Well, hello everybody, and welcome to the Equestria Girls: Friendship Games commentary. I am Brian Leonard, executive director at Hasbro Studios.

And I am Josh Haber, writer of this film.

Daniel Ingram, the song writer.

Jayson Thiessen, director.

I am Ishi Rudell, the other director.

And I am Rebecca Dart, the art director.

Actually I think I am credited as "consulting director," you're the director.

We'll find out in a second.

Give credit where credit is due, guys.

Fortunately nothing interesting is happening at this point in the movie, so...

Just the beginning.

Rarity, she was making a dress, and Fluttershy was petting...

One thing that fans might actually notice is that we changed Sunset Shimmer's design a little bit. We changed her clothing, which was first seen in the digital shorts, which have been released, and we actually desaturated her hair a little bit because we wanted to soften her up, because she's been redeemed, and she's a good girl now.

She's a good girl, she's not as harsh any more.

And her outfit just kicks butt.

Yeah, cool down her outfit so she's a little bit more... friendly.

Friendly, yeah.

Still has the book too from the previous movie, that was a...

Yeah, chief mode of communication to Twilight Sparkle.

I really dig her leather jacket.

She needs to have a motorbike.

She does.

I know, if only we gave her one in this movie.

Yeah, it's so weird. Where could she get a motor... or a dirtbike maybe.

Is it too late to add a dirtbike? Can we do that still?

We can probably fit it in somewhere.

If we go really fast.

I think I've seen that device before.

Is it inspired by something?

No, you haven't.

No, I don't think so. It's like a wholly original design for this machine.

So yes, finally we get to figure out what twilight has been up to. Oh wait, was that a spoiler?

We don't know that this is twilight!

That's right, nobody knows it yet.

It's impossible to determine.

I'm going to assume that everyone watched the movie first and then is watching the commentary, but...

I actually boarded that little scene.

With the car?

With the Twilight spinning around the lamppost.

What-whaaat?!

Yeah, it's my...

By the way what a terrible busdriver to just drive away.

I love the way this song starts, in the opening credits.

Yeah, it's very modernist.

I wonder who did that.

Well, that would be Will who actually scored into this.

Yeah, segued into the song.

The perfect union.

And lead into the opening title sequence.

Twilight, she's like a detective with all those, what do you call that? The thread? Yeah, just like that whole thread thing.

Oh, it's... vision board-type thing.

Yeah, so this whole sequence was done in Flash even though it looks a little bit like three-dimensional.

I think this is the longest opening title we've done too, isn't it? For the features?

Yeah, this was a lot of fun, trying to figure out how this was all going to work. We boarded it, and then we had the challenge of making it move.

We had this... many late nights for me.

Oh yeah, you did a lot of work on this. There was... We had all this like pie-in-the-sky ideas of like how to do this like following a string along the board, and like, this will be really cool... thought about it later of how to actually pull it off.

Rebecca did some great conceptual art for it.

And was that in CG? Did you guys do... did you animate...?

No, that was done in Flash.

Wow.

Amazing, Ishi.

So this kind of sets the tone for a lot of the songs coming up in this, right? Because we were going for a different sound for this movie than the others. It was "let's do this whole rally highschool rally prep school pep school kind of sound," so you get... We're getting that chant and the snare drum.

Yeah, almost like a marching band sort of thing.

Yeah, exactly, so that was kind of a unique direction for this movie.

And this went through a lot of different versions, changing the font and changing the characters, textures. We originally had all the characters crystalize when they froze because we were going for a Crystal Prep theme.

Crystal Prep.

But we... it was a little much so we toned it down.

I think it turned out really good. I like the kind of flat card sort of look.

Yeah, it's got sort of a, like a trading card sort of feel to it. I think it's pretty cool.

So remember this song orignally built and built and built and got really loud, and I think it was like, "wait, no, let's make it quiet!"

Yeah, we wanted to bring it down.

Yeah, that was a change from the original.

We were sort of fading out and seeing twilight build...

Build her special ...

Her much cooler version of the device.

She should go work for like a design firm or something. That's...

Yeah, seriously.

Yeah, that prop was designed by Charmaine Verhagen, our prop designer.

It's very cool, and very convenient to travel with too.

Yeah.

Yes.

I remember it had to be a pendant, that was like one of the... the one note that we got.

Yeah, big enough to wear around... or small enough to wear around her neck.

I remember trying to figure out like how each of the pone... Or of the... They're not ponies any more.

Get your mind out of ponyville!

It's force of habit.

But like getting them all in unique like character poses and, you know, how would each of them would be sitting around a library differently and in their character.

Isn't that like sort of one of the things that you take for granted when you're watching something, that you actually have to think about how characters sit?

They're not just going to sit normal all together the same way as... boring.

They have the gardener is... The third one, the magical maintenance maintainer or whatever. It's funny.

So this whole act was storyboarded by Roxie.

Oh Roxie, yeah.

Yeah, one of the tricky things about this too was how much information does sunset shimmer actually have about Crystal Prep. I know we kind of went back and forth a lot about that.

That's right.

She's new enough to not have it all.

Which is good because it helps us...

Justify all the exposition.

Good job, Josh.

Exposition is my favorite part of any of yours scripts, Josh.

Yeah, mine too.

Look how angry Angel bunny is.

I know normally this Angel bunny is usual... is nice, but here not so happy.

Does not like Sunset.

Oh, Rainbow Dash has a plan.

As always... Well, not always, but usually.

Do you think Rainbow Dash in the back of her mind is thinking "I'm going to use magic to beat Crystal Prep, that's my plan."

Yeah, pretty much.

That's probably it.

"Cheating."

I love the apathy.

