Hello, I’m Rob Marshall, and I’m the director of ‘The Little Mermaid.’ So that is about two minutes into the musical quantity ‘Below the Sea,’ which was essentially the most difficult musical quantity I’ve ever created as a result of you may have one stay actor — I imply, there she is Ariel, performed by Halle Bailey. And introducing dance right into a sequence is so sophisticated as a result of it has to really feel seamless. It has to really feel natural. It could’t really feel utilized. So proper about right here, because the turtles begin to transfer, you then see, O.Ok., there’s a bit little bit of dance beginning to occur. The tough half about this was as a result of I solely had one stay actor, I wanted some dancers or one thing to work from. And I took a web page out of Walt Disney’s playbook, and I labored with the Alvin Ailey Firm. He had labored with the Ballet Russe Firm when he created ‘Fantasia.’ And I believed that was such an excellent thought. So I labored with the Alvin Ailey Firm, introduced them to London so we may create all these sea creature strikes on one thing so our artists, our CGI artists, may really use them as a template, which was unbelievable. After which we discovered all these sea creatures that really lent themselves to bop naturally. These are all actual sea creatures. So proper there you may have mimic octopus and flatworms. Right here we’re shifting right into a bioluminescent world. We had the Alvin Ailey Firm utilizing umbrellas and, actually, ribbons, streamers hanging from them in order that they may actually create this concept of jellyfish. However all of this, each second of this was choreographed. And it was so sophisticated as a result of every little thing was carried out on counts. It wasn’t kind of similar to, properly, let’s simply allow them to do no matter they need. Each second of it was strategically choreographed on my own, John DeLuca, and our choreographers. [‘UNDER THE SEA’]: — music to me. Music is to me — There’s one second really arising right here proper right here — [‘UNDER THE SEA’]: — sizzling crustacean band — — that, actually, the CGI artist mentioned it’s essentially the most creatures they’ve ever had ever onscreen. However it was actually about defending and celebrating this stunning quantity. Right here’s a nautilus shell that we tried to create a la Busby Berkeley. However I actually simply needed to make it possible for we have been doing justice to this unbelievable quantity but additionally bringing a photoreal, thrilling world to life.
