Harold and the Purple Crayon is a beloved 1955 children’s picture book written and illustrated by Crockett Johnson. Harold, a curious 4-year-old, creates his own world thanks to his imagination and magical purple crayon. Harold’s adventures have delighted generations of families and children in the many years since his inception.

Director Carlos Saldanha is no stranger to animated family comedy films. Starting out as an animator, Saldanha co-directed Ice Age and Robots with Chris Wedge, before making his solo directorial debut with Ice Age: The Meltdown and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. He then co-wrote and directed Rio and Rio 2.

Saldanha returns to the directors chair, this time for his first live-action film, Sony Pictures’ Harold and the Purple Crayon. Harold (Zachary Levi), now an adult, is living happily in his world with his friends Porcupine (Tanya Reynolds) and Moose (Lil Rel Howery). This peace is shattered when Harold uses his purple crayon to create a door to the real world.

L to R: Lil Rel Howery as Moose, Benjamin Bottani as Mel and Zachary Levi as Harold in ‘Harold And The Purple Crayon’

Harold and his friends venture into our reality, causing plenty of shenanigans and mischief wherever they go. This chaos sweeps up Terri (Zooey Deschanel), a single mother that Harold befriends, and Gary (Jemaine Clement), a disgruntled novelist who schemes to steal the purple crayon for his own nefarious deeds.

We sat down with Saldanha to discuss his new film.

“I was familiar with the book,” he begins, “I read it to my kids way, way back, when they were younger, and I always loved that story. The story is very fun and creative. I identify myself a lot with that story because it’s about drawing and making your drawings come to life, I always loved that.”

Saldanha is an accomplished animation director, but the world of live-action filmmaking is new to him. How did this new world challenge him? “My approach was very similar to the way I approach animation. I tried to visualise everything, I storyboarded a lot of it, because I wanted to see, to feel it. This was the perfect translation because it has some animation to it; it has a lot of special effects. That’s an area I felt comfortable in.”

He adds, “I had to learn a lot with live action, I had to work with the actors in a capacity that I never worked before. I am used to working with big actors in a studio to record the voices for my animated movies. But I never put them altogether on a set, with makeup, seeing their faces, their expressions, their chemistry; and thinking, ‘How are they going to move?’ It was very unique to me, I enjoyed that quite a bit. It was a big challenge, but I thought it was a good challenge.”

Another challenge took place during the shooting process.

“A lot of things happened, and you don’t have a lot of time to solve it, because once you start shooting; that’s your time, you must make it. In animation we always have time… we take our time creating. In this one, sometimes I had to make decisions like, ‘We have this time, we have this light, it’s going to rain in 15 minutes, we have to shoot.’ It was a big challenge for me, to figure out the speed, and the pace of the shoot. It was something I had to learn, that was a big challenge.”

He elaborates further, this time, on his experience working with the wonderful cast of talented actors and their growth whilst making the film.

L to R: Zachary Levi as Harold, Benjamin Bottani as Mel, Lil Rel Howery as Moose and Zooey Deschanel as Terry in ‘Harold And The Purple Crayon’

“It was great to individually see how they would bring their talent to the story, but at the same time, moulding them to the story I wanted to tell: create the dynamics. With Jemaine, we’re very good friends, I have worked with him before (Clement played Nigel in the Rio movies). I love his sense of comedy.

“Tanya is a very lovely actress who was very engaged and brought a lot of life to her character. Zooey was incredible, she’s such an experienced actress. She helped me a lot. She helped with organising the set and talking to the actors. She was a good partner in the process of filmmaking. Working with Zach and Lil Rel, finding the comedic timing, was a challenge. But in essence, getting the whole team together was a challenging process but a fulfilling one.”

As much as the filmmaking process has its challenging and rewarding moments; it was the story, the character of Harold, that attracted the attention of Saldanha in the first place.

“Harold embodies the message that I relate to the most,’ he explains. “You have a superpower in you, and that’s your imagination, and you can’t let that die. You must keep that alive. It’s a great message from this character. Even though he gets bombarded with the real-life experience, he never loses sight of what makes him so important, which is his imagination. I relate to him the most in that way.”

He hopes the audience will take home a similar message after watching Harold’s adventure on the big screen. “I hope they remember they have that superpower as well. They can use their imagination for living better, to get a better life, to see the world in a different way.” He smiles and laughs, “Maybe in purple colour.”

‘Harold and the Purple Crayon’ is in cinemas now!

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