So you'll notice that the gym is very thin as far as how many students are there, and that's because not many students wanted to show up because, you know, these prep rallies are boring, and because we didn't have that many designs.

Shush, we have a robust... designs.

That's right, it was on purpose.

You're telling them how they make the sausages.

They don't want to know.

Actually it just turns out it's a very small school.

It is.

And it's the entire student body.

I love this, this is my favorite song, I think. I love this band, marching band stuff.

And Ashley is always such an ace to... She's such a great singer.

Did you bring a band in to record this, Daniel?

A band? No, but I'm listening to the background singers, and we did have a choir come in, and I can hear my... We had a studio assistant working with us this year, Kaley Johnson(?), and she was around during the whole course of writing the songs in this movie, and I can hear... We brought her back in to sing on the movie as one of the background singers.

Oh, great.

I can hear her above everybody else.

Yeah, she's a great singer.

DJ Pon-3 steps up.

Yeah, this is super fun.

So it's like highschool marching band meets kind of EDM meets rock. It's kind of a really fun combination of styles for this.

And that's one of the fun things about the music that you write for EG is that it can blend all those genres in a way that's sort of unique to EG and different from core pony.

Oh, absolutely, yeah. I think the sound on EGG movie is kind of unique to itself, and they're all unique from core pony, so there's a lot of flexibility there.

I like these songs when you get to get like a whole choir of people in it, and we got like at least a dozen people, other kids we brought in to sing in the background tier with Ashley.

That turned out great.

Doing a rotation of a tuba is really hard.

I always get stressed at these moments where I'm like "is the clapping in time?" You know?

Well, thanks to our animation director, Ken Chu, he's made sure that all those claps and all the instrumentation is timed to the music.

Ken was instrumental as well in Rainbow Rocks when, you know, with all the instrumentation, he's very merticulous about making sure they all play their instruments as realistically as possible, and I love that.

It's so fun for me to see these because, like, the songs get written before anything gets boarded or anything, and it's something like "oh, that's what they did with it." So it's always kind of cool.

Applejack always the one to be the doubter to tell the truth.

This is one of my favorite reveals.

The way magic works has always been such a tricky thing too in EG. I'm sure, Josh, it was fun to try to wrap your head around coming in and writing it.

It would have been so much easier to just gloss over it.

No, no, let's write this story all about it.

I don't know what you guys are talking about. We know exactly how the magic works in EG.

I love Sunset Shimmer in the short that we did with her. She's like "I have no idea how it works." It's like "we're just going to roll with that from movie to movie. It makes no sense."

We have very serious conversations about the limitations and implications of unicorn magic.

Like you do.

Well you don't want your character just to be able to do ANYTHING because, you know, then they can do anything, and that sort of ruins the story.

What would we do without Rarity and her infinite amount of outfits?

Sunset Shimmer just takes off. Nothing to worry about.

And check out the deleted scenes after this to see where she went in the original version.

That's right, there was a different place she was going to go to...

I think she just googled magic.

Exactly.

Yeah, this whole sequence was boarded by Katrina, who came in and quickly whipped it up with the new script rewrite.

She does really great poses and expressions with these characters.

Yeah, amazing.

Yeah, it's the most dynamic writing scene I've ever seen in any movie.

She's very emotive and expressive.

Are we going to do like a whole other movie about what Twilight was doing during this period, and why she couldn't see the book-ringing?

I'm not going to say anything, but there's a... Yeah, you actually will find out what she did during the course of the events of the movie, but I'm not going to give anything away.

Why she's not answering.

Yeah, exactly.

Now we see Twilight from Crystal Prep about to walk the gauntlet of teenagerdom.

All these backgrounds are desinged by Phil Caesar, who also designed all the locations for most of the series.

He's been on the series since day one.

Spike screensaver.

Yeah.

I think it's just a photo but...

I like these moments, these little zen moments.

Yeah.

It's nice that the chair spun around when he jumped off.

The lighting in these sequences are really nice too, like, we had nice little subtle gradients and... Yeah, it's all our After Effects department. We're adding more and more of that stuff, as much as we can, just give it that extra look.

"Sheen" as they say.

You might remember that ladybug from one of the other EGs.

Yeah, Rainbow Rocks.

Yhey have a pest problem at that school apparently.

No, they're introduced series, because they got an aphid problem is what they have.

Here we go, Cadance. Hey Rebecca, how was it designing the human version of Cadance? Was it tricky, or was it... any challenges?

Well, we had done it before, so she wasn't too difficult, and I think she actually turned out really well. I remember her colors are so pleasing that she looks just really beautiful no matter what pose set she's in, but getting her eyes right was a little difficult because Cadance has sort of a little point that comes down, so that was a little bit tricky.

Fitting it on a human face.

Yeah.

Now what about the science Twilight?

Sci-Twi? Yeah, she's, well she's basically Twilight from the first movies, but a little more conservative with the glasses and the bun.

I personally like Sci-Twi better than the original Twilight... But that's just me. I might be biased.

The Crystal Prep school uniforms... actually quite appealing.

Oh, they turned out great.

Yeah, they are, and that's our very talented character designer Kora Kosicka.

Here comes another song, Daniel.

This is... This is a nice one.

Yeah, the big ballad.

I kind of want to just sing along... It's... I'm resisting. It's really hard.

It is very hard to resist singing along to it.

So should we talk about the history of this song?

The history, you know, I'll tell you one thing...

There's some, yeah, there's a deleted scene from this.

The first time i heard this demo, Daniel, i got super excited.

Chills.

Yeah, I did, I got chills. Immediately sent it to Katrina, and then she like got chills and started freaking out.

