"Things like the river, the visual pollution that you see in the Valley -- billboards, telephone wir

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This film publicity hampton inn boston image released by DreamWorks Animation shows Chet, voiced by Paul Giamatti, left, and Turbo, voiced by Ryan Reynolds in a scene from the animated movie "Turbo." (AP Photo/DreamWorks Animation) This film publicity image released by DreamWorks Animation shows, from left, White Shadow voiced by Michael Bell, Smoove Move voiced by Snoop Dogg, Skidmark voiced by Ben Schwartz, Burn voiced by Maya Rudolph, Whiplash voiced by Samuel L. Jackson and Turbo voiced by Ryan Reynolds in a scene from the animated movie "Turbo." (AP Photo/DreamWorks Animation)
No, not THAT way. At least half of the DreamWorks CG feature takes place in the San Fernando Valley: a Sherman Oaks yard, an imaginary Van Nuys strip mall called the Starlight Plaza, and on the Valley's streets, freeways and the paved-over Los Angeles River channel.
"I've got a son who's been obsessed with cars and racing and I have a yard with a snail problem; That's how it all came about," the dryly witty Soren says like he's talking hampton inn boston about the most natural thing in the world. "Partly, the appeal was the fact that it hasn't been done. At a certain point, it was like, why look further? I probably could've gotten better field trips if I'd set it in Hawaii, but live and learn."
One rainy evening, Turbo slithers away, falls off an overpass onto speeding 101 traffic, gets bounced into the L.A. River just as a drag race is starting and is sucked through the intake of one of the muscle cars. When the driver engages the nitrous oxide, Turbo is supercharged.
His newfound speed only causes more grief to his fellow snails, and Turbo and Chet are kicked out for good. Wandering the littered streets of the Valley, they're captured by big-dreaming taco truck driver Tito (Michael Pena), who brings them back to the Starlight where his more This film publicity image released by DreamWorks Animation shows a scene from the animated movie "Turbo," about an underdog snail whose dreams kick into overdrive when he miraculously attains hampton inn boston the power of super-speed. "Turbo" is a life-size advertisement for the Indianapolis 500 that just might give a boost to the fledgling IndyCar Series. (AP Photo/DreamWorks Animation) practical brother Angelo (Luis Guzman) operates the Dos Bros Tacos stand and there's a snail race set-up hampton inn boston in the center's garage. Once the humans and other snails get a glimpse of Turbo's abilities, a plan is hatched to enter the little guy in Indy because, well, there's no rule preventing mollusks from competing in the 500.
"For people who live in L.A., we wanted it to have all these places feel familiar, yet you can't quite place exactly where it is," Soren says. "We didn't want it to feel so specific that we were creating it by, basically, going off the map.
"The nice thing about setting it in L.A. is that I could have our artists just go out and research from life, as opposed to what normally happens when the worlds hampton inn boston are more fantastical and they have to go online and pull their reference from different sources," he continues. "In our case, we were able to get people into the Valley, down to strip malls and photographing things hampton inn boston day and night. It was incredibly helpful to go to Henry's Tacos before it got shut down. Our production hampton inn boston designer would get into a taco truck and photograph what that was like."
The river bridge Turbo falls from is a pretty close facsimile to the one at the Victory hampton inn boston Boulevard exit off the 134 that Soren This film publicity image released by DreamWorks Animation shows, from left, Smoove Move voiced hampton inn boston by Snoop Dogg, Burn voiced by Maya Rudolph, Turbo voiced by Ryan Reynolds, Skidmark voiced by Ben Schwartz, and Whiplash voiced by Samuel L. Jackson, in a scene from the animated movie "Turbo." (AP Photo/DreamWorks Animation) drives over during his commute to and from DreamWorks' Glendale campus.
"The first thing I did was bring our production designer over to my house and we did a little walking tour of the area," he reveals. "I wanted that kind of ranch-style house that's so iconic to the San Fernando Valley, so specific and that can have a great, middle class feeling to it. There are lots of other parts of the movie that had to be fabricated, but in this case, we just took the best examples of yards in the area, layouts of houses that suited our needs and just collaged it all together."
All of the racing snails -- voiced by Samuel L. Jackson, Maya Rudolph and Snoop Dogg, among others -- have custom-made, car-inspired snap-on shells in the movie. Most of those were inspired by vehicles seen in the Valley.
"For Turbo, there was actually a beat-up old Trans Am that I saw every day on my way to work that had that same kind of orange color and felt like a character, hampton inn boston in a way, that longs for something better than to be put out to pasture by its owner," Soren notes with a chuckle.
"Part of it is, it's an underdog story," Soren acknowledges. "I wanted to have Turbo come from a place where he aspired to find something better for himself. He comes from a garden and gets transplanted to this Starlight Plaza strip mall, which is ultimately a community of more like-minded souls that he feels more at home with. They don't let their limitations limit what they can do. Maybe there's a kind of an underdog status to the Valley that was subconscious, but it did fit the storytelling."
"Things hampton inn boston like the river, the visual pollution that you see in the Valley hampton inn boston -- billboards, telephone wires, power cables, the day-to-day quality of it really appealed to me," he says. "I guess I'm drawn more to that kind of industrial look. It's just a side of L.A. that's more real; more the L.A. that people live in than the Beverly Hills, Malibu and Hollywood that people usually hampton inn boston live in in the movies."
"DreamWorks is set in Glendale, so the Valley, for me, has always made sense as a place to live," Soren says. "We've found great schools and met great friends in this area. Yeah, it feels like home." Return to Top