This past Friday, Light of the World, a lovingly crafted 2D-animated retelling of the life of Jesus, opened in 1,500 theaters nationwide. Directed by Disney veteran Tom Bancroft (The Lion King, Aladdin, Mulan) and John Schafer (Superbook), the movie was funded by the Christian nonprofit Salvation Poem Foundation, which brought together a team of industry veterans. The film tells the story of Christ as told through the eyes of his beloved young friend, the Apostle John, taking audiences to the beginning of his journey through his crucifixion and resurrection.
Bancroft and Schafer took the time to chat with us about their new movie, which had an impressive $2.4 million opening this past weekend:
Animation Magazine: Congratulations on your fantastic new movie, gentlemen. Can you tell us a little bit about how this project began?
John Schafer: Well, it was about four years ago when Matt McPherson, the founder of the Salvation Poem Project and his son Brendan, who’s also the producer of our movie, took us out for coffee. He knew because of my background as a producer of the Superbook series for the Christian Broadcasting Network, and he said maybe now it’s the right time to get this project off the ground.
We wanted to tell the story of the life of Jesus, but we didn’t want him to be the main character. We felt it needed to be told through the lens of someone else, one of the disciples, because that would draw credibility to the story. Many historians and theologians believe that the disciples would have been teenagers: Peter might have been the oldest, around 24, but John was the youngest. We gravitated towards making him our main character, and we decided to make him 13. In Jewish culture, that’s when you a boy comes into adulthood and this is kind of coming-of-age movie. His journey begins as he seeks out the Messiah to see if he could help his family out.
How did Tom Bancroft get involved with the movie?
John: Prior to Tom coming on board, I was the only director. I always wondered why Disney and Pixar often have two directors or more on a movie. Now I know why — because it’s a Herculean undertaking. When I was working with the early story team, the tone of the movie was like Back to the Future or The Goonies, that type of a fun adventure. John the Baptist is our Doc Brown, a little crazy and eccentric, but also heartfelt and firm. That’s where we were when I reached out to Tom, about a year into the preproduction.
I had worked with Tom for over 15 years on the Superbook series. I needed his help, because of his expertise in 2D animation and what he’s done throughout his entire career, but it was also working with Tom because I knew he was a believer. We wanted to make the story more funny and entertaining, I knew he would bring that right balance, because the biggest challenge is how to tell the story of Jesus in a way that it won’t offend people. We wanted it to be funny and engaging and show a different side of Jesus. He was very human when he was on this Earth. That’s why he understands how we feel. Bringing Tom helped us bring the right balance between script, scripture, humor, entertainment and all of that.
Tom, can you talk a bit about how this movie dovetails the rest of your amazing 2D animation career at Disney?
Tom Bancroft: As John was saying, it was about two and half year ago, when he approached me and asked me do an animation test based on some character designs that they had developed. I have my own company, Pencilish Animation Studio, so he was basically hiring me and Pencilish to create that. My producer Pam Darley came aboard and the two of us really set out and hired a few people and did a little animation test based on those early designs. It was all beautiful, hand-drawn 2D animation, and we loved doing it. But as we moved forward, John started to see some problems not only with the designs, but also about the pipeline. Soon, we both realized that it might help if I come on board, and he brought me in to help direct the film, and Pam came on board as one of the producers.
One of the reasons I said yes was because the movie was already looking beautiful. They showed me these amazing backgrounds and this incredible style that they had already developed. Now, it was all about taking it from concept into production, which is one of the hard steps. How do we make those amazing backgrounds and wonderful character design style, and make all these characters look like they’re in the same world, and translate that into a practical production process.
Why did you originally decide to go the 2D animation route with this movie?
John: First of all, I love 2D animation. When Matt McPherson decided to take on this retelling of the life of Jesus, we wanted to do this in a unique way. We decided to tell it in a way medium that we love. We don’t see that kind of craftsmanship anymore. I wanted this movie to be like a children’s story book come to life. I’ve traveled the world and no matter where I go, all these cultures have illustrated children’s storybooks. They all have a unique style. You can find commonality in a style, and that could help us be more familiar as people watch this film in their own cultures. So, that was the real reason we wanted this painterly feel and this artistic touch that couldn’t be done with CGI.
What was your ballpark production cost for Light of the World?
John: The production cost was about $20 million, and it was all funded by Matt McPherson and for this non-profit ministry, that is a lot of money! At the same time, in the real world of animation when you’re looking at Pixar or Disney, our movie is made on a much smaller scale. We don’t have the staffing and resources. We knew we had only had two shots at the animatic. We taxed Tom and also brought his brother Tony on board to be the animation supervisor. We brought in Pam Darley because of her background and how she ran the pipeline at Disney. So, we had old-school Disney meet new school with our production partners Lighthouse Studio, which is the sister studio owned by Cartoon Saloon in Ireland. It was cool seeing things being done with this level of character design. I feel that we really stretched our $20 million budget.
Tom: I’ll jump in to say that one way we did that was through virtual production. I know this isn’t a brand new idea, because of the COVID days, but it’s still pretty rare that you would do a feature projects like virtually in that not even the directors were together. I am based in Nashville, and John is in Sparta, Wisconsin, so this was really a collaboration between four different studios. That’s kind of how you make a lower budget animated film today. Let’s be honest: You can’t have a lot of in-house staff, and you can’t have a lot computer overhead. All the technology has to be cloud-based and there are problems that come with that too.
