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attackfish) wrote2018-08-18 07:35 pm
attackfish) wrote2018-08-18 07:35 pm
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Avatar: the Last Airbender DVD Commentary: Book II, Chapter 12, Journey to Ba Sing Se, Part 1
Commentators: Michael Dante DiMartino, series co-creator and episode co-writer, Bryan Konietzko, series co-creator, and Joshua Hamilton, episode co-writer.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Hi, this is Mike DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar, and, uh, co-writer of this episode.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And this is Bryan Konietzko, the other co-creator of Avatar.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: My name is Josh Hamilton, and I am the other co-writer of this episode. And that’s why it’s so awesome.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: It is. Josh and I teamed up for our first and only team-up.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Tag teams add extra power.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Which, that is the whole theme of Avatar. Working together.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Working together, totally. And outside the box.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: That’s right. Together, yet not in a box.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: So what… This was the Serpent’s Pass, which I believe, part of the inspiration was looking at the map of the Avatar world…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yes!
BRYAN KONIETZKO: We have a giant map in the writer’s room of, uh, the Avatar world.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: And years ago, Bryan had drawn a tiny little sliver of land with two lakes on either side that led to Ba Sing Say, and we’re like, That’s the only way you can get to Ba Sing Se, and now they don’t have Appa. They’re going to have to go across that little sliver of land.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, I think Aaron Ehasz just stared at that, for
JOSHUA HAMILTON: I remember the day that, we we’re like right here, this should be the serpant’s pass, and he was like oh my God, that’s the only landmass to get… He was so like, realization crossed him. Or was it you Mike?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: I don’t know. We cant… We always get each other’s ideas confused.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I likt this, I like this score right there that’s like ahhh, which from the music and sound effects spotting, I said when you see the title card, it should be like ahhhhhhh! And then they, Jeremy did that. It’s pretty cool.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: [Referring to a shot of the Gaang playing in the water] And then now it’s so calm and peaceful, and ice floating.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So our first, our first pass on that, Aang making a little ice cube around himself, hid head was in there too.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Oh that’s right.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And then I told Justin Ridge the storyboard artist… I think I came up with it, but then I was like I think he, I think he wouldn’t be able to breathe. So why don’t we keep his head outside.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: This is the third episode I got to write, and it’s the second time we start in water, with Katara’s hair down.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, what’s up with that, Josh.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: I don’t know, you know, it just seems to work.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: It does.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So this is a mistake of mine, the desert is colored just like the water, so it’s a little confusing. It looks like there’s a third lake.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Sorry about that, people.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: People have been up in arms about that.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I’ll go with George Lucas on that, maybe in the box sets I’ll go fix that.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Cool.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: So this was like, I really like this episode too because of Aang’s kind of emotional story of he’s lost Appa in the last episode, he was all crazy and going into the Avatar State, and now he’s kind of gone the total opposite way and is like you know what, I’m just, I’m cool, everything’s fine. Detatching.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: He’s detatch… He’s in denial though.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: These are all the stages of losing Appa.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: Great, we can travel through the Serpent's Pass together.
YING THE REFUGEE: The Serpent's Pass?!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Rahhhhhhhhhh!
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Weren’t these people in um, episode 2.07?
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Two of them were. The husband and wife were in uh 2.07, “Zuko Alone”, They were the couple that uh cooking up a meal that Zuko smelled when he was starving.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: And then he decided not to uh, do something about that.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Attack them.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Steal their food.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to a wide shot of the ferry harbor] Yeah this is a really cool location. This is the Full Moon Bay, which is um, kind of like this big Goonies cave, you know?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah. I really like it. I think it was originally called Half Moon Bay, but then there’s an actual place called Half Moon Bay.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, it’s a beautiful place in the Bay area of San Francisco.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: So uh, we changed it to Full Moon.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Which is cool, because at the top of the cave, there’s a circular opening. So. There you get the name. Full Moon Bay.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
IROH: Who would have thought, after all these years, I'd return to the scene of my greatest military disgrace…]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: That’s a good gag.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
IROH: As a tourist!
