QUESTION: Were you involved in the project from the time that it was to be a film called American Dog?
CLARK SPENCER: I was. I worked on Lilo And Stitch with Chris Sanders who originally had the idea of this character who thought that everything was real until he woke up one day and realised his whole life had been a lie. That story was evolving as American Dog and then when John Lasseter came in, he and Chris Sanders talked about it [American Dog]. One of the things that John Lasseter really stresses is believability and he felt that the dog, the cat and the hamster needed to be real with personalities that needed to come from the aspects of their characters. So the dog needed to be loyal, the cat independent and the hamster have a small brain. All those things needed to be true to the story. And that was different from American Dog because Chris Sanders was trying to develop an idea that was more about personalities that were put into an animal, as opposed to the animal’s personality. So John and Chris talked and agreed that they wanted to go in separate directions. It happens a lot in the industry where people have different points of view and that was when Chris Williams and Byron Howard came on to direct a story that became Bolt where the dog became the star of a TV show and it went from there.

QUESTION: What involvement have you had in putting together the DVD of Bolt?
CLARK SPENCER: We help to determine what extras will be on the DVD. One of the things that was created for the DVD of Bolt is that we did a Rhino short that comes from the idea that John Lasseter firmly believes that it is great to do lots of short films within your building because it gives younger people an opportunity to direct. So the Head of Story, Nathan Greno directed this Rhino short and that gives John Lasseter an opportunity to work with Nathan and see if he has the potential for directing a feature film. It also creates a great extra to go on to the DVD. In this case Rhino is a great character to create another story around and the idea of the story basically is if Rhino was to have super powers what would that be like. So we get to have a lot of fun with that in terms of the story. Then we also created a big segment around the Art Direction of the film because Paul Felix, the Art Director, really wanted to create a painterly look for the movie. So there is a section in the DVD that explains why we chose to do the art direction in this way and how it is hearkening back to our heritage at Disney with brush strokes and how those brush strokes are put into the computer. There is also a section with the voice talent, talking about their experience working on the film.

QUESTION: What about the possibility of Bolt 2?
CLARK SPENCER: You always hope of course that you create a franchise. At Disney the goal is to create things that live on through additional films or television shows or whatever. One of the reasons for doing the Rhino short for the DVD was to see to what extent does that continue to launch Rhino as a character.

QUESTION: Is there a competitive element between Disney and Pixar?
CLARK SPENCER: People always ask if there is competition between Disney and Pixar and there is always healthy competition because we are trying to push each other. No doubt Pixar has been a pioneer in CG animation and this is Disney’s third CG film, so we are still at that point where we are building our own ability to make these movies and we have learned so much from Pixar.  What is unbelievable about the merger is that we can share ideas back and forth. So when it came to making Bolt there were moments in time when we would fly up to northern California and show the movie to Brad Bird and Pete Docter and get their feedback. There were also things we did, like the painterly look of the film, that they were very interested in. So there is this great sharing and ability for both studios to build.

QUESTION: Was the owner of Bolt always going to be a girl or did you ever consider that it might be a boy?
CLARK SPENCER: The thought was always that the dog would be a male character and that the character on the TV show would be a female character. It was that contrast.

QUESTION: There are lots of locations in Bolt?
CLARK SPENCER: Doing a road trip movie in CG is difficult because you have to create all those environments. In an ideal world you would have two or three environments but in this story you had to show several locations or you would be cheating the audience on that journey. So we knew from the beginning we had to make choices about the locations.

QUESTION: Is there any pressure because of the standards you have set in the field of animation?
CLARK SPENCER: There is no doubt that everyone out there is doing unbelievably great animation. On the positive side you can say that if everyone makes great animated films it will expand the market. But there is that intimidation of how we raise the bar. But that keeps you on your toes as you try to figure out something that someone else has not done. So on Bolt the art direction was the key element.

BOLT SUPERBARKS HIS WAY TO DISNEY DVD           & BLU-RAY HI-DEF 1 JULY 2009!