Duncan Jones on Making Animated ‘Rogue Trooper’ on an Indie Budget

“There’s AI — the film has no AI,” says director-writer Duncan Jones emphatically about his latest feature, “Rogue Trooper.”

The subject comes up as producer Stuart Fennegan talks about how they got the stellar voice cast for the film: Aneurin Barnard, Jack Lowden, Hayley Atwell, Daryl McCormack, Reece Shearsmith, Sean Bean, Diane Morgan, Matt Berry and Jemaine Clement.

“We were actually really fortunate, for want of a better word, that when we were shooting, it was at the time when the SAG strike was happening, and obviously a big point of contention at that point was concerns for actors about AI,” says Fenegan. “Obviously, being a British movie, we were able to shoot under Equity, and contractually no AI performances in our movie at all.”

He adds: “We were really fortunate that lots of lots of actors that would have been booked up and on other shows weren’t working, so it was like, ‘Hey, have a look at this animatic. Do you want to come and play in this crazy different way of doing an animated movie with Duncan Jones?’ And pretty much everyone was like, ‘Hell yes.’”

An adaptation of the comic book series “2000 AD” created by Gerry Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons, “Rogue Trooper” is produced by Rebellion and Liberty Films. It makes its world premiere at Annecy on June 22.

Jones and Fenegan learned a lot from their experience of making “Warcraft,” and wanted to make a CGI animated film at a British indie price point. They took lessons learned and built on that – Jones wrote the script and “recorded every line of dialog for every character, and then worked with the team to put an animatic together for that for the whole project. So we were kind of able to kind of iterate and figure out how to make it as we go, and I think that was why we were in the end able to kind of end up with a bespoke, more indie pipeline, and bring what would be, you know, a 60 million plus studio movie down to a much indie budget,” says Fenegan. “We were fortunate with our contacts and our partners at Rebellion, we all kind of held hands and said we think we will be able to figure this out as we go, and we did.”

Jones notes: “That old triangle of speed, quality, and cost, we kind of knew that we could afford, we could afford to give up on speed, so it took us a long time to make it, but we were able to maintain the quality and keep the cost down.”

Some four years in the making, “Rogue Trooper” tells the story of 19, a genetic infantryman who is the sole survivor (in corporal form) of an invasion force ordered to battle the Norts on a remote small planet. He needs to track down the traitor who sold him and his fellow band of brothers out, and is accompanied by three killed-in-action squad mates, whose personalities have been stored in 19’s gun, helmet and backpack.

It’s photorealistic, but Jones says they used animation “more than you think.” He had two weeks with the actors rotating in and out of what was basically a black box studio, shooting 16 pages a day. The original animatic was the touchstone for the project.

“We weren’t recording mo-cap of their bodies, we were only recording their faces and their voices,” Jones says. “We would have an area blocked out, so we kind of knew what the what the environment was supposed to be, where a scene would take place, but we were only using that as a reference for witness cameras, and then the actual animation we would do later on, after we’d actually already kind of cut the film.”

Jones continues: “There was actually quite a lot of the film where the animation is done by hand, so it’s a real hybrid and way of working where we didn’t have to worry about setting up all of the motion capture for the for the actors.”

It was also cost-saving. “The sheer cost of processing all of that data is prohibitive, so being able to just strike that from that from our production pipeline, focus just on the human performance of the face and the voice, and then you’re only working on animating the bit that you need” without having to process “all that data was an efficiency that we found,” says Fenegan.

As for translating the comics to the screen, superfan Jones was very enthusiastic, comparing “2000 AD” to Marvel and DC in its world-building and storytelling.

“One of the interesting things about ‘2000 AD’ is they were very brave, with the artists that they used and the styles that they were willing to engage in, and allowing their artists to really experiment with the different characters that they had in the environments and really push things in interesting and artistic ways.,” Joens says.

He says that Gibbons’ “War Machine” was very much a touchstone for the visual look of “Rogue Trooper.” “I think it might even have been watercolor the way that they actually did the artwork in the book, and it was beautiful,” he says, adding “but we were kind of magpie-ing and picking from all of the different ideas that came up over the years that the comic book was made.”

Jones says that “Warcraft” — although less than a hit adaptation of IP with a passionate fan base — did have one thing going for it: the people that made it loved the IP. He says it’s the same with “Rogue Trooper.” “Artists like Steve Trumble, who was the production designer on the film, loved ‘Rogue Trooper.’ And we were bringing in artists who had actually worked on [the comic books] to come and do their concept artwork and design work. So I think the fidelity of it came from the fact that everyone who was doing the artistic [work] on it had a real, had a real love of the material.”

As for mounting an indie animated feature that looks expensive, there were considerations to make. “We set out with the idea of making a theatrical quality animated movie in Unreal Engine, and what we realized, probably like two years into the process, is that it’s an amazing tool, but it isn’t actually at the level at the moment — in version 5.3 which is what we were kind of locked in on for our film,” says Fenegan.

They found it didn’t have the tools to deliver the look they wanted. So two years into the production, they “migrated out of Unreal” and used traditional animation software like Maya, “then a final re-render back in Unreal Engine. So, I think the biggest obstacle was literally just us realizing, ‘Hang on a minute, the original plan to make this movie isn’t going to get us where we need to be,’” says Fenegan.

They don’t have a sales company yet — they are working with CAA — and are looking for distribution.

“Couldn’t be more excited to premiere at Annecy, which obviously is the most amazing animation festival,” says Fenegan.

It seems like it’s a natural for a sequel or even a series.

Jones is focused on the here and now. “We’ve put so much effort into this and spent so much time on it,we really just want to make sure that we get this film in front of an audience. As an indie film, that’s the scary thing because you don’t have a studio that’s there to make sure that the film gets out there. We’re at the point now where we just need to find a way to make sure that this film gets as many eyeballs as possible.”