August 17th, 2021 
Jackson Murphy 
Dave Needham directs new feature-length The Loud House Movie, which premieres this Friday August 20th on Netflix. The popular Nickelodeon family heads from Royal Woods to Scotland to learn more about their ancestry. I conducted Needham’s first interview about the film, which he hopes fans of the TV series embrace. (This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)
Jackson Murphy: How did you go from working as a story artist on some big DreamWorks and Warner Bros. animated movies like The Boss Baby, Trolls, The LEGO Batman Movie and Smallfoot to now coming into The Loud House world and making this your directorial feature debut?
Dave Needham: Well, it’s been a *long* journey, I’ll tell you that. I’ve worked in animation for about 20 years and the first 10 years was all TV, in the U.K. mostly. I was an art director. I’ve been a character designer. I moved onto story and worked in development. And when I moved to the States 10 years ago, I worked exclusively in features as a story artist and was lucky enough to work on the movies you just mentioned. All of them formed an experience that… every step of the way you learn something more. I was Head of Story on Smallfoot and from there made the still significantly large step into directing my first feature, which is honestly the most fun you can ever have. I love this job.
JM: I’m so glad. So you’re jumping into this universe. How did you study… The Loud House show and ALL of its characters going into this?
DN: (laughs) I had a cheat sheet with everyone’s name and picture on my screen! There’s a lot of characters in this. There’s 13 main characters and you end-up with all of them in shot at the same time. I prepared by just watching the show a lot and sort of understanding the influences of the show. It’s obviously [inspired] by a lot of things [including] Peanuts and Charles Schulz. But I wanted to take that and use it as a great starting point and then elevate it and make it more cinematic, without losing any of that flavor. It’s a balancing act.
JM: You’re able to make it happen… especially in this opening section of the movie. Everyone’s going somewhere, getting together and getting from one place to another. How did you organize that sequence?
DN: I had the help of some people from the show and some people that I’ve worked with in features before. It was a really great blend of people that we could call on for that experience, “Which sister would say this?” or “Who would do that?” and the people that worked on musicals before. Let’s not forget: this is a musical as well. It has a lot of song sequences in it. I just tried to put myself in the mind of the audience. What I wanted to do from the very start was to think of the two types of audiences that we’ve got: we’ve got the existing audience of Loud House fans and then you’ve got a whole new audience, hopefully, with it going onto Netflix. So the opening sequences are very much bringing everyone up to speed with who everyone is and how they got together and what their role in the family might be. But giving new stuff to existing fans as well. So there’s lots of little Easter eggs in every sequence.
JM: Definitely. The family goes to Scotland. What made you decide on Scotland as the primary location for The Loud House Movie?
DN: When I joined the team, there was already Chris Viscardi, Mike Rubiner, the showrunner and Kevin Sullivan, who’s a head writer on the show and writer of the movie. About three weeks into the job I was like, “Wait a minute. I don’t know why they’re going to Scotland?” So I asked them and they’re like, “Well, they always knew that Dad’s family came from Europe and they didn’t know where but they wanted a castle in it.” So they were thinking of where that could be and what those castles could look like. And they just settled on Scotland. For me that made an immediate connection because my sister lives in Scotland. I grew-up in Wales but… there’s castles everywhere [there]. I felt pretty comfortable, coming from the U.K., that that was where it was gonna be set.
JM: So your sister’s from Scotland. Did you ask her for some advice on specific details – visual or story details?
DN: (laughs) I actually drew her and her family into the movie. They’re extras in a few of the scenes.
JM: That’s great.
DN: I’ve visited Scotland a bunch of times. We’ve visited castles there. It’s something to translate into the world of The Loud House and that was a cool thing to be able to do. The Loud family has never really left Royal Woods, and it has this great aesthetic. But I wanted to really grow the world and give them something new and also make it more dimensional. When we were looking at how to make the movie feel similar but different to the show, what I deliberately wanted to do was make the first act feel familiar. It’s set in the house; it’s in the world of Royal Woods. But when they all get to Scotland, there’s a big camera movement. It kind of reveals the town. I wanted it to feel like they were moving into a new world, where things are just a little bit more realistic – a little bit less comic book. That was a bit of a challenge but I hope it paid off.
