Interview with Jett Kline

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Toonzone have sat down with an interview from Jeff Kine, the writer / producer of Transformers Prime.  Anyone who went to BotCon would haev heard most of this already.
Saturday at the 2011 BotCon at the Pasadena
Convention Center, Toonzone News was able to catch up with Transformers:
Prime and G.I. Joe: Renegades writer and executive producer, Jeff
Kline, to talk about his work on those shows as well as the future of
G.I. Joe: Renegades . A veteran of animated shows, Kline has previously
worked on such projects as Men In Black: The Animated Series, Godzilla:
The Series, and Big Guy and Rusty The Boy Robot.




TZN: In Transformers: Prime, it was
an interesting decision to put Megatron out of action for about half the
season. But it did open up a lot of character development for
Starscream. Why did you decide to go that direction?



JEFF KLINE: Quite honestly, that's the exact reason we went that
direction. It was to allow for more time to develop characters that
maybe hadn't been as well developed, especially our new characters that
hadn't been introduced before in the universe. When you have Megatron
and Optimus together, it's really hard not to focus on that
relationship. We spent a lot of time with them. It almost required that
we get rid of one of them for a little while to spend some time with the
other characters.




TZN: At the Transformers: Prime
season premiere event you noted that you wanted to keep the Autobot cast
size small to give the advantage to the Decepticons. At the same time,
it did not make much sense to me for Wheeljack to come and go from the
Autobot team while the Autobots are in the middle of a war and need as
many troops as possible. Why have Wheeljack leave when the Autobots need
him more than ever?



JEFF KLINE: Because we thought that was true to Wheeljack's
personality and then we could bring him back. We're like the Native
Americans. We waste nothing of the buffalo. Everything that you've seen
up to this point will eventually be used again. The most time and cost
extensive part of CG is the upfront builds. If we built it, we're going
to find a way to re-use it.




TZN: How does the collaboration and
writing process with Duane Capizzi, Bob Orci, and Alex Kurtzman work,
and how involved are Orci and Kurtzman in the writing process?



JEFF KLINE: Kurtzman and Orci are so much more involved than I ever
thought they would be. The way it really started when we first got
together to do Prime, there wasn't really a Hasbro Studios. There was
some executives that had been hired and there was this need to be on the
air a year later but there wasn't any other infrastructure. So for the
first month or so, literally Duane Capizzi, myself, Therese Trujillo
(our animation producer), [and] Dave Hartman were working out of Orci's
and Kurtzman's lobby on the Universal lot. We would literally just spend
at least a couple of hours a day sitting in a room just throwing around
story stuff with them and some of the other people at their company.
And that continued for quite a while and then we brought on four full
time writers that first season: Joe Kuhr, Nicole Dubuc, Steve Melching,
[and] Marsha Griffin. That was kind of the next step. We spent a lot of
time and continue to spend a lot of time in writers' rooms breaking
story. Most animated series do not have the luxury of a writing staff.
It's mostly maybe one or two story editors and freelancers. But because
the mythology of Transformers was so deep, there's twenty five years of
it – the little book they handed me was six hundred pages of “These Are
The Rules” – we had the movies and we didn't want to contradict
anything. It really required everybody who was going to be involved
sitting around at the beginning really talking through where we want to
go, what we want to do. [Orci and Kurtzman] were involved in every step
of that process. And the main involvement – they approve all the
artwork, they are much more involved than I ever would have believed
when someone first told me that they were going to do the show.




TZN: Hasbro is now producing their
own shows in terms of the Transformers and G.I. Joe franchises. What is
this process like now compared to when you've worked on other big
franchises like Men In Black and Godzilla? Is it different at all?