ZUKO: Look around, we're not tourists, we're refugees.]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: I love that Uncle is returning to his, you know, his old, his old war site.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yep. And then we bring back…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Mimics a bugle call]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: The handsome, stylish Jet.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Devilish. Hello.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, I’d always wanted Jet and Zuko. I knew that would be a great combo at some point, and we finally had a good reason to have them together when we figured out that there were going to be all of these refugees going to Ba Sing Se and stuff, it made sense that they could have run into each other on the, on this ferry to Ba Sing Se.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to a kind of boing sound] Great sound effect by Ben Wynn there, Uncle’s drool sound. [Referring to Zuko throwing his bowl over the side of the ferry.] You know, I don’t think Zuko should have littered. I know the food was bad and… It just doesn’t set a good example.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: I thought it was a leaf bowl and it just…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: There you go, it’s biodegradable. It’s an algae bowl.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
OFFICIAL: I've told you already, no vegetables on the ferry! One cabbage slug could destroy the entire ecosystem of Ba Sing Se! Security!]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Oh the cabbage man.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: This is uh Mike DiMartino awesome, awesomeness with the platypus-bear.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: So if you, if you toggle through that in slow motion, I think a cabbage slug does fly in front of the camera.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah!
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: It originally was that the two guards set the cabbage cart on fire and I think we couldn’t do that for some reason, and I was like why don’t we just have a platypus-bear with the guard.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Smashes it! And it turned out way funnier, so.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah it was fun putting him in the, putting him in the costume too. [Referring to a shot of bunch of people dressed as Aang] So yeah that’s Mike next to the guy picking his nose.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: I dressed up as Aang for Halloween one year.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: There’s a couple people right, that design…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, some Halloween people.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referrring to a shot of Momo seeing the platypus-bear crush a cabbage and then shrinking down to hide behind Aang’s shoulder] I love that Momo animation, it’s very cute.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
AANG: That won't be necessary.
OFFICIAL: Next!
TOPH: I'll take care of this.]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: So Josh what do you think when you’ve written an episode and then it comes back? Because you don’t get to see all the great processes that Bryan and I are involved in. Is it like magic to you, it comes back just…
JOSHUA HAMILTON: It is! I… I can remember, uh, this episode, because this was one of the first ones I didn’t get to see it until it was completely done, and it was just like awww man!
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So Josh, can you guve us your impression of how the animation process happens?
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Some people draw things on paper, and then flip like a booklet in front of a camera…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO and BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Laughter]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: I believe is how I grew up learning… You know what, I don’t know.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: You know what, that’s close enough.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: That’s closer than when everyone says oh you work in animation, so computers do everything. So you’re actually more accurate.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SUKI: I've seen your type before, probably sarcastic, think your hilarious...]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Who’s this girl? I don’t know. I got to say, I love her without her makeup, maybe even a little bit more.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Really?
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Mmhmm.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SUKI: You mean you don't remember? Maybe you remember this.
SOKKA: Suki!]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: The one… The first of many kisses in this episode.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yes, this is the kissy episode. So this was conceived as a two part episode, um, 2.12, and then 2.13 is “The Drill” which comes after it, sort of a couplet. Getting to Ba Sing Se. And this one’s sort of the more emotional half, and then 2.13 is the just crazy action adventure half.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: One thing I do remember about the serpent, they name the Serpent’s Pass was a name that was used in 2.02 and then later cut.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Oh that’s right. Was that the name of the Cave of Two Lovers?
JOSHUA HAMILTON: No it wasn’t… It was just some name that was thrown in there for like someone’s backstory was like they had to cross the Serpent’s Pass, and then later on Mike was like that’s what we’ve got to name this!