Dave Needham
JM: Oh it did. You can tell we have that familiarity but also we’re going somewhere different. They’re experiencing everything and so are we at the same time, and how will they react to everything? And I think a way you make it more dimensional is [through] the character of Angus (voiced by David Tennant). What value do you see in this character and did you see in him early on in this process?
DN: All of our new voices in this movie are Scottish actors. There’s two major new characters, Morag and Angus, and they both are Scottish and the groundskeeper and caretaker of the castle, Castle Loud. Angus is a really kind, warm, inviting person. He’s always helping out the town but he’s kind of powerless. But he’s the first person the Louds really meet in Scotland and he introduces them to that world and explains that this is their town. It was such fun working with David Tennant as well. All of the actors, at some point, we recorded in their apartments and often in a closet or a duvet fort at the end of their bed so they were making their own little sound recording booth. (laughs) You would see them in such different circumstances than you might normally.
JM: The Loud House actors making loud noises inside of a closet!
DN: There’s a lot of screaming in the movie and you sometimes worry there may be an apartment somewhere and a neighbor’s thinking, “What on Earth is going on here?”
JM: And then they say, “Don’t worry. On August 20th on Netflix you will find out… what all of that is all about!”
DN: (laughs)
JM: In the movie there’s a big theme of Lincoln taking care of everyone – helping out everyone. You are also overseeing and helping out a lot of people now as a director. What surprised you the most about this responsibility of overseeing a lot of people?
DN: I don’t know what surprised me most. I don’t know if it was surprising, necessarily, but it was just bringing everyone together. I love working in animation, mostly because it’s a collaborative art form. I just wanna hear what everyone thinks: good, bad or confusing. I always wanna give everyone on the team a voice and try and make sure I’ve always got time for everyone. We’re making this together and I try and be mindful of that all the time. That’s most important to me. As for Lincoln, his role in the family is kind of the same. He’s like the glue that keeps them all together, at least certainly in this film. We wanted to go back to making it Lincoln’s story. As The Loud House has progressed in later seasons there’s been slightly fewer Lincoln stories and the stories tend to focus on an individual sister, most of the time. We really wanted to get back to the original thing of it being Lincoln’s story.
JM: I interviewed Michelle Lewis and Doug Rockwell in 2018 about a music-themed episode of The Loud House. You mentioned this is a musical. There are a lot of songs. They’re incorporated with a few of them. They’re incredibly talented aren’t they?
DN: They’re wonderful to work with. They’re amazing. The opening sequence of the movie is Doug and Michelle and they’re kind of speaking for Mom & Dad. They did such an amazing job. We do have other songwriters in the movie but it was really important to start out making it in the same tone as the series. It’s the same singers and vibe.
JM: There’s even in the movie a little twist on the theme song. Was there any hesitation from the people at Nickelodeon… or were they all for it completely?
DN: I think that was one of the first sequences we had properly finished. We got some demos and we boarded to that song pretty early. When we shared it with Ramsey [Naito], the head of animation here, she was like, “That’s your trailer!” She loved it. “This is the way to go with it.” That’s one of my favorite sequences. Pretty frenetic. There’s a lot of stuff that happens. Some shots are barely a second long. It was great at the midpoint of the story to [see] how far they’ve come.
JM: You mentioned crowd scenes. In some of those, there are dozens and dozens of characters. What is the difficulty level of putting something like that together?
