The ‘Magic’ Behind the ‘Son of Zorn’ Revealed
In the Walt Disney classic musical, Mary Poppins, one of the most famous scenes is when the nanny, her buddy Bert, and the two children that she is caring for, jump into a chalk painting on the sidewalk and find themselves in an animated world. FOX’s Son of Zorn TV show is actually the complete opposite in just about every way possible. For Zorn, it is as if he jumped out of a sidewalk illustration and into the real world. Instead of happy and simple penguins, Zorn is a sarcastic brute. As for the production of the show itself, it would appear to be a simple process, but even with today’s impressive technology, there still a lot of work to create this “magic” on screen.
Although you never see him on screen, Dan Lippert is one of the most important characters on Son of Zorn working as the animated character’s stand in. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the main cast members (Cheryl Hines, Johnny Pemberton and Tim Meadows) act out every scene first with Lippert, who sits or stand everywhere that Zorn would if Zorn were real while speaking his lines as well. Then they act out the scene again with no version of Zorn present at all.
Lippert, who stand 6? 7? tall, has to wear a muscle suit to give the actors a better idea of who and where their eyes should be focused on when filming with no one there.
“We needed a big enough guy to take up the space, to replicate what Zorn would be doing in that space,” says Showrunner Sally Bradford McKenna. “And he needed to be able to play with the other actors, so that actors wouldn’t have to act all day with a tennis ball or a giant X. They can work off each other.”
Despite how good the banter sounds between Zorn (voiced by Jason Sudeikis), he and the actors rarely ever work together on the show. With the second take, the one without Lippert filling in for Zorn, the character is sketched and shown to Sudeikis to give him a better idea on how to voice the lines.
“We’ll have them do the scene as an art animation director is on set sketching out what Zorn will look like — perspective, dimension, how big he’ll be, where he’s gonna move, how he’s gonna move,” says Bradford McKenna.
For Sudeikis, it takes about four or five hours to voice the animated warrior’s line, but he would like to find a way where he was actually acting with the others directly.
Jason Sudeikis on grunting and sweating through Son Of Zorn https://t.co/uoTgjsPhCG pic.twitter.com/WWHx7Uq0Bl
— The A.V. Club (@TheAVClub) September 22, 2016
“I’d love to figure out a way for me to be there for my scene partners,” Sudeikis says. “One of the things I was drawn to when getting into acting and part of the reason I came through the world of sketch and improv was to get to bounce off other people. The most foreign thing about the gig is being isolated in the booth.”
Still, despite the show’s complications, it all turns out well.
“It’s a very fluid experience, despite the isolation,” he says. “It’s very joyful on my side of things, because [my co-stars] are so fun to watch. The most fun is seeing how it all comes together. It’s the same thing I felt when I watched Angry Birds(another movie where he voiced he did voice work) – ‘wow, it really sounds like we’re all there together!'”
Son of Zorn airs on Sundays at 8:30 p.m. on FOX
[Featured Image by FOX]
