Monday, January 21, 2002

DIRECTOR TALKS STATIC SHOCK

Static Shock kicks off its second season on Kids' WB! on Saturday with ěThe Big Leagues, an episode guest-starring Batman and Robin.

The Continuum caught up with David J. Chlystek, director of the episode, to discuss the episode.

The Continuum: How did Batman and Robin end up on Static Shock?

Chlystek: The network decided to add them. It came as a surprise as it was towards the end of production.

The Batman episode was the 11th episode out of 13 so we were all taken a bit aback.

I had to pinch myself a couple of times, because, even though I had been a storyboard artist on Batman Beyond, This was BATMAN and ROBIN! And the JOKER!! Together again for the first time since ROTJ! I tried to treat the episode very much like a Batman episode; we even changed the color pallette a bit to reflect the "influence" of Batman.

I told my board artists to treat it like the audience is Static, and we are all meeting Batman, and being brought into his world. Which meant going with some iconic silhoutted shots, and whatnot. My hope and intent was to do an episode that I would want to see.

I'm very proud of the results, as are the rest of the crew, we worked really hard on that one, and it shows!

Once we turned in the final storyboards for The WB's approval, we got a very enthusiastic thumbs up, we knew we had something. I also would like to take the opportunity to thank my very talented crew, Tristin Roesch, our color designer, who really exceeded everyone's expectations on our show, not just for this episode, but for EVERY episode.

My exceptional storyboard crew, Eddie Lin, and Pat McEown, who are tremendous storytellers, they made my job easy, and I can't thank them enough. Our Producers, Scott Jeralds and Alan Burnett, who I can't praise enough, I don't even know where we would be without them, and lastly, to WB's President, Sander Schwartz, who made sure we got a great studio to animate the episode. I never thanked him personally, so Thanks Sander!!!

The Continuum: What were you pleased with about the episode?

Chlystek: That we pulled off an extremely difficult task. Everything. I think it looks great!!

The action sequences in the tunnel (which I boarded, so I'm biased) turned out amazingly well. I've looked at that sucker a million times and I STILL smile when I see it. The colors look very rich and lush. Since our backgrounds are digitally colored as opposed to hand painted like BTAS or Justice League it is impossible to match the bgs of a Batman cartoon, but we came up with a pretty darn good marriage of both styles. And mostly, that the episode is FUN!! Nothing earthshattering happens, but it is a fun ride.

The Continuum: How many other of the second-season episodes did you work on?

Chlystek: I directed three other episodes, (one) entitled "Frozen Out", an episode that I am most proud of in many ways. It is one of our more "socially concious" episodes, but it turned out very well. We did alot of different things, filmic things with that one.

The other episodes are "Attack of Brain Puppets", which is our "homage" to such B-movie classics as "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and to a much tamer degree, "Night of the Living Dead" with a touch of "Election" thrown in. A very funny/cool episode.

And finally, "Trouble Squared," which is just a straight ahead action story, very well written by Chris Simmons.