So nice little subtle acting with like her running her fingers along the glass and all these like poses of her all by herself.

Yeah, this...

Turned out great.

It did, and this whole musical sequence was originally storyboarded by Hanna Lee, but then we made some changes to it, and we had a few...

Did Katrina...?

Yeah, Katrina ended up doing some revisions on it, more the back half of this song.

Yeah, I mean, fortunately we were able to preserve a lot of what made not just the song but also sort of this musical sequence great, but you'll be able to see how amazing the original version of it was in the deleted scenes too, but it's still... This is still very awesome.

yeah, kind of took on a life of its own in each version originally being a duet and then a solo.

A duet? What? No.

But Rebecca, we kept bringing her back in again and again and again. It's like "oh, we need you to sing another version."

That's right, because Rebecca sings both Twilight and Sunset.

Rebecca Shoichet, not Rebecca Dart.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, not me. I don't sing.

I'm sure you could sing great.

No, I cannot.

This is a really high ceiling.

Yeah

Where is that in the...

It is a prep school.

It's some vestibule.

This is on the way to Principal Cinch's office. She's... she thinks that maybe she's going to get a scholarship or something.

We used a cooler palate for Crystal Prep to make it a little bit more of a cold feeling to it, a little bit more of a sterile feeling to it.

Yeah, you can see like the floors are all like polished and, you know, very flat.

Crystally.

Yeah, no textures.

She just goes into harmony with herself just at the end there... Magic.

It's the magic of singing!

I love the art direction here too, the contrast between like the bright halls and the really dark, ominous, foreboding office of Cinch.

The long... We wanted to make this whole office feel really long.

Intimidating.

Intimidating.

This is an odd choice when you're introducing such a good guy.

Well, twilight is sitting on like the lowest possible stool and, you know, to sit in front of this giant desk so that she seems more subordinate.

And Cinch, great character. Well done, Josh, in bringing cinch to life on the page. She's... fantastic villain.

Yeah, I love her.

Is this the first time we see Shining Armor as...

Yeah, I think so.

And do you remember those notes that we got on shining armor, Brian?

I do remember, yeah. at first Shining Armor was a bit of a jerk.

He sounded a little bit too... jerky.

Yeah.

Very jerky.

Was that Andrew Francis?

Well, Andrew Francis, you know how he is.

Just kidding!

But yeah, we sort of looked at it like even though he goes to this really cold and harsh school environment, he's still her older brother.

He was being a little bit harsh with... with his sister.

And originally we were making him cold on purpose to try to sort of sell that... how the school is... I love that pencil pointing right there.

And he still has a bit of an edge to him, but he's definitely like a softer version of...

It was too much.

Yeah, we brought him back in and got him to rerecord his lines, and they weren't that much different, but they were just enough that he didn't sound quite as jerky.

It's a subtle difference.

Shouldn't he just start crying?

Well, he did.

He cries at everything.

She basically shuts her up with her hand.

Yup.

We actually toned down Cinch's animation a little bit because we wanted her to be a little bit more stiff. Yeah, she's very starched, so she seems even more like intimidating.

But also like I love that she's got these amazing huge eyebrows that like make so much of the...

Yeah, very expressive.

I love the mole too. Awesome choice.

Twilight's pushed in the corner.

Great lighting here as well.

I love that pose.

What's she gonna do?

Oh, ok, she's goonna go back to her room and pack.

Has anyone noticed that Spike hasn't said a word?

I know. What's up with that?

Why would he? He's a dog.

Now is Cathy still doing Spike's growls?

Grr, grr!

Yeah, she is actually. That's all Cathy's growls. She did a great job.

That's it. She never speaks, just growls through the whole movie. The end.

See? Thank God she designed it that way.

Almost like it was made to do that.

Convenient.

Just enough room for the dog.

And it's the CP students!

How many different names did we go through for those students, those girls?

Wow, so many.

Yeah, Rebecca you should know, we... I think we had to rename the design files like...

I think the final names actually came after the design crew was even finished.

Yeah, well, when we recorded we made sure that they said like five different names.

Trademarking.

Indigo Zap. Indigo Zap was originally supposed to be... Lightning Dust?

Yeah, I believe so. That was her name.

And then we changed that.

Yeah, we were looking for sort of parallels to the pony universe that... of characters that might show up and then decided to go with sort of wholly original charadcters.

Yeah, weren't we talking about Spitfire at one point?

Yeah, and then we figured that Spitfire wasn't quite mean enough, and then we just kind of moved away from that, and yeah... Here, coming up, my favorite of the CP students right here, Sugarcoat.

Everybody's favorite.

Yeah, she's... great character. And yet she's so deadpan, so cold.

I think that name made it all the way through, right, Josh? That was your first name?

Sugarcoat? Yeah.

And it just so perfectly captures her personality.

Slight... Like a parallel to applejack. like tells the truth but doesn't... not in a tactful kind of way.

Yeah, that was sort of the philosophy that you came up with for these characters, right? Like that was sort of the parallels to the main six.

Right.

I just want to mention that the busdriver is actually a caricature of Phil Caesar, the BG designer.

Oh yeah, that's right.

Wait, who did the voice of the busdriver?

At one point I was trying to get Peter to do it. I think. Peter New.

Or Peter was trying to get me to do it. I'm not sure which it was.

And by the way for everyone who was wondering, yeah they still do pony up when they play instruments, that is still a thing. It's just that the magic was changing.

It's becoming its own thing for this world.

We're just constantly trying to find new ways to make them pony up.

These costumes are all fantastic.

I think this section was done by Jocelan, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Jocelan who?

My wife.

Ah, Jocelan Thiessen.

Cinch is not having it.

