Eric Brevig, director for the new Yogi Bear movie being released this December, was recently interviewed by MTV. Brevig talks about filming in New Zealand, choosing Justin Timberlake to play Boo Boo, why it was important to make Yogi Bear in 3-D, and what music may be in the movie.
From MTV.com:
Recently we caught up with “Journey to the Center of the Earth” director Eric Brevig, who had just returned from months of shooting in New Zealand where he’d re-created Hanna-Barbera’s beloved Jellystone Park. He had a pick-a-nick basket’s worth of goodies to spill on Yogi and Boo Boo’s movie debut in 3-D, casting Justin Timberlake as everybody’s favorite sidekick and why Yogi is still smarter than the average bear.
MTV: How did the shoot go?
Eric Brevig: It went really well. My plan for the movie was to get very funny, comic actors like Anna Faris, Andy Daly and — you’ve probably heard of Dan Aykroyd, right? — he’s the voice of Yogi. And then I wanted to make a movie that’s a comedy in which some of the characters are bears, as opposed to a kid’s film.
MTV: How did you shoot the film? Was there a lot of tennis balls and sticks involved?
Brevig: Well, yeah, but it wasn’t quite that removed from a normal live-action film. I had two actors — one of whom was six-foot-four and the other one was four-foot-two — and they stood in for Yogi and Boo-Boo from the blocking to the rehearsal and the filming … after a while, you’d forget that some of the characters are going to be replaced by CG bears later on.
Read the rest of the interview here.