I have to say that at first, it was really hard for Tony and I to wrap our minds around it, coming from the Disney studio system. I believe in in low-budget filmmaking for sure, and I honestly think that’s what we’re going to see moving forward in this industry. But this is hard to conceive in the U.S. Tony would always say, “Oh, you’ll never be able to do it for $20 million, not for the quality level that we want to get. I think in Europe you can do a $10 million animated feature,” And although we had a $20 million budget, we even came about $250,000 under budget.
Was the animation all done in Toon Boom?
Tom: Yes, we used Toon Boom Harmony, and part of that was because that’s what Lighthouse uses. We needed to be the same, and lot of our previous development work was not done in Toon Boom — it was more Photoshop and things like that. But we always had that eye toward the fact that the deliverables need to be in in Harmony or something like that.
Can you tell me what you love most about this movie, now that is finally in theaters after many years of hard work.
John: I never imagined in my wildest dream that I would have a chance to direct a 2D animated feature film with my good friend Tom Bancroft and his brother Tony. We also had Disney legend John Pomeroy doing storyboards on our film. We were also able to show our stuff to the amazing Glen Keane. So, for me, who has had this deep love for 2D animation since I was a child, to be part of something like this has been in incredible. I’m reading social media posts where people are saying that our movie has that Prince of Egypt or Aladdin vibe. We weren’t actually referencing Prince of Egypt. We were actually looking at the graphic shapes and styles of Cartoon Saloon’s movies like The Secret of Kells. But to see people excited about 2D animation again and to be able to tell the story of Jesus retold in a new way — I absolutely love that.
One funny thing I have to say is that when Tom and I started to direct, we realized we needed an animation director, and we thought about Tom’s brother Tony. As we were scaling up quickly, I remember one day Tom calls me and says, “John, I never ask you for a favor, but whatever you do, you have to hire Tony!” I thought, was that twin brother bonding love? They just want to work together. But Tom goes, “It has been my dream my entire life that Tony would work for me!” And I told him, “Well, it’s been my dream that both you and Tony come work for me!” And that’s how the whole journey kicked off!
This movie feels like a really authentic 2D animated feature, like what we saw back in the ’90s. Tom always says if Disney wanted to make a movie about the life of Jesus in the ’90s, this would be it.
Tom: That’s true. My brother Tony was my boss on Mulan, when I was a supervising animator on Mushu and he was one of the supervising animators, so in fairness, this was just a little bit of selfish revenge on my behalf. But I will say this: One of the parts that I really enjoyed, and it does involve Tony, was that when he and I got to the phase where we were working with Lighthouse, working directly with the animators, that was largely Tony. That was largely his job as he was doing most of the reviews. But I was very involved too, because I’m a Disney animator too. So, we both got to apply how to create characters that combine personality and acting and performance. We got to really push the animation because our boards were done very quickly, and we didn’t get a refine them as much as we wanted to again because of time and budget.
The team at Lighthouse Studio was doing a miraculous job and they knew how to move things around. They’d never done this level of performance animation though, so that was where Tony and I could really be even more involved and gave them a lot of guidance. There was only one shot in the whole movie that we didn’t put any red line drawing notes on, because every single thing no matter how well it was done, you would push a pose or expression. I’m hoping when people see on the screen, it bring them to tears with these characters since this story is that powerful already. If we didn’t do that with the characters expressions, acting and performances, then we would be letting this amazing, true story down.
What are your hopes for the movie and how it will impact the audience?
John: We really hope this is that movie will encourage people to share the gospel with a friend or family. This is the movie you could take them to and let it speak to their hears. I think the biggest takeaway is that you’re watching this friendship between John and Jesus. For us, it’s more important than all the amazing animation, visual effects, music, etc. We want people to walk away feeling that Jesus this is the one they want to get to know. This is who I want to become friends with.
We’ve seen it amazing examples of this in the past, with films like Prince of Egypt and even The Lion King, that animated films can change your life. A lot of people might say, “Oh, I don’t want to see an animated Jesus telling me how I should think or believe,” right? It’s not that we’re just telling this true story about this character that changed the world. We took it very seriously, but we had a lot of fun doing it, and I think that’s on the screen. I’m just excited to see the movie coming out, and praying that everybody buys their ticket because we need people who don’t usually go to theaters on opening weekend to do it. Those who want more 2D animation on the big screen, this is the time to show your support!
Tom, you and your brother have a wonderful animation podcast, so you know exactly what’s happening in the animation industry. A lot of people talk about wanting to see more 2D animation. Do you hope your movie will lead to more 2D features being made?
Tom: Well, it’s never going to be as big as it was in the 1990s, because that was before CG really took off. Now we are seeing that 2D doesn’t have to be dead. Maybe it’s a way of making lower-budget films as we mentioned before. Honestly, a bad, low-budget CG film can look very low budget, and you can’t hide it. You have to spend a lot of money to make it look just right and polished. I will say that last year’s Flow counters that, but that movie had a completely different look, and you had to go into it a accepting that it was going to be a low-budget computer animated movie and just enjoy the story. But the amazing animation and acting to get the performance on that film really made it what it was. I think that there are certain people that were probably turned off they thought it looked like a video game. I think we need to remember that you can make [great looking] lower-budget 2D animated films and that’s the secret that we need to get out.
You can learn more about the movie and buy tickets at lightoftheworld.com.
