Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1451742
ENCANTO H ome is where the heart is, but for the Madrigals, the focus of Walt Disney Animation Studios' (WDAS') 60th feature film Encanto, home is where the magic happens. It all started 50 years ago with Abuelo Pedro and his great sacrifi e, and Abuela Alma, whose unwavering faith created the magical Encanto deep within the cloud-covered forest mountains of Colombia and Casa Madrigal, the family's house, in a vibrant village within the Encanto, a special charmed place. The home's magic has bestowed a unique gift upon each child in the family during a ceremony on his or her 5th birthday. That is when a magical door appears in the house opening to an enchanted space, revealing the person's special gift and how that family member will serve the community. The ability to speak to and understand animals. Beauty and perfection that makes plants grow and fl wers bloom. The ability to heal. Untold physical strength. And so on. For everyone, that is, except Mirabel, who is now a teen and still search- ing for her so-called family gift that will turn her from ordinary to extraordinary. However, she just may be the one Madrigal to save the family magic from disappearing. The central focus of Encanto is family, as the fil explores the compelling but complicated relation- ships within families, especially those with multiple generations living in one household — which is not uncommon in Colombia. "We thought it would be amazing to tell a story about not just a pair of characters, but a large extended family," says director Byron Howard (Zootopia, Tangled). "We wanted to celebrate and try to understand how the complex dynamics in big families really work." Sharing the director credit with Howard is Jared Bush (Zootopia co-director); co-directing the film i Charise Castro Smith. Encanto is produced by Clark Spencer and Yvett Merino. Bush and Castro Smith are screenwriters for the musical, which features songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton, Moana). Some of the key filmma ers are musicians themselves, who had wanted to apply key story- telling principles, including depth of character, to a musical. "We love musicals," says Howard, referring to himself and Bush, who had written Moana. "We knew that if we wanted to take a fresh approach to musicals, we were going to have to work with the best — Lin-Manuel Miranda," who Bush had worked with on Moana. "Lin-Manuel Miranda's whole career is about evolving what a musical can be, and what he brought to Moana (and subsequently, Encanto) was simply incredible." So, the filmma ers began examining the com- plex dynamics of large, extended families — some- thing all of us have in some form or another. "It became an exciting challenge for us, telling a story with a large family," Howard says. Such an under- taking would involve many main characters, each imbued with personality dimensions and unique qualities. This led to the questions of how well do we know our family, and how well does our family know us? "Perspective and understanding is the foundation we started building this movie on," notes Howard. Next came the issue of where the film ould be set, which was driven by story. Howard, Bush, and Miranda began discussing Latin America and the importance of family within that region, and soon their sights turned to Colombia, considered the crossroads of Latin America. "Colombia is a melting pot of Latin culture, music, art, food, and dance, with some of the greatest biodiversity on the planet," says Howard. It's also home to magical realism, which Howard describes as magic that's grounded in reality. It's tied to real emotions, real events, and it's thought- ful and layered, he adds. Eventually, Howard, Bush, Miranda and his father, and head of music Tom MacDougall traveled to Colombia for a cultural journey of learning, with its larger cities and small towns, along with natural landmarks such as the Cocora Valley, which figu es prominently in the film. hey also visited secret forests and other areas of heightened spirituality and places of magic, usually found in areas of nat- ural wonder — which some people call "Encantos," hence the name of the film. " hey are all over Latin America, usually in areas of some incredible natural wonder where you just feel differently, inspired," Encanto reflects three generations of one family.