Still: Panda Bear in Africa - Karsten Kiilerich & Richard Claus

Imagine a cross between The Lion King, Kung Fu Panda and The Jungle Book, with a smattering of Game Of Thrones thrown in for good measure, and you’ll begin to understand the wide appeal of co-director Richard Claus’s stunning and very funny animated feature Panda Bear in Africa.
 
Packed with a cast of exotic animal characters, the film tells of panda Pang and the odyssey he must undertake from China to Africa to rescue his best friend Jielong, a young dragon, who has been kidnapped by the evil lion Malume. En route he encounters animal folk both trustworthy and treacherous, forges new and close friendships and even joins a community of hyenas who want nothing more than to return to their ancient homeland now occupied by Malume and the lions under his control. And all the time Jielong is developing her very particular dragon skills…
 
The origins of the story are very personal. Director Richard Claus lived for some years in Cape Town where he would regularly make up jungle bedtime stories for his daughter, especially ones that involved young animals playing together and helping each other.
 
Little by little the idea for a film began to emerge from these stories. He had previously co-directed and produced the animated films The Little Vampire 3D and AINBO - Spirit of the Amazon, so had experience in the genre, but with Panda Bear he was looking to up the ante in terms of visual aesthetics and humour. 
 
The animation team was headed up by Danish Stine Marie Buhl and Dutch Michiel van Iperen. Their work deeply impressed director Claus, who speaks of the ‘ah’ moment when everything began to come together.

“I remember when the first shots came in in their full and final beauty. You're working so long on something and you are only seeing black and white and drawings and strange images - somehow everything is in there but you can never quite see it. And then come the first fully rendered shots, fully lit, composited and you think, oh my God, it looks even better than I could have ever expected.”

Back in the day, two elements that proved very difficult for animators were water and fur. When Claus produced An American Werewolf in Paris (1997), the scenes that involved water and fur were very tricky to create, and both time-consuming and expensive. But on Panda Bear in Africa, a combination of improved software and the brilliance of the film’s visual effects team delivered perfect results, especially on the initial voyage across the ocean to Africa.
 
“It was amazing when the first full renders of these shots came out. I had frankly never expected it that we could pull it off on that level in this quality,” says Claus.
 
Likewise, the film’s screenplay is elevated by the wisecracking quips of screenwriter Rob Sprackling, whose previous credits include Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015) and the quite brilliant football-themed rib tickler Mike Bassett: England Manager (2001).
 
The budget on the film was modest (though you can never tell) and Claus maintains that his key concern was to retain consistently high standards of work throughout the production on the basis that audiences and critics will always judge you on “the worst shot in the movie.”

“If you compare it to American or bigger other international animated films, we made this film on a shoestring. The big hurdle, so to speak, was to have a plan of how to make this specific film for the amount of money and time that you have, and to deliver something which is consistently good.”

Panda Bear in Africa is a family film with just the right degree of mild threat so as not to terrify pre-schoolers while delivering bucketloads of thrills and laughs for older kids and grown-ups alike.
 
“Usually these kids go with their parents to watch these films,” says Claus. “And for us, it's an important thing that these adults don't get totally bored or annoyed. So we always try to put in some jokes or elements that maybe the kids won’t understand. I have obviously spoken to few grown-ups who have seen the film who said they loved it just as much as their kids, which is great.”

Panda Bear in Africa will celebrate its world premiere in the Animovie Kids section at the Stuttgart Trickfilm International Animated Film Festival. It is produced by Cool Beans, sales are handled by Cinema Management Group International.