‘Wednesdays with Gramps’ Directors Chris & Justin Copeland Explore Family Ties and Love for Gaming in Their Heartwarming Short

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“Whenever we work on a film, we ask ourselves: what about this idea makes it work as an animated film? What separates it from a live action piece? And that is where the video game aspects really came to life.”

— Directors Chris and Justin Copeland

 

A teen gamer realizes that he and his elderly grandfather have a lot more in common than he imagined in the beautifully crafted DreamWorks short Wednesdays with Gramp, directed by brothers Chris and Justin Copeland and produced by Shabrayia Cleaver. The charming short, which has won several festival awards and qualified for Oscar consideration, has been in the works since early 2022.

“We were in development on a feature at the time, and DreamWorks thought that it would be a good idea for us to get to know the pipeline and some of the amazing artists that build our movies on a daily basis,” recalls Chris. “We were invited to explore any idea that we wanted, within reason. After pitching a few ideas that we had laying around that didn’t work, our fearless and amazing producer, Shabrayia Cleaver, asked us to think about the foundation of all good stories: relationships. We’ve never known our grandparents, and we had this wish fulfillment idea that they probably would have been gamers like us!”

The duo, who have worked as artists on a wide range of projects including Invincible, Batman: Soul of the Dragon and Guardians of the Galaxy, discovered that the video game aspect of the short made it perfect for animation. “The emotional angle of the story came to us pretty early on and from there, it was all about making sure the rest of the piece built upon that foundation,” says Chris. “Really though, this film belongs to our producer Shabrayia, as much as us. She brought us on and wouldn’t take no for an answer! She also worked with us on our feature and knew which meetings we needed to be in, and which ones we didn’t. She made the entire process easy and painless, which freed us to just create. She really is the MVP on this film!”

The Copelands, who are currently working on a new project at LAIKA Studios, pursued different paths to animation careers. “We were born in the early ’80s and got to experience the dawn of anime, super hero films, comics and video games,” says Justin. “Along with our older brother, we would both read comics and draw into the early morning hours.” The goal for Justin was to direct live-action films, while Chris was fascinated by the visual appeal and the style of everything — from comic books, to video games to fine art, and of course, animation.

“We were really poor growing up in Chicago, and a movie camera or camcorder was out of the question,” they recall. “An uncle of ours, who loved movies like us, would send us boxes of comics. He also sent The Making of Batman (89’) as well, and that was really eye opening! So, we read comics, built worlds with LEGOs and just started drawing — a lot!”

The talented siblings are also great graffiti artists and use the shapes and colors as a foundation in most of the art that they create. “We’d also spend months drawing comic pages and then travel the country to different conventions, trying to break into the comic industry,” says Justin. “Luckily, we just couldn’t get our feet into the ‘comic book’ door. After a decade of trying, Chris was done. We were both married with young families and it just wasn’t working. He decided to move to L.A. and try drawing in any other industry. Justin decided to give it one more year then maybe follow. Things changed for us both when Chris got a job at Warner Bros Animation three days after moving to Burbank. Justin followed six months later, and we both began what’s now been 16 year careers!”

The Copelands are very grateful that DreamWorks enabled them to build their short from the ground up. “They gave us a budget and any artists that were interested, and thankfully, there were a lot of folks that wanted to help us bring this idea to life!” notes Justin. “From the very beginning, Shabrayia leaned on this idea that we could really do a lot for our feature if we started with a short. We all gelled with the other team members as a family really quickly. We would joke and find creative ways to solve problems that would pop up.”

Of course, we had to find out if their family had seen their emotionally charged short! “They have, and they all love it,” says Chris. “Between the two of us, we have nine children (Justin has five, and Chris four) and they and our beautiful wives actually really love the short and that feels super nice. They’ve been such amazing supporters of our careers, so to make something that they actually love feels even more validating.”

Ironically, the brothers have never met either of their grandfathers. “On one hand that’s a sad reality,” admits Chris. “But, on the other hand, it’s actually what drives the ‘wish fulfillment’ of the movie. Justin and myself, with our other siblings, used to wonder what our grandparents were like, so we built this story with the thought of ‘What if we met him, and he was a gamer like us?’ Honestly, that question and the desire to answer it with animated short film is what kept an emotional core active throughout the making of the film. In some meta way, this movie is a love letter to the grandfather and mother we never met.”

 

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Wednesdays with Gramps producer Shabrayia Cleaver will participate in the “Shorts Contenders in the Spotlight” panel at the World Animation Summit in L.A. this week.