No.

I really believe her when she says that.

These two know each other.

Yeah, they do.

Clearly.

You'll notice a lot of those background Crystal Prep characters are characters from the show, right, Rebecca?

Yeah there's... Fleur Dis Lee is in there. Tender... Tenderhoof? Or Trenderhoof, sorry.

Trenderhoof, yeah.

Trenderhoof? Where's Trenderhoof? I didn't see him.

Sour Sweet.

Always just perfectly matches her name. Says something nice then totally jabs you.

I love, this lemon zest, I love her, the color of her hair. It's like a... It's sort of a nice lime-lemon... Some about it like...

It's a pleasing color to the eye.

The device.

Oh, this little section here is great. Jen Davreux boarded it.

I think this is one of my favorite things to write, this little bit right here. Everyone recognizes her, and she has no idea what's coming up.

Really good, really funny.

There's a funny voice coming up here too.

"Twilight, yeah."

Is that Tree Hugger?

Ooh!

Oh hey, what the?

It's everybody's favoite.

Flash Sentry.

Pony Flashy.

He's so hunky.

I think he's growing on people.

What?!

I like this classic shot coming up. through the glasses.

Very nicely done.

'Sup.

It's written so well too, because it's like, you know, they're having a conversation, but nobody's letting on enough to indicate that, you know, there's something really amiss here. and then, yeah, of course our favorite muffin-loving human consoling him.

Sunset Shimmer's wearing a... is that a welding mask?

It is, yeah.

Applejack's jai alai.

Yeah, she's playing jai alai .

And Rarity does... She covers everything, doesn't she?

And Rarity is, or, sorry, Rainbow Dash is dressed like a bobby. A British bobby.

She's opened her device.

I like the little mannerism of her putting the glasses up her nose.

Yeah, that's something we talked about in the story boards. we're like "give her a little twitch."

Clark Kent thing.

Yeah, she's always pushing her glasses up.

That's something Katrina came up with. She made sure everyone got that in... sequence.

Yeah, keep it consistent.

See, Sunset's excited, she thinks "oh, she's responded to my messages." But no.

Wrong.

She's slowly starting to catch on.

That's the cutest hockey goalie outfit.

Someone will cosplay it.

Yeah, I'd like to see that actually.

Someone needs to put together a bunch of people to dress like all these costumes.

It'll happen.

What event would require you to dress like a police office? From the UK?

Uhh, Burning Man?

How do you win Burning Man?

Rarity's just prepared for everything.

Yes.

Anything fashion-related.

This is the kind of exposition I like. Here it comes.

Great "got it" response.

It's like, yes, comedy.

I was mesmerized by the tassles on Pinkie's cuffs, the way they were moving.

She's so mean. Without... She's just, you know, cold.

Yeah, what's her backstory?

Yeah, Josh, what's going on?

How did she become this way?

How long has she been principal?

Was she always like this?

It has to do with that mole, I think.

All the evil is contained in the mole.

It's a parasite.

It's an alien parasite.

Yeah, it's like a magical mole that has infected her.

It's actually a creature. It's a symbiote.

I smell spin-off.

Goodness.

This is a great little moment here.

Rarity's shoulders. Some nice imagery.

Yeah, this is really nice. This was boarded by Roxie. There's this great moment where Rarity pulls the hair out of Sunset's eyes.

I'm waiting for this hair thing you said.

I was a little early on that.

It's bugging me.

Here it comes!

It's such a relief.

The payoff.

Everyone at home was on the edge of their seat waiting for that move.

I like that little bite of the thumb.

Yeah, there's a little nuance that happens of the characters that's so natural, but everything has to be thought out.

Yeah, it does.

Now Sunset's having that moment when she's thinking "should i just go back to Equestria? Talk to Twilight in person?"

That is a powerful little pocketwatch.

It actually looks like Sunset's sort of cutie mark magic there when she touched it. A nice touch.

Commence freakout scene in...

So now she has no way to get a hold of Twilight.

By the way, guys, what happened to the banner that the guys were making for this party, huh? Oh, woops. I shouldn't have broght that up.

Well, Celestia, see, Luna liked it, but Celestia had to veto.

She was like "there's no way we're putting that up in the school."

Turns out Luna has like no artistic taste.

Okay, these outfits.

These actually are actually really nice.

Look at Applejack's...

Special party outfits. But every time you redesign an outfit you have to do a full rotation usually, so profile, back, three-quarter...

It's a lot.

And then build it, that's another thing.

Build it in Flash.

And Flash-build it.

But it's worth it.

Yup.

This is a fun little scene.

Yeah.

This track-out as we brought each character in...

And by the way a little bit of sort of good research of DJing because DJ Pon-3 is queuing up music, which is why you don't hear it playing.

That's right.

You see her head bobbing.

She's hearing it in her phones.

Exactly.

Even more now.

Yeah.

Again this is all boarded by your wife.

That's right, Jocelan.

I know that.

You knew that. What am I telling you that for?

That's a great look by Pinkie.

Yeah, pinkie just staring at her.

DJ Pon-3's having her own party.

She really can't decide what song to play.

Well, she's agreeing with something.

"Yes, yes yes."

There's the presents.

She wrapped them up just to reveal them.

Unwrap

Yeah, that seems a little unnecessary.

That's the Pinkie Pie way.

It's the Pinkie way.

Well, somebody's gotta get this party started.

It'll be Pinkie.

She's got her own mix.

I wish she had Rick Rolled everybody right there.

These are new party canons.

Yeah, what's the led readout on the side all about? That's what I want to know. What happens when they go all the way up to the top?

Full power. You don't want full power.

She's mixing everybody up.

Oh boy, another pony up.

