don’t get to see their real expressions, that through the way the script is written and then the way the actors do their voices, their lines, that feel is omnipresent. So, that’s kind of how I approached it going in. And then, whatever the animation was was what it was going to be.
[25:02]
-That is the highest compliment that I get about the film- especially from my USC film buddies who hate everything, is that it seems like a 100% real feature film that just happens to be animated. And, people clambered for a live action film for a long time and we tried to set that up. But the bottom line is you’re talking about an 80 million dollar film before P&A and it’s just not practical: maybe now that we have the animated version people will be more into that. But for me, the fact that people think it’s a great film is what’s important. And that definitely is what made the difference.
[25:36]
-Excellent. So, where do you guys plan on going from here? What other books in the Chronicles and things like that?
[25:41]
-Moving forward! Two then three.
[25:45]
-Sounds good to me.
[25:46]
-Haha, excellent.
[25:48]
-I can’t write it yet
-Yeah of course not
-at least, not until we have a deal.
[25:51]
-You can think about writing it.
[25:53]
-Yeah, I have. In fact, I have thought about it because of course, I envision these books as movies when I was fourteen. So already, since I have handed in that script I have been thinking “well, how do we do the second one? What do we have to do? What are the different concerns about book two? What are the things that are easier in book two?”
[26:13]
-And it seems to me that part of writing book one would be keeping in mind two and three the entire way. Even with the music that’s, when I wrote some of the themes of the characters I would actually picture moments from the later books to come up with their theme. You know, the more pivotal moments in their personal story.
[26:32]
-Absolutely. In fact, I read through the whole trilogy twice again right before I started outlining the story because I wanted to make sure all the elements we needed were going to be in place.
[26:43]
-And, yeah, when we first met with you, you had- were ready with a take immediately. That was one of the great things about George was because he was a fan of the series he was able to immediately say “well, I’ve written this script in my head a hundred times over the last ten years, let me tell you exactly what the story would be.” And we went from there. Where as frequently when you hire a writer you have to convince them that the property is worth looking at and then you have to hope that they’ll bother to even look at it or read it or learn about it.
[27:08]
-And that was a great advantage actually, in the sense that there was access to Margaret and Tracy’s thought even before I even spoke to them because I hadn’t been hired yet, the system is that when you’re hired as a writer you find out you’re going to have a meeting a particular project and you have to come in with a take. You have to come in with your- what would you do? You haven’t written it out yet, you’re just coming in with you know, an approach. And so, at that point I’m not allowed to speak to Margaret and Tracy or anybody really, so-
[27:34]
-Because anything you might say to them you might sue us over later and we’re not paying you for that.
[27:37]
-Exactly. And so it was great to have for example The Annotated Chronicles, which I used a lot because I would go to a passage and before I made any changes I would read whatever annotations there were to make sure whatever changes I was making were not going to violate something that was in the thoughts of either of the authors. So, that actually was very helpful, and of course not to mention all the interviews they’ve done, etc. That was for me a key part of trying to crack the adaptation of at least the first book.
[28:07]
-Well excellent, you know. It really sounds like this is a “by the fans, for the fans” kind of project.
[28:14]
-I think so, I mean we’re all D&D players. I mean John Frank has played in my D&D campaign and I just was telling the guys that I had been getting a [UNINTELLIGBLE] as to fourth edition yesterday and, so, and Cindy and I met in gaming I worked at West End Games and they worked with TSR at the time and we met at DragonCon- I don’t know, twelve years ago, thirteen years ago. So, yeah, I mean we’re all united by this common background of gaming and Dragonlance.
[28:47]
-Yeah, the Star Wars West End game engine is probably my absolute favorite game engine. We talk about it on the show all the time. It’s one of those sort of “yes, yes we know” about the open ended d6 stuff, and how cinematic it is and all that. So I know where you’re coming from.
[29:04]
-George is one of the creators of that.
[29:05]
-Very very cool.
[29:07]
-Thanks, I wish there- it was still out there Well, I guess it is but in a very limited way.
[29:12]
-I play in a game once every two weeks where we use the d6 system.
-Yay!
-You do?
-Absolutely
[29:17]
-Is it adventure now, or is it… I forget what it was called.
[29:21]
-No, they have three branches of it- it’s adventure, fantasy, and science fiction.
[29:25]
-Very Cool
[29:26]
-I use fantasy, I hope you don’t mind George.
[29:27]
-That’s fine, that’s- I can live with it.
[29:30]
-So, um, do you guys have any last comments in closing?
[29:37]
-I don’t know, I mean I guess we’ll just hopefully, we’re all waiting to hear when we find out about a sequel. We do- I think one important thing is that we do listen to feedback. And that feedback can come form our own friends, that feedback can come from people in the various companies- what is it, Paramount or Roxy (??????) or Hasbaro or wherever, or Margaret and Tracy. But also from the fans. I mean, it’s not like- I mean, we all read the message boards, we all want to see what people think, and we take people’s comments into consideration. We are doing it for a collective which is- everybody who has been touched by these books. And some things we can’t do, but some things are great ideas and we can do them. We’re limited by various things- whatever that might be and just like in any endeavor. Just like the initial writing of the first three Dragonlance books, especially if you go back and listen to Margaret and Tracy, the story of how that happened- they were under great pressure to do it a certain way, get it done a certain time. Those constraints of course are there but we are actively interested in ma king the next one better. We want to top each one. We want the next movie to be better and better and better. So we would like to hear the feedback, we would like to see what people think. We like to have ideas brought to us that we maybe didn’t think of. And maybe we can’t use that specific idea but it sparks another idea and makes it better. So that whole fandom, all the commenting is fantastic and I hope people keep posting, tell us what you like, tell us what you didn’t like. Post thoughts, post ideas- whatever interests you we love to hear it, we love to- it’s like having a sounding board with the entire community. It’s great, I’m happy. When there’s negative stuff, it’s great.
[31:23]
-We read that too.
[31:24]
-We read that too and sometimes they’re right on. Sometimes I disagree, but sometimes they’re right on and sometimes we can take that into account for the next thing we do. So, I really hope that what comes out of that interaction between both sides is an even better movie. That’s my goal for the second one.
[31:40]
-And all I can really say is how lucky we were to have the production team we did. We had Cindy Rice, who cared so much about the properties, and worked tirelessly to make sure that it was as great a film as it could possibly be. And then we had two amazing producers in Steve Stabler and Arthur Cohen who fought, fought for us at Paramount to make sure that the film was not swept under the rug, that it was treated like a great film, that it got the P&A that it deserved, that it got the attention that it deserved, and they fought to get us the cast that we deserved, and they did their best to try to tell this epic tale in the best possible way. And I think they’ve done a great job. I mean, you look at all the people who tried to make Dungeons and Dragons, tried to make Dragonlance movies over the years, and they’ve fallen by the wayside but Steve and Arthur pushed it through, made it happen and now the film is on the shelf available for sale today.
[32:30]
Well, very cool gentlemen. Thank you very much John, Carl, and George. We’re going to wrap this one up for today. We really appreciate you guys taking the time out- please, we’ll get in touch with you, hopefully, fingers crossed for the next two.
[32:44]
-We look forward to it
-Great, thanks a lot
-Thanks
-You too
-you guys have a great night
-take care
-bye

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