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I did not know that.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
YING THE REFUGEE: Avatar Aang, you have to help us! Someone took all of our belongings. Our passports, our tickets. Everything's gone!]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Except for these two backpacks.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, they should have just looked in their backpacks, their stuff might have been in there.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Aang’s like maybe you just switched backpacks? Halfway through The Serpent’s Pass they did find them in their backpacks.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Sometimes we don’t notice little inconsistencies like that until much later, so.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: We do our best.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Aaron asked me after this episode was done what I liked best about it, and I said I liked the bureaucrat. She’s just… Or which I was most proud of, and I said the bureaucrat.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: She is pretty fun. She was a fine character, and seemed like a real pain in the butt lady that would make it difficult for you to get to Ba Sing Se, that’s for sure.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Yeah, certainly dealt with her before.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And she was sort of the foreshadowing of what Ba Sing Se would be like, which is tonnes of bureaucracy, tonnes of read tape. Everything has to have forms and be approved, and go through, you know, weeks of paperwork. And her speech about you know, if we didn’t have order, there’d be no civilization, is sort of inklings of tot- what they’re going to run into. Long Feng, and…
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: It says, abandon hope.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: After I did that, I had to, I got the calligraphy from S. L. Lee our, calligraphy expert, but then I had to make it look all scratchy, like graffiti, but then I needed to show it to someone who could read Chinese and make sure it was still legible, or didn’t say something bad, so luckily it worked out.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Isn’t like abandoning hope an actual Buddhist, um, philosophy, or some sort of… I know you gave me some, some pamphlets…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Mike had been reading some stuff.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, yeah, that’s the thing that’s kind of… tricky about Buddhism is that they say you’re supposed to abandon hope, but that doesn’t mean to not feel, not have emotion and stuff like that, it’s about…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Aang sort of took it too far.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: He sort of used it as a way of blocking his emotions so he wouldn’t have to deal with them. But I think the idea is so that you’re not, um, pining for something, and hinging all of your…
JOSHUA HAMILTON: You’re focusing on the now.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, exactly.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: It allows you to be more adaptable, I’d say, if you’re not set on only one outcome.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: [Referrring to Toph saving Suki from a rock slide and Sokka getting worried] So maybe there’s some inklings of some, um, shipping.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, there’s a little Toph/Sokka, you know, something going on there, you know, but it’s also a little Goonies.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Yeah, you’re right. You are right.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to shots of the Serpant’s Pass rock formations from above.] So these paintings are some of my favorite in the whole series. Uh, they just came out really beautiful.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: [Referring to Ying the refugee’s husband massaging her feet] Sore feet.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to a shot of Suki spreading out her bedroll, the dusky sky in the background] This uh, that shot right there. That’s one of my favorite shots in Avatar.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SUKI: Sokka, I'm fine. Stop worrying!
SOKKA: You're right, you're right. You're perfectly capable of taking care of yourself...Wait! Oh, never mind. I thought I saw a spider, but you're fine.]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: I love this read by Jack.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: It’s great.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Jack DeSena, the voice of Sokka. I believe it was the first read he did.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Wow.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: He just nailed it.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Referring to the ferry that Iroh Jet and Zuko are riding] So it looked lite the paddle wheel was going the wrong way, but is that that weird visual effect where like a propeller looks like it’s spinning the wrong way?
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Probably.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: That’s what we’re going to stick to.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: That’s exactly what I believe is going on. That’s what the animator said.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah that’s what it was. So when he flipped the paper in front of the camera, he flipped it the other way.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: He just flipped it upside down. [Referring to Zuko covering and stacking the bowls of food for transport] I love how he stacks those things. I’m always like…
RYAN KONIETZKO: Thank you.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: You can do so much with those swords.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, I remember Bryan in the storyboard meeting was like he’s like, he’s doing take out.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Which is exactly, which is exactly what it looks like.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Well I thought this was a cool little sequence, you know, to show Jet and Zuko kind of bonding, and you know, and steal some food in the way that Jet and the freedom fighters would do that. So they had the little, little lookout, Smellerbee was the lookout, and you know, Longshot helped them out at the end.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: What's going on with you? In the desert, all you cared about was finding Appa, and now it's like you don't care about him at all.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to a shot of Katara talking to Aang as he looks out from the cliff over the lake at night] That’s another great shot. One of my favorites.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
AANG: You saw what I did out there. I was so angry about losing Appa…]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: These scenes are some of the hardest scenes to write, I sometimes feel.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: The emotional ones.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Yeah, getting the timing, and…
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: I know sometimes it hurts more to hope…]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: They’re always rewritten heavily.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, because you know, you walk a fine line between too cheesy and too emotional…
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Exactly.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: You want the emotion, you want that, that feeling that you get from these scenes.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I think they’re great.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: They’re definitely aren’t terrible.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: They are great. I love this, this is Sokka looking at the moon, which is Yue.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, we’re always joking, like yeah that’s my girlfriend up there.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: My girlfriend’s the moon.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: She’s the moon.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SUKI: Look, I know you're just trying to help, but I can take care of myself.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: We should have had Sokka like covered in makeup after the kiss. Just all over his face.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SOKKA: Something happened at the North Pole, and I couldn't protect someone.]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: So some people might wonder, Josh, how did two people write an episode. How’s it work?