So much for keeping magic out of the games.

Don't worry, Twilight'll fix it.

And they're not ponying up playing their instruments.

Good job on the lights.

All the disco ball lights.

That's a lot of work for layout.

You know, that is absolutely layout. That's Chris Leinonen and Stephanie Mahoney. They did an amazing job.

Getting it like all across the surfaces and different directions.

That little portal too.

So, something new here because the portal magic has been absorbed into her device, so whereas before it just sucked up the magic, now it creates portals every time that she absorbs magic.

I really like the design on the portals too, that's really cool.

Just wait until we get to the end. Spoiler alert!

There is an end. That's the spoiler.

Anyone watching it for the first time, you're missing out.

You should probably go back and watch it witout our voices.

You shoud know that it does end though.

Really? I thought we just kept animating forever and ever.

Feels that way sometimes. Right, guys?

We're scheduled for three weeks in this commentary, right? This is a three week record?

I don't believe her.

Oh, I see what you did.

Really cool that...

She's separated everybody. She's the ice... pun.

Quite a nice turn of the phrase there, Josh, kudos.

I think it originally... I think originaly she said "leaked out of me," and we changed that at the voice recording stage.

Was that true, Josh?

Honestly I do not have a memory.

It's all a blur.

Oh yeah, there's another song coming up.

Hey, who's that?

Cranky Doodle! Nice toupe, dude.

How fun was it coming up with all the events for the academic decathalon? Holy moly.

How do you make a spelling bee interesting?

This, this was a song by... that Jocelan storyboarded.

She did, she boarded this.

This turned out great.

She loved this part.

This is like almost identical to her board, how she timed it out.

You can hear Kaley again singing lead on the... and Shilo(?), she was one of the singers from Rainbow Rocks actually, she played one of the Sirens.

Oh, did she?

Yeah, she's singing a lead for the Crystal Prep kids here.

This is like, I feel it has that pep rally kind of feel, but now it's like...

That's awesome. Because of course pinkie's gonna win, like, c'mon.

Do you remember when you originally recorded this? Did you recorded Shadow...

Yeah, Shadow, I mixed the names up, yeah.

Shadowcolts?

Shadowcolts and Wonderbolts? No, wonder-...

Wondercolts and...

See, it's easy to get it wrong.

They rhyme, it's...

Oh yeah, so this was a rap orginally. Remember? Like this part where they're kind of like smack-talking each other or whatever, was a rap, and it just sounded really cheesy, so it was like "okay, how can we sing a rap basically?" It was really quite a bit of fun to try to come up with insults that weren't too mean.

I like how it turned out. This great build-up here too.

These, these are actual real winning words from real spelling bees.

Now are they spelling them right or wrong?

Wrong.

They'd have to be.

I actually got a note, like, "these words aren't spelled correctly." I'm like "that's why they got the big X over their face!"

That's why they got the x.

Nice.

So it's going back, it's interesting, so when this was written, originally they were singing back and forth between the Crystal Prep kids and the Wondercolts, and... or the Canterlot High kids, and we're trying, it's the same group of singers singing both groups of kids, so it's like...

How did you get them to sound different?

"Just try to sound really obnoxious when you sing the Crystal Prep kids. Try to sound really nice when you sing the Canterlot High kids."

That could work.

Yeah.

This is my favorite part right here.

This build-up.

Tick-tick.

Amazing job of making writing out math equation on blackboard dramatic and exciting.

And this is a real...

Yeah, I googled "hardest geometry problem".

Yeah, there you go.

This is the one that came up.

Did you also figure out where Sunset went wrong in her equation or did we just put the wrong answer?

I think we did, I think we tried to make it as accurate as... I'm sure there's some man out there who's going to prove us wrong, but...

Nobody cares.

That's not a good school.

No support.

They're not friends.

So who's the real winner here?

That's a good question, Jayson.

Don't patronize me.

She wishes she had that.

So this is sort of the Crystal Prep main six.

Oooh, here's the moment when they're going to... oh.

Later, dude.

Always getting shot down.

They love hanging out at that statue.

I like how Fluttershy goes off in secret to play with her little pets. Well they still have a anti-pet policy at this school, I suppose.

I think most schools do.

Yeah, it's a little distracting.

So that makes... Fluttershy's a bit subversive then, she's breaking the rules. Yeah, by the way, why would you put all those animals together in a tiny confined space? That just doesn't seem like it's going to work out well, but...

Look how beautiful she looks there. The birds and... It's like a princess.

Yeah, Fluttershy's right here. I've never held a bunny and not felt better.

Angel being nice for a change, thank you.

Kabam!

Kindness.

Yeah, kindness.

First time Twilight's really actually seeing this, isn't it?

Yeah, the other times were kind of hidden from her.

Digital.

Jackalope!

Who came up with that design?

It was Kora.

Kora's great.

Oh, Spike got in the way! He got in the beam!

Oh boy.

I hope he's okay. What's going to happen?

Oh, it's all okay.

Oh, wait a minute!

He turned into Cathy!

So the Equestrian magic traveling through the portal and from... don't think about it.

Yeah, just don't worry about it.

It makes sense though. He was in the beam. It's magic.

I like how she's strafing the wall.

I remember the adjustments to the script for Spike was we wanted him to actually sound like he was a dog who just learned how to talk instead of actually being spike the dragon.

Exactly.

This is all new for him too.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

Ow!

Cinch is...

I like that little touch of her pulling on her hair.

Again this whole sequence was Jen Davreux.

Jen's great.

She boarded everything right up until when we get to the games.

It's interesting how every time Cinch shows up to put pressure, she's changing her tactic just very slightly. She is conniving.

