Sergio Pablos Talks His 2D Masterpiece, ‘Klaus’

Since founding SPA Studios in 2004, Sergio Pablos has, like all industry entrepreneurs, done whatever was necessary to keep his shop open while trying to incubate his own ideas and projects. An endless parade of service work may have paid the Madrid studio’s bills, but it didn’t nourish the artistic soul of a classically trained animator determined to pursue his own 2D animation projects, hoping to revitalize a style of filmmaking all but abandoned by the big studios.   

And so the story behind his heartwarming and beautifully animated feature film, Klaus, really begins back in 2010, when the idea for the movie first surfaced through an exercise in exploring historical characters with an eye towards introducing them to contemporary audiences. Napoleon?  Dracula? How about Santa Claus? Little did Pablos know, with numerous starts, stops, studio shuffles and ideas destined for the waste basket, Klaus would finally find its way to audiences around the world. And, what a treat those audiences have in store for them.   

Klaus, which debuts today on Netflix, is an animated holiday comedy about a self-centered child of privilege, the worst student at the postal academy, who after being banished to the frozen north, finds redemption in the kind works of an old toymaker; together, they help bring laughter and joy to a feuding town, stockings to everyone’s fireplace, and a new sense of purpose and humility to a person seriously in need of an attitude adjustment.

Designed and produced using state-of-the-art 2D animation technology that gives the film a bright, crisp and modern feel, Klaus is first and foremost, a funny and engaging take on a Christmas origin story; Jason Schwartzman, J.K. Simmons and Rashida Jones bring warmth and depth to a set of characters mired in centuries-old conflict that has all but eliminated even a hint of happiness from the lives of their neighbors.

I recently had a chance to talk at length with Pablos about the film. He shared his unique insights on the almost torturous path he took to make his movie, the pressures faced working under the tight time constraints of a Netflix holiday project, and the dedication and almost “relentless” efforts he and his team undertook to finish a film he fully expected would never get a chance to generate any holiday cheer.  

Dan Sarto:  This film, your improbable and incredible passion project, is finally finished. Are you pleased with the final version of Klaus that Netflix is releasing November 15?

Sergio Pablos: The whole process with Klaus was about setting the bar as high as we could; we're going to make a Christmas movie, so let's try to make the perfect Christmas movie. Of course, we'll fall short, but let’s see how close we can get. It’s not for me to judge the result; the audience will decide the merits of the film. But, the driving force behind this film was always there. We kept discovering as we went along, and with a certain team of artists, and certain set of tools, we were able to keep making this film better and better until we finally finished. At the zero hour… but we finished.

Every day was filled with discovery. "Oh, we can do that too? Let's definitely use that." We were always adapting. And, in the end, I have to say, as far as my simple expectations, we came very, very close; with every angle… artistically, technically, story-wise, I really watched audience responses to see how they engaged with the film. I’m been very pleased with those responses.

DS: After all this time, it must feel good to be able to really talk about your film.  

SP: It does. We've been working on this film for so long. Finally, people will be able to see it. We're super excited. You hope you’ve made something good, but you're so close to it that you're kind of blind to it. We've been trying to make a film for 15 years in my company and we’ve failed in different ways. Right? Sometimes a film would end up going elsewhere, or it wouldn’t even get made. Meanwhile, we're taking service work to try and support our effort. So, it’s been a long road. But I always dreamt the day would come where I’d have a project I could be proud of. So, I'm stoked; the reaction to Klaus has been so overwhelming… just great.

DS: Your lead character, Jesper, is brilliantly played by Jason Schwartzman with a fairly contemporary “feel” to his dialogue and mannerisms. Watching him, I can’t imagine anyone else in that role. Klaus is played perfectly by J.K Simmons with a fairly minimalist, measured approach. Together, they’re a fantastic combination. How early were you able to get them to participate?

SP: Well, we always knew Jesper was somewhat self-centered, because we wanted Klaus to be the catalyst of his transformation. Here's a guy who needs to learn altruism; he needs to be taught a lesson in humility. We were a bit hesitant with that angle in our first attempt because… I'd been on films where we had a main character with flaws that made him unlikable - I won't name any particular films – and sometimes we never got past that. What am I going to do if we give him those flaws and people don’t root for him? I was so afraid of that possibility, that I originally wrote a different version, where he wasn’t a postman. He was a poor chimney sweep that we were supposed to feel sorry for.