JOSHUA HAMILTON: [Laughter] Well, um, oh yeah, how did we write this? I believe you wrote most of the B story… Oh yeah, you wrote the ending and the B story, and I wrote like maybe the first two acts?
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Some people might be wondering what a B story is.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Well the B story for this episode is the Zuko Uncle… Anything with Zuko. I think that’s kind of how it works with all the stories, we kind of have the B story… Oh wait, I got to see this.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SOKKA: I can’t.]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO, JOSHUA HAMILTON and BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Laughter]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to Sokka almost kissing Suki under the moonlight] Did you think she was going to be jealous?
JOSHUA HAMILTON: I really thought they were going to do it this time.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, I thought they’d kiss, but… See animation doesn’t work that way. [Laughter] It’s not a choose your own adventure.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: [Referring to the cut back to the ferry with Jet and Zuko] So this would be considered the B story, which is this separate story that is happening at the same time as the A story, which is Aang. Mike wrote all of this, and um, I thought it was awesome. And then we, at the end after we wrote them, then we sat down together for a few days, or a few evenings, and just rewrote the whole thing together.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yep, and that’s how it’s done, just like that.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And then all the writers, like...
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Right, yeah that’s just for the first draft.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: then we all give our notes on the scripts, and then all the writers including Aaron Ehasz the head writer, sit in the writer’s room and they have a projector, and they put the script up on the projector, and then they go through all the notes, and everybody pitches different dialogue tweaks…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah so it’s all very col- all the writers are a very collaborative process. Even when we’re coming up with stories, we’re always throwing ideas off each other, and adding to each other’s ideas, and rewriting lines, and pitching different lines and stuff, so, so in the end, it’s everybody.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: One or two person script, but you know, a lot of people have contributed to that.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And I think that… You know, our writing team has been pretty similar, uh makeup throughout most of the series, so um, it keeps the characters’ voices pretty consistent, you know, the way they talk, the words they use, and their attitudes…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, I think with a series like Avatar, it’s imperative that we all work together that closely, because it’s not the type of show you can just send someone off to like oh go write a script about…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah definitely.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Whatever, it’s like… So many things have to hook up, and if you do one thing in one episode, you got to make sure it follows through to the next one, and stuff, so. That’s always a challenge.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to a shot of the gaang walking underwater in the waterbent bubble] So here’s some beautiful effects animation by Yoo Jae Myung in Korea, at JM Animation, and um… [Referring to Momo jumping through the bubble wall to swim] I like this Momo… I believe Ethan Spaulding, the director of this episode storyboarded this section.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah these Momo, little beats are some of my favorite.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: We call them Momoments in the writer’s room.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So this serpent, if you got the box set of season one, um, this serpent was from the pilot of Avatar that Mike and I did about I don’t know, four years ago.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah. It was always a cool creature that we knew we wanted to use somewhere, and finally we had a moment for him to emerge.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: The Serpent’s Pass, that’s perfect!
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: So to speak.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah seahorse pass just… It wasn’t as cool.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: What is the creature cr- is it a seahorse?
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Kind of a leafy dragon mixed with a seahorse. Made really big.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: My favorite joke of the episode coming up.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SOKKA: Suki, you know about giant sea monsters. Make it go away!]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Oh. We have to wait a little longer.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: The Momo one.