Yeah. Well, she is the bad guy.

Wait, what?! I thought she was the hero!

Totally in line with her character to do that.

She's just a... She is the adult.

Yeah, we made a whole revision pass on this sequence to make sure that in all those scenes that one locker didn't have a lock on it.

Oh yeah, so that he didn't... that he was able... that it was open for him to go into.

Exactly.

That's really convenient though.

Really, that's the one?

But then there's no locks on these lockers.

You can't see them! they're just below the...

Coincidences happen sometimes.

Yeah, it's true.

I don't think Sunset trusts that Twilight.

You're all on your own Sunset.

This is one of my favorite transitions.

Portable magics!

That's great.

Smack!

Pinkie Pie's so fun because you can do all kinds of..

You can do stuff like this.

Where she just spaces out.

So good.

By the way, how did Applejack get outside before her?

She went out the front door.

Naturally.

No.

No, you are not.

How did no one notice that field being made?

They had it covered. We were actually talking about doing a short originally where Photo Finish was trying to get a picture of the construction and what was going on inside, and then... I like where we landed though with the short with her taking photos for Luna. That was really funny. But yeah, we were thinking of making a bigger deal about that in the short, but we were like "meh."

It might not have been as funny maybe.

We decided to make A Banner Day instead.

Cinch is cut off on purpose, her head. So she can do that.

This is, I think Jen Davreux did this part too, storyboarded it.

Yes, yes, this whole sequence right until the archery is over.

No, she did the archery, I think.

She did the whole archery sequence, which turned out amazing.

Yeah, looks really good.

How challenging was it to design this field? Because you got three very disparate events here.

That was Phil, right?

That was Phil, and it was very... just trying to figure out the logistics of how things would work. I think there was a couple passes added.

How do you create an archery...?

Without shooting any of the kids as they're...?

Yeah, I know, that was a bit of a challenge actually, that we had to make sure there were hay bales behind the archery.

Yeah, it's sort of a centrifugal, like there's... not centrifugal, but there's like a... there's like the archery in the center, and then there's a track around in the middle of that for roller derby, and then outside of that...

Motorcross.

And motorcross, it's all contained.

Yeah, we had to add in also like a bit more challenging element to the archery, because, yeah, just sort of walking up and shooting isn't all that dynamic. So this is pretty great though.

How do you make archery exciting?

Has anyone actually tried archery? Because that's not easy.

It isn't.

No.

Hitting something that's moving, very challenging.

But applejack, you know, she's good.

She's got this.

Also notice that Sour Sweet's beret is cranberries. Specifically cranberries because they're sour.

And they're sweet.

C'mon. Oh!

I like her growing frustrating, throughout the scenes, it's pretty funny.

No competition for them.

Ah, the pressure's on! C'mon!

Oh, you're not helping!

I like this idea of her, like, you know, the whole giving her the honesty... by helping the opponent...

One of the fun things about working on Equestria Girls is designing all the clothes. It's like playing fashion dolls.

Yeah.

Especially cool outfits like these.

Yeah, thank god for Rarity.

Bull's eye!

Yeah, Sour Sweet just, "I heard a dog talk!"

I'm going to address the elephant in the room here, but has anyone noticed how you can't really make out who's in the crowd? That's because it was difficult to fill out that crowd. I'm bringing it up again. I should just stop, shouldn't I?

The foreground is so compelling I didn't even notice.

You're saying they didn't bus in a bunch of like purple people and...? I thought that was just part of the world.

We had to keep track of all the numbers, yeah.

Weird seven-lap race.

Seven-lap race.

By the way how slow are they skating? I mean they had a really huge head start. It's kind of crazy.

They were taking their time. Pinkie was signing autographs.

They were having fun.

Whole tortoise and the hare thing.

Crystal Prep has, like, they have a faster roller blades.

I love this move.

Just kicks her forward.

That's an actual move in roller derby, right?

Totally something you would do in highschool.

Yeah.

This is where our board artist Mike Myhre took over, and he had a lot of fun with these motorcycles.

Great action sequence.

His storyboard drawings were really fun too.

At least it doesn't look very dangerous.

No, no, they're wearing helmets.

Except for that. Look out!

See, I really had no idea how you guys were going to do this. This is so impressive. When I was writing, like, "dirtbike track," I had no idea how good it would look.

We had all these motorcycles built in 3D, so we had multiple angles of them, which really helped our animators, our layout team.

So they had all the angles in the... in Flash, that they could just call up, because it was all rendered out, every angle. The design team did not have to.

Can you tell us anything about those plant vine desings, Rebecca?

There's's not much. We did sort of similar plants in the series, but we wanted these ones to look different because those ones were associated with Discord, I believe.

Oh, that's right.

So these ones weren't related to Discord, so...

Wasn't this, wasn't there an original design on the light plants that was done a long time ago that this was kind of based off of?

I don't remember actually.

Never mind.

There are quite a few man-eating plants in pony.

Yeah, these are Equestrian plants.

Well, plants are... you can kill them without making people too sad.

People would get sad when you...

What about all those...?

So these plants, even though they have mouths and some sort of sentience, since they are obviously going after something...

They don't have eyes.

They don't have a soul.

They still don't have a soul.

Yeah.

That was a late note on my part.

What happened to all those students?

They are being attacked by...

I know. Wouldn't somebody say that they should leave? "Everyone, get out of here!"

They had to wait until the race was over though.

Exactly.

Nice helmet-removing animation.

It's hard to do with all that hair.

How do you tuck all that in there?

That hair can be really tricky for animation.

I think that's the true magic of friendship is that it keeps your hair looking perfect no matter what kind of thing you wear.

