A Wacky Race for the Underdogs

Writer-director Ross Venokur discusses the challenges and rewards of making the new CG-animated feature Rally Road Racers.

When writer-director Ross Venokur was growing up, he loved to watch screwball comedies like Cannonball Run, Smokey and the Bandit and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. So, it’s not surprising that he’s the man behind the fun new animated feature Rally Road Racers (also known as Silk Road Rally). The new CG-animated feature follows the adventures of an underdog hero who wages a bet with the reigning champ of the rally car circuit to save his grandmother’s home from demolition.

“Our movie is one part underdog sports movie, like Bad News Bears, Mighty Ducks and Karate Kid, mashed up with those movies I grew up with, which are all comedies about unlikely teams racing coast to coast in a rally with the same classic rule — namely, ‘there are no rules,’” says Venokur, who also directed the popular 2018 feature Charming and wrote for animated shows such as Game Over and The Tick.

Labor of Love

Venokur wrote the first draft of Rally Road Racers over a decade ago. “Right after the writers’ strike in 2008, I decided that, for me, Hollywood wasn’t where I wanted to be,” he recalls. “So at my wife’s urging, I reached out to John Williams at Vanguard Animation to see if he wanted to take a deep dive into indie animation together. John and I have a long history, dating back to the first pitch that I ever sold, which was a live-action feature adaptation of Galaxy High, the Chris Columbus/ Amblin animated series from back around 1986 or so — but that’s a whole different story. The point is, I’ve known John for nearly 30 years, and I knew he was always interested in cracking the indie-animation feature nut. So we made a three-script deal, and one of those scripts was Charming and the other was Rally Road Racers.”

Things started to pick up when industry veteran Williams (Shrek, Valiant, Space Chimps) introduced Venokur to producer Deepak Nayar. “That was a game changer,” says the director. “When we met, he had already produced nearly 70 films, including Bend It Like Beckham and Buena Vista Social Club. He’s a true lover of cinema, and he has always existed outside of the studio system and loves betting on his own gut. He also came up as an AD, so the dude’s not afraid of confrontation and going head-to-head with anyone. Once Deepak got involved, things came together really quickly. As

Deepak and I went back and forth on about 20 more drafts of the script, he brought in financing, and we got going. So it was a bit of a domino effect over the course of a decade — a super slow and boring domino effect, but with a climactic ending!”

Most of the film’s CG animation was produced by Montreal-based indie ReDefine, and DNEG also helped out on the production. The film’s motion graphics were handled by Prime Focus. “ReDefine is spread out all over the place though, so we did most of our front-end design and story work in Montreal, shot production was primarily handled in Mumbai and we did post in London, which is also where our amazing composer, Tom Howe, lives,” says Venokur. “For the first year or so of the film, I was still living in Ojai, California, so I was traveling a lot. But when the pandemic hit, my family took to the road for a couple of years to find a new place to live, so I probably directed the film from at least 20 different states. I’m realizing now that we should have made an Airbnb sponsorship deal!”

The movie, which took about four years to produce, was made in the ReDefine pipeline, but the team created a huge number of custom tools and processes to accommodate the unique challenges of the movie. According to Venokur, the production used a custom version of Maya, rendering was done in Clarisse and Nuke was used for comping.

Looking back at the experience, the director says there are so many aspects of the project that he absolutely loved. “You’re not always fortunate enough to feel that way at the end of a project, but this movie makes me happy!” says the director. “I was overcome with how joyful it is as a film, it’s just fun to watch, and you have a good time watching it.”

Venokur says it has become a real passion for him to make movies for the whole family. “I know there’s a big movement that says animation is not just for kids, and I totally agree with that. But I also think that it’s okay for movies for families to be for families, and therefore be appropriate for kids,” he mentions. “And I think they can still be high-quality, and they can still have great casts, and they can still be really funny without innuendo and a bunch of other stuff that’s totally appropriate in a different space, but just not in this space.”

He also sings the praises of the film’s top-notch cast, which includes J.K. Simmons, John Cleese, Chloe Bennet, Sharon Horgan and Catherine Tate. “They’re all great actors who brought their A-game every time,” says Venokur. “Last, but definitely not least, is the great, iconic Lisa Lu as Granny Bai. We recorded her in the middle of the

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pandemic. We sent a mic kit to Lisa’s daughter’s house, because Lisa was staying with her daughter for the lockdowns, and I recorded Lisa over zoom. Lisa was 93 at the time of the recording! I am not exaggerating when I say she didn’t blink at all. Lisa just nailed her lines, line after line. She is such a pro, it’s insane!”

Venokur says he’s also really proud of how the movie looks. “I can talk about the visuals all day, because I love them so much,” he says. “I was extremely fortunate that Tom Jacomb (President of DNEG Animation) introduced me to Alexei Nechytaylo right off the bat, and Alexei and I got along right from the start. Alexei was brought on as the production designer, but by the time the movie was done, he was also the head of layout, the VFX supervisor and one or two other things! From the get-go, Alexei and I agreed that one of biggest challenges was to create a unique look that wasn’t trying to imitate what the bigger studios do.”

Clever Designs and Funny Critters

Venokur believes that small movies have to find ways to be smart to achieve greatness. “They have to punch above their weight, as Alexei has said to me,” he says. “So, we first made a short list of elements that we knew we wanted to define our look. We’re a comedy, so we wanted funny characters. The light-hearted and expressive character design is essential to our look. I personally love how ridiculously small all of our characters’ legs and feet are. It created a few headaches in production, but it was totally worth it, because I’ve never seen CG characters quite like ours.”

After all is said and done, Venokur says he hopes audiences will laugh and have fun when they see the movie. “I came to movies and filmmaking because of comedy,” he says. “I love laughing and I love making people laugh. I think this movie is funny, it has a lot of heart, it has fun action — so I just hope people really enjoy it. People who go to the theater and pay for a ticket to see this — or pay for four or five tickets for the whole family — I hope they feel like it was worth their time and money. As I touched on before, I’m on a mission to make movies that families can watch together. I want to make animation that is totally appropriate for kids, but that has jokes and storytelling that parents will appreciate too — without innuendo or relying on telling myself that something is fine because ‘it’ll go over kids’ heads!’” ◆

Viva Kids will release Rally Road Racers in U.S. theaters on May 12.