Oh that was your favorite joke Josh?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: JOSHUA HAMILTON: No! [Referring to Sokka picking Momo up and offering him to the serpent] This one!
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Is this a Momoment?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yep, totally is.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: The other really corny thing often said in the writer’s room is what’s the aangle.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Yeah, I was trying to think of the other one, but for some reason…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: What’s the A A N G…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Nothing better than some puns. So this is a fabulous action sequence storyboarded by Ethan Spaulding. And I love this little… I remember coming up with this, oh Katara’s got to fight this sea monster, what’s she going to do, and I was like, she needs like a jet ski! Yeah! And then Ethan and Bryan and Kisu all made it come to life and look cool.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So was it this past comicon when… That we were not there that they showed a clip of this show?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And when everyone saw Katara on that ice jet ski thing, they just went crazy.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yep, Katara is awesome, there’s no doubt about it.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Katara surfing man, I love it.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SOKKA: You're doing great! Just follow the sound of my voice!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So the idea is Toph can see through vibrations through the ground, through earth, but not on ice, since that’s not her element.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Water and sand…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: And we realized, you know, she would have never had an opportunity to learn how to swim.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: She would have stayed away from water for sure.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah. Much more comfortable on land.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Her dad was much too protective.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: So this is a…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to a shot of Toph underwater and Suki grabbing her] Love that shot.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah underwater.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Cool sound design by Ben Wynn.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
TOPH: Oh Sokka, you saved me!]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: [Laughter] Was that the second kiss? I think the first kiss didn’t happen.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: But there’s the… Suki kissed Sokka…
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Oh!
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: And the Suki almost kiss, then there was an almost kiss, then an actual one.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Okay, I got to give a shoutout to Mike for that joke, the you can let me drown now, which I think is hilarious. Good job Mike.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: It might have been someone else, I don’t know.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Or it could have been someone else. Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was you, but maybe, just in case, let me thank John O’Brien and Tim Hedrick…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: That’s always the problem.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: And Aaron Ehasz and Liz.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Good job everyone. Yeah sometimes we’ll be like yeah remember when I said that joke, and they’ll be like no, that was me. No that was me.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Oh really?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Then you can’t remember who actually came up with it.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: But I came up with the first part.
So there’s the first glimpse of the six hundred foot wall that surrounds outer Ba Sing Se.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
YING THE REFUGEE: The baby's coming!
SOKKA: What! Now! Can't you hold it in or something?]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I love Jack’s read on this.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: Sokka, Calm down. I helped Gran-Gran deliver lots of babies back home.
SOKKA: his isn't the same as delivering an arctic seal! This is a real... human.... thing!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Oh, you get the idea that when this was happening at the South Pole, Sokka was out fishing as far away as possible.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: Aang, get some rags. Sokka, water. Toph, I need you to make an earth tent. A big one. Suki, come with me.]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Dramatic baby music.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Baby being born music, dun da-dun dun da-dun, Baby is coming! [Referring to the profile closeup of Zuko’s face, scar towards the camera with Jet behind him as he asks Zuko to join his gang] This is one of my favorite shots, right…
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Here?
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Right here. Great layout. We call that far eye. Just a glimpse. It’s almost profile…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: On Zuko there.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: It’s almost a five eighths view, very precise.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: So yeah, you see that little glimpse of the other eye.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: It does give it a little extra depth.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: You're doing great Ying. Sokka! Where's that water? Get ready to push. One, two, three...PUSH!
[Sokka faints]
KATATA: It's a girl!
TOPH: [To Sokka] So, you want to go see the baby, or are you going to faint like an old lady again?]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: I love it where Sokka’s like… The animation of him like wiping his sweat off.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, it’s great.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SOKKA: Nah, I'm good this time.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I like how Aang sort of waits.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: Aang, you have to come see this.]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Very unlike Aang.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Usually he’s very, you know, full of life and into other people, and creatures, but.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SOKKA: It's so...squishy looking.]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: It makes him think of Appa.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, that baby totally looks like Appa.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: [Laughter]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Especially the fifth and sixth legs really push it over the edge.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: [Mimicking the music] Boop boop boop boop!