They don't get helmet head in this world.

No.

Ah, get a hold of your device!

Don't worry, Sunset's going to give her the what-for!

Exactly that happens every time I update my iPhone.

In an early version it was chocolate rain that came out of there, right?

That's right.

And I think I was probably the one that was like, "that's going to make people think Discord's involved"

That's true.

"Change it!"

And just nighttime during the day is enough to say that there's something different out there

Yeah, this isn't about the threat any more, it's about their emotional, you know, it's a big emotional build about how frustrated Sunset's getting.

Yeah, how she just blows up at Twilight.

Looses it.

Yup.

It's so mean.

So much for her reformation.

She's got a fiery temper.

When she loses it...

Well she was a villain at one point.

I like that about her character, that she can... that she can kind of fly off the handle a bit and have a bit of a temper.

That makes sense. I mean she's passionate about the safety of her friends. I feel like that's... She gets passionate.

It's a good reason to get angry.

Yeah, passion seems to be part of her thing.

Cinch won't stand for that.

Imagine if we did that, if we just ended it there.

"A tie it is. Thanks everyone!"

Just have a song about having a tie. The end.

"It's a tie, it's a tie."

How would that song go, Daniel?

Something like that.

We're all speechless here.

Yeah, she feels terrible.

It really is her fault. I mean, I think we all learned that.

She needs to do something to fix that.

The true villain of the movie: Sunset Shimmer.

Again.

It's Twilight over in equestria not responding.

That too! All responsible for this.

"But let's continue with the games anyway."

Exactly.

Yeah, why not?

It's just some magic plants that tried to eat you.

"They're gone now!"

I think Fluttershy captured it pretty well though. It's like "why are we doing this?"

Right, yeah.

Oh Fluttershy, you're making her feel worse!

Rub it in.

She did that before.

She just shuffles to the side.

Applejack saves it.

This is my second favorite number coming up.

Yeah.

No, this turned out awesome, Daniel.

The series needed it. It's our first big villain song, I think, really, isn't it? For the Equestria Girls?

And our voice actress for Cinch actually sung the song.

Oh cool.

Yeah, Iris Quinn.

Yeah, she did a fabulous job.

Yeah, had a lot of character and personality in this song, it's great.

Oh, I should say, this whole sequence, this song and the end battle, was all boarded by Katrina Hadley, our amazing storybaord supervisor.

It's fantastic.

Yeah, here it comes.

What, the song? Is that the thing?

Yeah, the song, that's right.

Well we were talking about this song.

I thought we were going to have another hair-brushing behind the ear moment.

You gotta be more specific with that, please.

How great would that have been, if you had paid that off right now?

Yeah, that would have been awesome.

"In about forty minutes you're going to see something."

Every single song in this movie excpet one has like all the kids singing in it, like a choir singing along, which is kind of makes it kind of unique and fun too. It's where you get that big sound of having all these... all these kids.

Yeah, and I'm thinking originally it was just Cinch who sang, and then we were sort of like, you know, the...

Was it? I thought it...

Or maybe I'm misremembering it. Wow, what a great thing to put into a commentary to preserve for all time.

I know, I mean, my memory of it was that the Crystal Prep kids sang the chorus.

My memory is that this... that I wrote this song twice.

No, I'm thinking like way early, like first draft, it was just Cinch singing, and then I think we were like "let's get the Crystal Preps in," or it was just a conversation that we had very early on. There, I just saved it. Right? I saved it.

Well it helps that they're, you know, they're using their peer pressure to have her...

Well this was another interesting thing, originally in the demo I had them singing quite aggressively, and you guys were like "no, let's have her... like them more whispering and pushing..."

Yeah, we wanted it more tempting.

A little more of a build.

Not like they're forcing her but just convincing her that it's the right thing to do.

I remember that line. We took like fifty takes.

It took a while to get that one.

We wanted to get it just right.

And I kept thinking "should we change that to 'will her school Cinch the win?'" And then it's like a whole play on "Cinch."

Cinch!

We had quite a long discussion about that, I recall, in the recording session.

I like that, how much they're just sort of... How this build-up turns out here.

Yeah, this part.

This is, yeah, this is my favorite part right here. The girls, the guys, the solo, everything all layering up at once.

"Should I? Shouldn't I?" And everyone's pushing her, and she doesn't know what to do. She's trying to make this big decision.

It's like a long build-up for this, but it's great.

I think the payoff is pretty spectacular though.

It's amazing.

Yeah.

These character designs are phenomenal.

"Nooo, don't do it!"

A little slow-motion.

Nice effects.

Yeah, the sound design was unbelievable.

Speaking of effects.

Wait, was that Gregory Ross(?)?

yeah, that was Gregory Ross(?). Yeah, he just did an amazing job with all these effects. We had a dedicated effects person on the show this time, who came up with all these, like, orbs and...

I really thought we had said that that was going to be too crazy for her to say "help me" and turn around and...

I love it, it's so great.

It was just the right amount of threat so that it wasn't too scary.

I think in one version I went a little far, and it was like...

But I think it was just right, yeah.

So cool.

Yeah, look at that.

This is... I remember recording Tara Strong as this sort of evil Twilight, and she loved it.

She loved it, yeah.

This is actually the very first design I did for the movie.

That's right, yeah.

Yeah, we did it way before starting anything else.

I remember when you did it too, we were all just like "wow, that's amazing. I hope we can keep it."

Because villains are so much fun to design.

Yeah, it's true.

And it's great too is how you captured the glasses in like sort of the energy surrounding her eyes because it's such a unique trait for Sci-Twi. That you were able to get that is pretty cool.

How can you say that about your own student?

Spinless!

She doesn't care.

