How Lin-Manuel Miranda helped bring the colourful world of Encanto to life

(Photos  © 2021 Disney. All Rights Reserved)

When Disney set out to tell a story rooted in Latin American culture, they knew the way in was family and the person who could help bring it to life was Lin-Manuel Miranda.

The result is Encanto, a new Disney animated film about a large Colombian family named the Madrigals. Everyone in the family receives a magical gift on their fifth birthday – everyone except 15-year-old Mirabel (Stephanie Beatriz) – who has to come to terms with being the only ordinary one.

Director Byron Howard, who won an Oscar® for Zootopia, says they began talking about the project years ago with the Grammy, Tony, and Emmy award-winning Miranda, who was excited to collaborate on a story about an extended family.

To gather research for the film, Howard along with Jared Bush (Director/Co-Writer), Charise Castro Smith (Co-Director/Co-Writer), Miranda and Miranda’s father Luis headed down to Colombia (pre-pandemic) to soak in the sights and sounds and get a sense of the magical realism the country embodies.

“We went there with Lin and his dad … to experience that with your songwriter is so rare,” says Howard. 

“I think Lin came back very inspired by all these different regions we visited in Colombia … and to see it make its way into the songs and the soundtrack of the film has been really inspirational.”

Miranda jokes he’s not sure how his father ended up on the trip but says his insight was invaluable. He remembers  Luis telling them about his grandmother in Puerto Rico who lived with all her kids and grandkids and was in charge of the house.

“(It) ended up informing, Abuela Alma, who really loves her family dearly, but holds it super tight. That's just sort of where our story begins,” says Miranda. 

Being part of the project from the ground up also allowed Miranda to help shape the story with his songs, pointing to the film’s opening number introducing the large extended family as an example. 

“I think that being there from the beginning, as Byron said, really allowed for more of a give and take than I've ever experienced on an animated film … I wrote that opening number before we had a second act or a third act to our film, because we needed it for ourselves to keep track of everybody,” he says with a laugh. 

“And these names may change, and the powers may change, but we know the audience is gonna need a guide, and Mirabel's gonna be our guide, so let's write that song early.”  

With Mirabel as the guide, the audience goes on a journey with her, learning how it feels to be the only ordinary member of an extraordinary family. The filmmakers hope audiences can relate to this insecurity of not being enough. 

“Anyone who has grown up in any family understands the tension of how you see yourself versus how your family sees you, and how that grows and changes over time … that's all meaty stuff to write about and honestly, I don't think there is a person who can go to this movie and not identify with a character, up on that screen,” says Miranda. 

As well as being able to relate to the characters, Bush adds the audience is going to be captivated by Miranda’s music.

“Many people might not know the different kinds of music you’d find in Colombia, which are vast and exciting, and amazing and I think between Lin-Manuel’s songs, there’s eight original songs as well as a soundtrack … people will find there’s this enormous world certainly of Colombia to explore.”

Bringing the characters and choreography to life 

With the movie set in Colombia, the filmmakers wanted to make sure they captured the rich culture and colours of the region. 

Lorelay Bové, Associate Production Designer, was tasked with designing everything from the look of the characters’ clothing to the Madrigals’ enchanted home. 

“It’s a lot of collaboration and back and forth that happens and a lot of research photos even for characters, for costumes, for any object, a spatula, a pot, plants, everything has to be designed. It’s not like live action where you have a set and props. It is quite amazing and remarkable the things we have to build from scratch,” says Bové.

She says the Madrigals’ house was like a character in the film and had to be different and special from the beginning. Once it was designed it was up to heads of animation Kira Lehtomaki and Renato dos Anjos to bring it to life. 

“In terms of the house it was really actually hard. We had to not only figure out the logic of how the house would move … if it was like a table and a chair the house couldn’t move that without moving the tiles underneath to move the chair, so we had these rules that were being formed for the logic of the house,” she says.

It was also challenging to incorporate so many characters into the film. 

“To have 12 main characters that needed a full character exploration and development and specific movement style that we had to figure out that was a huge task and then on top of that it was a musical where we would have dancing and choreography and the culture and all these things coming together, it was one of the greatest challenges,” says Lehtomaki.

“This was the hardest movie I’ve ever worked on hands down but also the most rewarding,” adds dos Anjos.

To get the movements and rhythms of Latin music, Disney enlisted the help of Kai Martinez, a choreographer who later became a reference consultant for the film. 

“As a dancer I’m very aware of my body, what muscles I’m moving, how I’m moving everything. As animators they’re the same way because they’re puppeteers. They’re moving every piece of a character’s body in the same fashion,” explains Martinez.

Not only did Martinez have to figure out how a Latin person would dance in the different regions of Colombia she also had to consider how someone of different ages would move.

“There was a lot of conversations we had about how the hips move, how the shoulders move, how the hands move, how a Latin person would wave, how they would say thank you, how they would move their hands. How would a grandmother move her shoulders and her hips, how would a young woman do it? How would someone who’s not a professional dancer dance this music and this style?”

As a first generation born Colombian American, Martinez says working on a film about Latin American culture was already an incredible experience. Choreographing to the music of Lin-Manuel Miranda was just beyond her wildest dreams.

“It really made me understand how special he is as a storyteller and why he is where he is. I’m from New York, I’m from Jackson Heights, he’s from Washington Heights, always that connection of being Latino from New York, and I’ve always loved his work, but then being in a space where now I’m creating to his music I get it,” says Martinez.