JEFF KLINE: It's more similar than not. I would say the one place
it's different is—and I'm not a toy expert—it would seem that Hasbro for
a number of their brands has created this mythology behind them that
pre-exists me or pre-exists anybody buying the toy. When you buy the
toy, you already get kind of story whether it's on the back of the
package. There was so much more stuff to pull from on Transformers than
there had been on even on some of those other franchises. Part of that
is those twenty five years, but I would say the biggest difference to me
as opposed to some of the other shows where the toy company is really
only involved in making toys, these guys have lived with the brand for a
lot of years. They are an incredible resource for us. Whenever we have
questions, whenever we run big concepts by them, because they know them
better than us: which characters the fans tend to associate with, what
are they hearing on their e-mail chains. So they're more partner than
probably any other toy company I've ever worked with.




TZN: In Prime, a new interesting
character is the human antagonist Silas voiced by Clancy Brown. Going
forward what can we expect Silas involving himself in the Autobot and
Decepticon conflict?



JEFF KLINE: You are definitely going to see more Silas. I'm not
going to tell you where it's going, because it's definitely pretty cool.
But again, if we built it, we're using it. And if they turn into a
zombie, we're going to use it again.




TZN: What writer gets credit for the Ghostbusters references in Prime?



JEFF KLINE: I believe Marsha Griffin actually wrote most of that
riff, and I believe Duane [Capizzi] re-wrote a little bit of it. But I
believe he would throw that to Marsha.




TZN: Regarding the Unicron
references and the “blood of Unicron,” does that mean there is a CGI
model being built for Unicron that we could ever glimpse at some point;
in a flashback maybe?



JEFF KLINE: Hmm, let's see; we talk about it. I would say that we
try to pay off almost everything that we talk about in some way, shape,
or form.




TZN: I thought it was a great choice
to begin with a five part miniseries which was evocative of a lot of
cartoons in the 1980's, especially Transformers in the 80's. What was it
like, basically starting with a feature length movie for the show at
the beginning, and is it something you would like to do again with the
show moving forward?



JEFF KLINE: I think Kurtzman and Orci came on maybe around Labor Day
2009, and the idea was to get on the air before the end of 2010. Most
CG shows, even a lot of simple one, have a two year production cycle –
Kung Fu Panda's of the world and such. So we had half the time to do a
CG show – the most complicated one ever attempted for television, quite
honestly. So knowing we had to get on the air in 2010, the idea of
getting on with 13 episodes was impossible. We decided if we could get
on with a miniseries—maybe it will be three episodes, maybe it will be
five—and then pick up the series a month or two later and give the other
studio time to catch up. Again, a lot of your initial expensive time is
spent on that upfront buildup. I think literally the day before the
first part of that miniseries aired was the day the network got it,
maybe three or four days before. Polygon is our Japanese [animation]
studio, and they're incredible. They're the only guys that could have
pulled this off. But the miniseries grew out of both necessity, but then
once we had it we were like, “Oh, let's really blow it out. Let's make
it five. Can we do five by the end of the year?” “No, but let's try
anyway.”




TZN: And you did it.



JEFF KLINE: And we did it, which means now they expect it from us every year. That was stupid.




TZN: So would we see another miniseries again at some point?



JEFF KLINE: I don't think we'd do five episodes, but you are
definitely going to have multi-parters coming up. Already, if you look
at the storytelling there are groups of episodes you could put together
and that are thematically related. It's important that each episode live
on its own. You want people to be able to come to the show as new
viewers at any point during your airing and be able to catch up and be
interested. But we like telling complicated stories. We like showing
growth of character over time. We like turning a really important piece
of Transformers mythology into something more than a one-off. So I think
within the body of the season we build toward in our minds, something
of a miniseries at the end of every season.




TZN: As a writer and producer, what
do you prefer: a longer season of twenty six episodes where you get to
tell a fuller, longer story arc but is more work or a more lean and
abbreviated thirteen episode season?



JEFF KLINE: I always prefer more. It's the thing where once you're
in the middle of it, you're damning yourself for wanting more, because
those last couple [episodes] are always the hardest. But knowing you
have twenty six, you can actually roll character stuff out slowly and
actually grow relationships; that's always better. Also, it's easier to
get the best crew because you are offering more episodes. It's easier to
work a slightly better deal with your post house because you're
guaranteeing them more episodes. Every penny is onscreen. The more
episodes you know you are going to do up front, the better you are going
to be all around.