Hoodwinked retells the Red Riding Hood tale Rashomon style. All Hoodwinked images © 2004 Kanbar Ent.

There are lessons to be learned from the making of Hoodwinked: The True Story of Red Riding Hood, an independently produced 3D animated feature that refashions the familiar fairy tale as Rashomon. Although we may think we already know them, those of us who have any desire to break into indie features should pay special attention.

Lesson #1: It’s Not What You Know But Who You Know
While the unique way that Hoodwinked came together points to this time-honored Hollywood adage, there’s an important corollary inferred by one of the film’s producers, Sue Bea Montgomery: “When preparation meets opportunity, magic can happen.”

The two magicians in this case are the Edwards brothers, Cory and Todd, who spent many hours on the front lawn and streets of their Tulsa neighborhood, acting out adventure films on Super 8. “We had storyboards, miniatures, stunts and had screenings of our finished masterpieces for friends,” said Cory Edwards, Hoodwinked’s director and co-writer. “It has been a life-long love affair that few folks around us have ever understood.”

Lesson #2: Learn to Crawl Before You Can Walk
When Cory and Todd Edwards started Blue Yonder Films in Tulsa with several trusted friends, like any small company they had to hack away at the usual commercials and industrial videos for local businesses and ad agencies. Then in 1997 they decided to make a live-action feature. The Oklahoma Film Commission gave them the phone number for Montgomery, a Hollywood veteran and Tulsa native. Together, they raised money from friends and investors who believed in their vision. After a year-and-a-half, utilizing nearly every actor they knew and every location they could finagle for free, they finished Chillicothe, a comedy/drama written and directed by Todd about the pains of leaving the secure cradle of college friends to make something of your life. The film premiered at Sundance in 1999, but remained in the shadow of The Blair Witch Project, that year’s Sundance winner. So, it was back to nuts ‘n’ bolts again — but not for long.

Lesson #3: Networking: Keep an Eye on Your Friends
Although Cory used to work for a midwest animation company during his summers off from school, he and his brother hoped to make their living in live action. But another longtime friend, Benjy Gaither, who had started his own animation company in Indiana, Live Bait Prods., offered to partner with them. That created an opportunity for Cory to cut his teeth on LightWave 3D and direct several short-form animated sing-along videos. But both Edwards brothers still had their sights and their creative imaginations set higher.

Brothers Cory and Todd Edwards (left and center) wrote and co-directed the movie. Tony Leech was brought on as editor and wound up as co-director.

“As a creative person, you grow up keeping tabs on your other friends or your other associates and what they’re doing,” Cory explained. “So as we were coming up in our part of the world [Tulsa], he [Gaither] was also coming up in his part of the world [Indiana], raising money and he had backing for other creative projects. So, he saw the right idea, and we saw he had the money and wanted to do it.”

That right idea was Wobots. The 45-minute animated feature, which Cory wrote and directed, was about a young boy with a speech impediment who befriends misfit robots sent to a junk heap to rot. “I wrote that, designed the characters, designed every ship and prop, storyboarded every shot,” Cory explained. “It was one of those labor of love things.”