DN: It’s always gonna be pretty difficult but working in lockdown with the overseas studio, everyone’s working at their own houses. Normally… if it’s the same camera set-up three times, you’ll probably give it to the same animator. That wasn’t necessarily happening. So you’d see people in the background moving places. That was a real challenge to make sure that didn’t happen too much and you keep it all consistent. It’s a real trick, but I had a great team here and I had a lot of help… Everyone is being so diligent making sure there are no little mistakes made. That’s all you can do. It just takes time.
JM: Another [major] theme of The Loud House Movie has to do with ancestry – why they go to Scotland. Have you ever wanted to explore your own ancestry?
DN: Oh yeah! I think it’s fascinating for everyone to know where they come from and see their history. And for the Louds: the very first teaser image was seeing the family and no one knew if it was our Louds dressed up or if it was actually their ancestors.
JM: Right!
DN: It’s cool now that it’s starting to come out. That’s their ancestors. That’s them 400 years ago. And we had real fun playing with it.
JM: This Loud House community is huge. Every time I post about The Loud House or The Casagrandes… the reaction is huge. There are so many Twitter accounts. How have you experienced the reaction of the fan communities as you’ve been making The Loud House Movie?
DN: Mostly, as I was making it, through Kevin Sullivan. He’s on Twitter and he’s always telling me about what the fans say about different episodes and things. After what he said I thought, “You know what? I’m not gonna listen for now. I’m just gonna concentrate on making the movie the way I wanna make it.” Now that it’s starting to come out in the world, it’s amazing how big that community is. The video of the first sequence was posted [in late July] on YouTube, and I got a text from some of the guys at the studio who said, “Hey, do you know that it’s passing a million views?” I checked today and it’s passed 2.5 million views already. It’s a huge, huge fanbase and I’m hoping that some of those views are people re-watching it because there are so many Easter eggs in that opening sequence… seeing the kids little. But I didn’t wanna get overwhelmed by it. That’s why I kind of kept my head down and just kept making the movie.
JM: Yeah, just keep on going. You can get some influence and opinions from other people but at the same time it’s your vision. You wanna get across certain things with this story and these characters and THEN have the fandom come in and be pleased with what you’ve done.
DN: I’m so glad at the moment that the reaction is so positive to everything. Through Kevin I know that every little detail is checked. So we went back and talked to the [people who work on the] series about absolutely everything. Every detail is poured over by a bunch of different people. I’m just really glad the reaction’s so positive.
JM: Good. You worked on the Penguins of Madagascar movie. There was a TV show component to that, as well as a franchise before then. But this is a different case where you’ve got a pre-existing TV show and you’re working with other people to check on everything. Could you feel the real difference in that as a key element as opposed to the other movies you previously worked on?
DN: Yeah. It’s very specific. Nickelodeon’s a different studio and every studio has its own flavor. But the series [people] were really nice to us. They were very generous letting us expand their world the way that they did. And similarly we wanted to be respectful of the world they had already built. I can honestly say I’ve never experienced a more collaborative group of people. If we went too far they’d probably say. At one point we had a third act where we were like, “Wow! That was mad action! But we need more comedy in there! This is Loud House! This is not Game of Thrones!” We kept ourselves in check by measuring with them where we should be at.
JM: In needing those third act changes, you were able to pivot and make it happen!
DN: Huge credit to the story team. I gave them a list of, “Here’s all the things we need to have happen in the third act” and then just go in a room for three days and talk about it. And then I’ll come back and we’ll figure it out. They did it time and again. We had an awesome first screening but one of the things that did need to change: some of the things didn’t quite line-up in the third act, so I challenged them to do it again and they nailed it. It feels really satisfying. I hope it is satisfying for everyone. Everything builds in this movie. You start in Royal Woods… but where we get to by the end, you almost have to pinch yourself and go, “This is Loud House”.
JM: Next-level Loud House. New emotional, comedic and action levels. Would you want to continue on in this Loud House universe – even in terms of the television series or another feature? How would you wanna be involved in the future of The Loud House?
DN: I’ve become a huge fan of The Loud House in making this and I love all the people that make the show. I’d hope to always be able to be involved in some way.
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