And then we realized, wait, we're sending mixed messages here. This guy's not someone who needs to learn that lesson. You know what? We were being too shy. Let's go all out. Let's make him a more unapproachable character, someone who really needs to learn that lesson. And after a lot of rewriting and thinking, this new idea of the postman came up. And even then, the tone wasn't clear; while I was writing, the risk that he might be unlikable was very scary to me.

And that's when we started talking about casting Jason in the film. Once we got him involved, he really helped develop Jesper’s character. He came to the first recording session with a bunch of clips from old films and said, “I can play him like this or I can play him like this.”

He helped me understand Jesper’s character better. It took a couple of sessions for him to really land this role. Jesper is an egotistical, pampered character that we love to hate. That takes real acting skills. Jason improvised a lot of his lines; they weren't in the script. But we kept saying, "Oh, we've got to use that." So after those first couple of sessions with Jason, I went back to writing knowing who Jesper was. But it didn't click until Jason got involved.

J.K. was a no brainer. It was like, "Can we get him?" "Yes." “Done.”

DS: You’re so well-known and respected in the industry, but even you struggled to get backing for your feature. You’ve shared with me how in various meetings, you were told again and again, “Not interested… not interested.” And then you went to Netflix, who appreciated the honesty in your story. And took on the project.

SP: When you’ve been in this business as long as I have, you learn that failure is always close at hand. Earlier in my career. I had to make a choice. 2D was gone. I had no interest in being a 2D animator on projects I didn’t care about. I said to myself, “What am I going to do?” I tried my hand at 3D. I could do it, but I became an animator because of my love for drawing. So, if you take my drawings out of it, I’m not interested.

My other love was always story, but I was never serious about it. So I said, "Let me try my luck with storytelling, Let me get good at it.” I soon realized very clearly there's no direct connection between being a good animator and being a director. This is a whole new profession and I'm going to have to train myself. I started revisiting good and bad films, figuring out why they worked, or didn’t work. I learned a lot trying to fix bad films.

This must be the 15th or 16th project that I developed, and on each one, I made mistakes. You learn, you adjust, you try again. I try not to get caught up in externalizing the problem… the reason they aren’t picking this project up is because they're idiots. They can't see the genius that it is." Right? And I know a lot of people who do that. I told myself, "Don't fall into the trap." Something you did was wrong; adjust it and come back. So, you try and try again. But like I said, failure is built into the process. We're not strangers to it and we're not afraid of it because we learn from it. All you need is that one small opportunity someone gives you; you need to recognize it and make sure you don't spoil it.

DS: Whatever you do, don’t mess it up.

SP: Right. Because you don't get many of those chances. With Klaus, we knew it couldn’t just be a great looking film. It had to have a great story. And I had to be up to the challenge, so I had to get better at storytelling. But even then, I wasn’t even planning on writing it myself. I wrote the treatment fully intending to hire a writer. But I couldn't afford to pay my writer, so I took over. You just have to rise to the occasion, be humble and try not to mess it up. And never think you know everything. I still love to animate, but I think now, I’m a storyteller.

DS: The road to animation glory is littered with projects that never got made, or for whatever reason, crashed and burned. Now that your film is finished and the initial reaction has been so positive, does this mean it might be easier to get projects made moving forward?

SP: That’s an interesting question. I've had my share of projects that never landed, or almost landed because after a studio regime change, they were canceled. The number of ways in which a film can go wrong is endless. And you can live 20 lifetimes and still not learn enough to prevent those things from happening. So much of it is beyond your control. For a film to get made, a lot of planets have to align. For a good film to get made, even more so. For a great film to get made, it's almost impossible, because everything has to be just right. Now, I'm not claiming Klaus is a great film, but the planets did align for this one for sure.

We got everything we asked for from Netflix: incredible support and a level of creative freedom I'd never experienced before. We would get studio notes, but to me, they were very minimal. Some notes were great; I’d say, “I want to try this.” There were notes I had no particular feelings about; I’d say, "If that's important to you, we'll put them in." And there were notes that I felt like, "I really don't think that's the right move.” To my shock, the answer back would be, “The don't do them. Just ignore them. It's your film and your feelings are what matter.” I've never seen that before. So, for the first time in my life, if the film is no good, I’ve got no one to blame. It's all on me.

