When the audience meets Raya as an adult in the film, she’s a lone warrior - but she learns that in order to accomplish her goals and save Kumandra, she must open herself up and trust others. Says Briggs: “It was really special to get a glimpse inside people’s homes, and see their loved ones, and their kids, and their pets.” Though at first the filmmakers worried about how the physical distance would impact their collaboration, their video conferencing ended up making the process more intimate, strengthening the crew’s bond.Īnd as it turns out, the crew’s experience overcoming the challenges of remote filmmaking directly relates to the theme of trust in the movie. It’s always cats.”īut that made the filmmaking process much more personal than the typical experience, and it brought the whole team even closer together than usual. And in video meetings - which were plentiful - Briggs jokes, “A lot of times pets would come in and get right on the screen. Of course, everyone experienced their fair share of the usual internet connectivity issues. Director Don Hall shared of the vocal recording process, “Our cast needed to record from their homes - very often in closets, which coincidentally have the best acoustics in your house.” Awkwafina, who voices Sisu, was all the way across the world in Australia, where she’d been shooting a movie. Not that the experience wasn’t without its particular challenges. Says writer Qui Nguyen: “Our Technology team deserves the biggest props because they were able to - over the period of maybe two weeks - just set up all of our systems so that we could just continue to work.” The filmmakers agree that this transition wouldn’t have been possible without the studio’s talented Technology team. As co-director Paul Briggs recalls, “Animators were carrying some of their computers out of the building to go home and start making the movie from home.” Now, under the best of circumstances, animation is a highly collaborative art form - but having to adapt to making an animated film from over 450 separate homes took the levels of collaboration to new heights, with the whole crew, including artists, technologists, and production staff, adjusting to a brand-new workflow. Shot production of Raya and the Last Dragon was just getting started in March 2020 when everyone was forced to work from home. We were so excited to hear from the filmmakers about their experience making Raya and the Last Dragon, which was unlike any other. Featuring the vocal talents of Kelly Marie Tran as Raya, and Awkwafina as Sisu, the last dragon, Raya and the Last Dragon premieres in theaters and on Disney+ with Premier Access on March 5. Along the way, Raya must learn that it’ll take more than a dragon to save Kumandra - it’ll take trust and teamwork as well.

Raya and the Last Dragon tells the story of Raya, a lone warrior who must track down the last dragon to help save her homeland of Kumandra from the sinister Druun. You wouldn’t expect the experience of creating an animated film set in a fantasy world to mirror real life, but that was what happened during the creation of Walt Disney Animation Studios’ latest movie.

The last dragon movie disney