Video:Rob Machado Interview - 'Surf's Up' Premiere
with Rebecca MurrayRob Machado signed on to help the 'Surf's Up' filmmakers make the animated surfing action as realistic as possible and wound up being a part of the voice cast. At the film's LA premiere, Machado provided the scoop on the animated penguin comedy.See Transcript
Transcript:Rob Machado Interview - 'Surf's Up' Premiere
Rebecca Murray from About.com Hollywood Movies at the Los Angeles premiere of Surf's Up.
Surfer and Surf's Up Voice Actor Rob Machado
Where you worried about how they would animate the surfing in this?
Rob Machado: "That was originally why they brought us in. We came in and they said, 'Hey, we want get you guys to kind of approve the ocean and the waves and the surfing.' The first stuff I saw was pretty amazing. I was like, 'Wow, you guys are good, man.' There was very few things was I, 'Well, maybe just tweak that a little and do this.' It was fun to sit there and talk and go over ideas. They were so receptive. They wanted it. It was like we just started talking. There were no egos involved. It was like they wanted to hear it. It's great. It's really natural."
What do you think about the finished product? Does it look as good as a real surfing film?
Rob Machado: "I think it's better than any surfing film. The animation is incredible and the waves, it's like that's the kind of waves you dream about. I tell my friends it's like the waves you draw on a notebook when you're a kid, you know? I fly all around the world to try and find waves like that."
How did you get involved doing a voice in this?
Rob Machado: "It kind of started just going in to help out with the animation. The next thing you know we were going to have a little cameo, just a voice in the background. And then it turned into…it just kind of grew and grew throughout the process."
Was the voice process fun? Did you have a good time doing that?
Rob Machado: "It was. It truly was. We did ours together with myself and Kelly [Slater] and Sal [Masekela]. We all were in the studio together. We all just sat there and bounced lines off each other and really had a good time with it. We just made it, for us – we don't do it that often – so it's a lot more relaxed."
So you guys came up with a lot of those lines? They weren't in the script?
Rob Machado: "Yeah, they were super loose. They would throw a script at us and we'd kind of go through it and then they'd just say, 'You guys do it how you feel it.' You could rewrite the whole line as long as we get the point across. And we'd just go on these tangents and get lost. I think that's why our parts kind of grew. We'd do one session and they'd go, 'We want you guys to talk more about this,' and then we'd do another. It just kind of steamrolled."
When you first saw that they were doing a surfing penguin movie, could you immediately grab onto that?
Rob Machado: "There's always that like, 'Oh no, here we go. Here we go again,' right? Once we got in there and saw the first animation it was like, 'Wow, this is cool. This is going to be really cool.'"
Are you going to do more movies?
Rob Machado: "I'd love to, yeah. I don't know."
Doesn't it take time away from surfing?
Rob Machado: "Not too much. As long as it's just voice over, right?"