Moving forward, I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever get this level of creative freedom again. We're very motivated to continue working with Netflix and they are keen on hearing new projects. And so, as long as I keep doing my part and bringing them interesting properties and they keep supporting the way they have, I could very easily move forward with such collaboration. On the other hand, I have to say, the one thing that we’ve learned about ourselves while making this film was if you start getting complacent, you lose interest.

Every other idea I'm playing with always has a level of risk, always has a little uncharted territory. And we'll see if Netflix is okay with that. Stylistically, there's so many other things we could do. We don't have to go with the style we used on Klaus, which is heavily influenced by my experience at Disney. I'm the first to recognize that. But do we want to stay with that? Is that a house style? No. Let's try to explore other possibilities, as long as we keep pushing the envelope in directions that excite us; let’s keep saying, "I don't know how to do that, but let's try and see what happens." And as long as we get the support to do that, we're going to continue.

DS: You’ve spoken at length about both technical and narrative challenges. Which are tougher?

SP: Narrative. It’s always story. Anything to do with drawing, character design or animation, if I get stuck, I just keep drawing, right? If I get stuck when I'm writing, I'm just stuck. There's nothing I can do. I just stare at a blank screen and get frustrated, and it's terrible. Not only that, you feel the pressure, like, there's a movie that needs to happen, and if you don't crack this problem in time, you are delaying the whole process, and it's on you. And you are painfully aware of what the problem is, but finding the right solution is tricky, and then you convince yourself you got it and then realize, "Oh, that's actually worse."

So, every solution is trial and error. But, there’s that pressure of, I have the potential to really destroy this film if I don't come up with a brilliant idea to solve this storytelling problem. And sometimes you just settle. Like, "I'm sure there's a better option for that, but this does the job. Let's keep going,"

DS: With the rise of streaming platforms like Netflix and Disney+, there is an unprecedented amount of animation under development everywhere you look right now. What does this mean for you and your studio?

SP: I'll tell you what. I was convinced this film wasn’t going to happen. We went everywhere with Klaus. And the studios basically, they have their ways. I know how to make a film that pleases the studios, but that doesn't mean it's going to please me. Right? So I mean, being employed... that’s no longer enough. Animated films are like dog years. You only get so many and then you're dead. And we spend so much time on each of these things that I don't want to get put on the wrong one.

So, with Klaus, I always looked at it this way. You have to bring the commercial element, and you have to bring that element that makes you want to tell the story. And all my projects need to have both those things, because if I don't care, then I don't want to make the film. And if I make a film that's just for me, with no commercial element, then I'm not going to sell it.

I figured Klaus is perfect because he's all about my taste in storytelling, but with a Santa built into it, which brings the commercial angle to it. And then I go out to all the studios and say, "Oh, it's a Christmas thing." I’m told, "Then we're not interested." I say, "Why?" I’m told, "There's no way we're going to put out a Christmas film in theaters because Christmas pretty much belongs to these big movies. These days, they put out a Star Wars or Frozen 2, and they just swipe the market. What's the point of that? We're not interested."

The only studio that didn’t follow that thinking was Netflix, who were, in fact, doing the opposite. "We need Christmas content because we do recognize this demand for it on our platform, and that is actually something we want." Even then, when they picked us up, we were an exception. Because they weren’t doing feature films. We were told that several times. We kept going back, and they kept saying no. But this one time, they said, "We're actually not looking for animated feature films, but we're looking for Christmas films, so maybe let us take a look at Klaus."

It came down to timing. We were that weird animal in that they were doing this one film. But meanwhile, in the matter of a year, they built a whole division around this film, and now there's a huge operation going on, and we find ourselves being the tip of this huge spear without knowing how it happened. So, the landscape right now is completely different from what was going on the day we got picked up.

DS: Much has been discussed about the challenges you faced finding a technological solution to bring an updated, brighter, more modern look to your 2D animation. What were the other big challenges you dealt with on the production?