She really is terrible.

So this is like a bit of a role-reversal for Sunset Shimmer, isn't it?

It sure is.

As I state the obvious.

This is so cool.

Yeah.

What's great here too is that it's just sort of an extension of that portal magic that was growing haywire, like, so it's like, you know, sort of like the culmination of what we've seen building during the entire movie.

Absolutely. We were super excited when we read the script and found out Twilight Sparkle was going to become the villain.

Yeah, that was just a really cool twist on the whole series.

I think it was a good idea.

Yeah, great idea, Josh.

But that's the thing, but she's a cool villain because she's not inherently evil. She's just gotten misguided by the power of the magic.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah, this sequence sparked a whole lot of discussion.

It sure did.

Yeah, like how did they get powered back up? where's the power coming from?

I just like the idea that their power was never really gone. There's just something very appealing about that.

It wasn't fully gone. It was just, like...

Yeah.

Because it comes from inside them.

It's friendhsip magic, and they were recharged when all those people were helping out.

Yup.

Sunset can speak from experience.

Nice with the hair.

Great animation.

And all in Flash, you know.

What?!

It's a magic bomb!

Oooh, here we go!

Ah, Daydream Shimmer!

So good!

She turned out great, Rebecca.

Well, Kora designed her. And I remember somebody mentioning "oh, why is she wearing pink? It's so girly!" And I was like there's no reason pink can't be a powerful color.

That's a very good point.

Another cool distinction is that she's got energy wings because she doesn't have a...

She's not an alicorn.

Yeah, she's not an alicorn. She's not a pegasus, so...

We really wanted to make them look like rays of light coming off of her back.

But then this Twilight isn't alicorn either.

And here's a moment where, yeah, Spike is the reason Twilight kind of loses concentration, or Midnight Sparkle.

Yeah, her first true friend, so...

Oh, I like that, when it lost color there for just a second, and then it just like... empty, yeah.

This is my favorite moment in the movie.

Will did a amazing job with score, and sound effects was done great for this.

That's a great shot.

That's Katrina's poses for you. Alright, Katrina!

She's all over this movie.

Thankfully didn't do as much damange as Sunset's defeat.

That's right.

You know, originally we did put a crater in there, but we fixed that at animatics stage.

Yeah, other than the statue the school held up pretty well.

Well, she was only breaking the time-space continuum, not any physical thing.

You're still thinking about the games?

Cinch, please. Get over it.

The one thing on her mind.

I love this line.

That's how you do exposition.

That's right.

A taste of your own medicine there, Pinkie.

Talkin' dog.

Ooh, the school board!

They are the most feared disciplinary committee in all the land.

Nothing against anyone out there who is actually working for the school board, mind you.

No, they do a good job.

They do good work.

They do good work.

Oh, burn!

No one's on your side now.

I like that. She just sort of...

You think she's going to explode, but nope.

She's going to keep her dignity.

I always kind of wanted her to then just sort of take off running, like...

Aaah!

"I'm out of here!"

"run away!"

Originally we thought of having her fall into the pit that we had originally.

Oooh.

But we got rid of the pit.

Wasn't there an early version of the script, Josh, where she fell through the portal?

Yeah, and she ended up in Equestria as this, like, horrible creature.

And you were like "that might be a little too mean."

Oh, Twilight's about to make a decision here.

Get ready for the deleted scenes to see an alternate ending, guys.

That's right.

Yeah, this whole, this new ending that we went with was all boarded by Hanna Lee.

Oh yes, princess Twilight never responded.

Why didn't she respond, guys?

I don't know, we should... oh god, if only there was some explanation that we had.

Oh, you'll never know.

Sorry, guys, unanswered question.

"Hey, we just replace one Twilight with the other Twilight. Problem solved."

Easy.

You can't have My Little Pony without Twilight.

And now we don't have to explain why she comes back through the portal every time.

What portal?

I like her glasses got pushed off.

I love the Pinkie squeeze toy noise.

Well, there you go, guys.

All done.

No unanswered questions.

Oh, what's this?

What could that be referring to?

Uh-oh, two Twilights. and the world explodes.

No, that's only if they touch each other.

Oooh, let's hope that doesn't happen.

End credits.

Who did these photos?

They were originally sketched out by Katrina, and then we had Chris Leinonen and... Oh, I'm going to totally....

Oh, they're going to hate you. They're goin to hate you for...

Just edit it out, please.

Cut it out or like very clumsily add in like your...

So the lyrics in this song are kind of like the answer to her solo song, What More is Out There, because she's answering all the questions she was asking in that song in this song. It's like "What More is Out There," and "It was Right There in Front of Me," so this is kind of the bookend to that song.

Did you plan that?

I thought to think of something.

Oh, Jeremy Mah. There you go. See?

Yeah, they did a good job going over Katrina's pictures and bringing them to life.

I like that they took a picture of them taking pictures. That's so modern, isn't it? It so speaks to our time and generation. Am I right, guys?

I can't believe nobody had a selfie stick.

When Katrina actually sketches these out she went on the internet and found, like, random images from like school dances and school yearbooks, and she was, like, that's where she got her inspiration.

That's very cool.

I don't know where she found somebody with a welding mask and a hockey mask.

That welding mask doesn't really work because you can see righ through it, like, it's clear.

Oh yeah, it needs to be tinted,

I think we originally had it that, but then we were like "we can't see her face!"

It's a special... specially altered welding mask.

I believe that's crumping.

Aww, they love that.

So cute.

They still love that even though it's terrible.

Busted.

They're eating that delicious...

How dare they eat?

Wow, these are nice.

The shotened ending.

Alright, thanks everyone for joining us.