President Obama’s visit to the DreamWorks Animation Studios lot got underway Tuesday with CEO and pal Jeffrey Katzenberg showing POTUS around the studio’s motion-capture and sound facilities — and the DWA team had a little surprise in store.
Obama was scheduled to make an economic address outside the Glendale facility (check back at TheWrap for updates), but not before getting a good look around first.
With “How to Train Your Dragon 2” director Dean DeBlois in tow, POTUS watched as two mocap actors did a scene for the June 2014 sequel, according to press pool reports.
“That was wonderful,” Obama said of what he was seeing. “Coming to a theater near you!”
Outside the studio, visual-effects professionals wore green (for the color of green-screen) and held signs to protest subsidies that were luring work away from Los Angeles.
Also read: Visual Effects Workers on Planned Protest of Obama’s DreamWorks Visit: ‘We’ve Already Won’
After the mocap demonstration, Obama moved on to a sound recording studio with where Steve Martin and Jim Parsons voiced a scene of the upcoming film “Home”; Martin greeted the President by saying his time playing the banjo at the White House was the biggest thrill of his life — and by that, the ever tongue-in-cheek Martin meant Obama’s life.
As Obama, Martin and Parsons looked at storyboards with director Tim Johnson, Martin described the challenge of doing voice work.
“You have to picture the scene as described by the director rather than actually being in the scene,” he said.
The DreamWorks team then used the little alien characters from the film to greet Obama – with one of them saying, in POTUS’ voice from a previous event: “Happy Thanksgiving everybody, welcome to the White House.”
“I’ve got to get that clip,” Obama said to laughter. “That will impress the girls. … Let’s run it again.”