SP: The Netflix development timeframes are shorter than what I'm used to at big studios. At Disney or Pixar, our dream was to get eight or nine screenings just to find your story. With Klaus, we got three. Which means you’ve got to land your story very, very quickly, practically on the first try. We’ve had first screenings at Disney where we’re told, “Okay, let's see the film we're not going to make." At Netflix, you’re supposed to start production after the first screening. You’ve got to have at least a portion of a decent piece of work that’s ready to go. That’s a lot of pressure.

That’s the hardest thing. Instead of a distance race, it’s been like a long sprint. But, I'm not complaining. We don't mind the hard work, but because it’s a Christmas film, that means the date, if they have to shift, needs to shift an entire year, and they’re not going to shift your film an entire year. That's never going to happen. So, we’ve got to deliver, and we know, to get it done on time, it’s going to be tight. Which is fine.

So, I would say the tighter schedule was probably the most challenging part of this film. But, there's nothing I can complain about regarding the production process and the kind of support we've been getting from Netflix; all the rumors about supporting the creator, I have to corroborate them. They’re all true. They really let me make the film I wanted to make without any interference, and I never felt that experience before. So... What can I say? I mean, it's a best-case scenario. I don't think I've ever had a better directing experience than this, you know?

DS: In pushing the envelope and expanding your 2D visual development capabilities on this film, did you discover any exciting new areas of production technology that you’re eager to explore?

SP: Yes. Like I said, we kept discovering things throughout the production. Sometimes, it was too late to incorporate what we did in one shot into the logic of the pipeline, even if it was something we could really use throughout. Stylistically these tools remind me a lot of when Pixar was taking huge leaps in CGI. Every film they would figure something out, like cloth, hair, fur or water. They kept demolishing these barriers. It feels to me like what we have ahead of us is a similar road. In our next film, we can try to do yet one more thing that supposedly was not possible; that alone will keep us motivated. And it feels like these tools are incredibly instinctive and powerful and we need to continue pushing the envelope.

DS: Do you think the beautiful new 2D look you’ve brought to Klaus might mean studios may pay more attention to the world of 2D features again?

SP: I would hope so. But don’t forget, Klaus is first and foremost, a story. Let's be clear: we don't want anybody to support the film just because it's 2D. That would be hypocritical to all the people who say, “Toy Story's great because of the story, not the technique,” and then completely switch the argument and say, "Oh, support Klaus because it's 2D." That wouldn’t be right. If it's a good film, support it, regardless of medium. How we made it should be a secondary consideration, not the primary one. 

But I always felt someone had to make a statement for 2D, and say all these things that we've been told, the reason for studios not doing 2D, they’re not true. It's not more expensive. That's a fallacy. And as far as, “The audience has spoken and they don't want to see 2D,” when was the last time you challenged them and showed them something new and appealing in traditional animation? You cannot just say, "Hey, have you been missing talking animals and princesses in 2D?" And people kind of go, "No, we're good on those." "Okay, we tried, let's do 3D then." That's not right. You still haven't tried to actually challenge everything and reinvent what we can do with 2D animation.

I love 2D. But people might not share my love for 2D. I'm not saying it's Klaus, but someone eventually has to make a good case for 2D and let the audience react to it. Then we’ll know for sure if those sentiments, that reasoning, is really true or not.

DS: You told me previously that in bringing a lot of young talent onto the production, you felt they were probably making an awful career decision by spending years working in the 2D realm. Now that they've gone through this experience with you and seen the wonderful results, do you think they’re happy they made that decision?

SP: We actually had 700 people fly back from overseas to attend our wrap party. I wasn't even going to have a party because I figured, who’d bother to fly back? Turns out everyone did. And the vibe was unbelievably special, to be truly cherished. Everybody was super appreciative of the opportunity to work on Klaus and they basically hope, like me, that we're going to continue doing 2D films. Maybe people will see the potential. We're not looking to bring 2D back to where it was, but there should be at least a space for it, so if someone chooses to tell animated stories through painting or drawing, they have the ability to do that.

Because I got trained in 3D. I found that I may enjoy the end result, but I hate the production process. My mind is wired to think as an artist; if something doesn't work, my solution is to draw better. It's not, “Oh, let's call the TD to fix it.” I'm just not built that way. I believe, after Klaus, more people are going to make that choice to go into 2D. I hope we’ll continue to make more of these 2D film so we can begin to rebuild the side of the feature film industry that has pretty much been demolished.

Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.