Chris Sanders (right) and Dean DeBlois, co-writers and co-directors of Lilo & Stitch. All Lilo & Stitch images © Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.

There's something rather unnerving about seeing a man speaking fluent Stitch. From Chris Sanders' larynx emerges the familiar cackling, howling gibber that we've learned to associate with the blue-skinned, pint-sized genetic whatsit called experiment 626, puppy impersonator and maker of mayhem. Thankfully Mr. Sanders is more articulate in English, as he talks to AWN about his film, together with co-director and co-writer Dean DeBlois.

Throughout this interview (conducted in London's Dorchester hotel), Sanders was flipping through a wildlife magazine in search of future fauna inspiration. Trivia freaks may like to know that sea-otters have an archetypal "Chris Sanders head": low eyes and a nose that's big and high on the face. Hey, have we found Lilo's next pet?

Andrew Osmond: You've stressed that Lilo & Stitch was a very 'intimate' kind of Disney film. Can you talk more about the pros and cons of that?

Chris Sanders: It was a very pragmatic decision. We had just finished working on Mulan, which was a very big production, not only in terms of the number of people but also the scale of the story. We wanted to bring all that down in size and tell a more intimate story, just to keep ourselves fresh. And we realized through the experience of Mulan that the more people who are involved in the writing and directing of a film...well, it's not going to make it a better or worse film but it will slow the process. Anybody who has ordered a pizza with more than two other people knows the amount of discussion will increase dramatically. We wanted to get this film done quickly. We paid for our story freedom by promising to bring it in on a very low budget, very fast, and we knew we needed fewer people at the front-end to accomplish that.

So we wrote, directed and storyboarded it and this gave us clarity and speed. It also required that we be much more critical of what we're doing, because one of the things we lost by reducing the crew is the number of people that could question and contribute. We were a little bit concerned that we might get something up on screen that was way too personal to appeal to a mass audience. We needed to be very critical of our own and each others' work.

AO: Film pundits often say 'big' films involving lots of decision-makers become impersonal, lacking real vision. You've talked about speed and budget, but how did Lilo's intimacy affect its quality?

Sanders and DeBlois meet up with the Flying Elvises at a Lilo & Stitch publicity event.

Dean DeBlois: There's a compromise when you involve lots of people, because ultimately 30 people can only agree on something that falls in the realm of cliché. What happened with this film is that the studio understood it was going to be something unusual and quirky and unique for Disney storytelling. Having seen us work together previously on Mulan and having a certain amount of trust in us, they gave us the latitude and space to develop the story, the voice of the storytelling. We had a year to actually write the script and storyboard the film, just the two of us. That allowed us to challenge each other but also keep the voice in a very specific realm. From that point we could go to a crew of 350 people and say, "This is the film we're making," and sit down with every animator and every background painter, everyone involved, and say, "There's a very specific sensibility at hand here and here it is."

CS: One of the things we found out is that people appreciated the clarity. You worry a little bit that you're going to seem like [snooty accent], "Oh no, this is what I want to do, I won't have any of those other suggestions!" But they appreciated the clarity, and liked the purity of the story coming through.

AO: You've emphasized that you like extremely detailed storyboarding — not just movement, but also lighting and staging, close to the storyboarding for a live-action film.

DD: Both Chris and I have a philosophy — it isn't entirely shared within the studio — that composition and lighting are vital in storytelling. We're very specific and detailed about involving the background, the cinematography. Our choices of where to put the camera and how to light the scene compositionally have such an effect on us in our storyboards that it's automatically communicated to the rest of the crew. That means there's less of a discussion by the time it comes to layout. There might be an issue here and there about camera direction or whatever, but for the most part, our storyboards tend to translate exactly to the screen.

It's not an entirely shared philosophy on other Disney productions. It's a personal choice... It's a little more work but ultimately it makes me feel more like a director because I have more visual control of how my script pages are executed.