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I like the little heart glis there.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
AANG: But you've made me… hopeful again.]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: So this baby was a girl for a while. Or is it a girl now?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: No, it was a boy, and then we changed it to a girl.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Yeah.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: And named it Hope.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: What was the other name, the Chinese name?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Well there was… Originally there was a Chinese name for the baby that meant hope, but obviously no one was going to get that reference, except for… No one like us.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, No one in the United States.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Well not no one, I mean there are people who speak...
BRYAN KONIETZKO: No one in the world.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: You know what I mean.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Point taken.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: [Referring to Aang and Katara hugging] This is a very touching moment.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I like the theme here. It’s really pretty. Uh, Jeremy Zuckerman.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
AANG: I promise I'll find Appa as fast as I can. I just really need to do this.
SOKKA: See ya in the big city.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I like how Momo’s like, you ready to go Momo?
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Oh yeah, I know, Momoment, just with the wings.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: They’re all over the place in this episode.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: He’s like [high pitched voice] yeah I’m ready Aang, let’s go. Meow, told you I was ready.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SUKI: Sokka, It's been really great to see you again.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Oh, here it comes, Josh!
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Finally.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: This is the greatest kiss, animated kiss…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Just look at them! Look at them, the tendon between Sokka’s ear and his clavicle is flexed in such a realistic way.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SUKI: Listen, I'm really sorry about last night.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I like how she blushes through her makeup.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, her pancake makeup.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Serious blushing.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to the animation on Sokka as he kisses Suki] Look at that, neck flex! It’s crazy!
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Wow. I never noticed that. Now I can’t look away.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to the shot as Sokka and Suki kiss and Suki pulls Sokka close] So that looks referenced.
JOSHUA HAMILTON and MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Laugher]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Oh…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Someone at JM Animation did some video referencing on that I think. [Referring to a shot of Aang flying vertically up the wall] We wanted to show how tall this wall was. The Great Wall in China is amazing, but when Mike and I went there, it’s really not very tall. So when we had a chance to make our fictitious great wall, we made it six hundred feet tall. And then here’s The Drill!
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: That’s one of mine.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: When this episode was over?
BRYAN KONIETZKO: The Drill, awesome.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Based on tunnel boring machines.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: TBMs, I like to call them.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: I won’t I won’t be here for the next episode to talk about slurry.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Neither will we. Oh well. I’m just glad we brought slurry to the world.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: You know, we didn’t make it up, but people need to know about it.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Spread the slurry knowledge.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: When I asked S. L. Lee, our calligraphy expert, when I asked him to translate slurry, I, that was one I thought he would kick back and be like there’s no Chinese character for slurry, and no complaints, like one hour later, got the Chinese translation.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: What is the word for slurry?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: You don’t know.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I don’t know. I just put the art in the background painting. But you know, slurry is you know, it’s water and chopped up rock.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Say it Bryan.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: No, we’re not doing that.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Hi, this is Mike DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar, and, uh, co-writer of this episode.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And this is Bryan Konietzko, the other co-creator of Avatar.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: My name is Josh Hamilton, and I am the other co-writer of this episode. And that’s why it’s so awesome.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: It is. Josh and I teamed up for our first and only team-up.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Tag teams add extra power.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Which, that is the whole theme of Avatar. Working together.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Working together, totally. And outside the box.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: That’s right. Together, yet not in a box.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: So what… This was the Serpent’s Pass, which I believe, part of the inspiration was looking at the map of the Avatar world…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yes!
BRYAN KONIETZKO: We have a giant map in the writer’s room of, uh, the Avatar world.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: And years ago, Bryan had drawn a tiny little sliver of land with two lakes on either side that led to Ba Sing Say, and we’re like, That’s the only way you can get to Ba Sing Se, and now they don’t have Appa. They’re going to have to go across that little sliver of land.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, I think Aaron Ehasz just stared at that, for
JOSHUA HAMILTON: I remember the day that, we we’re like right here, this should be the serpant’s pass, and he was like oh my God, that’s the only landmass to get… He was so like, realization crossed him. Or was it you Mike?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: I don’t know. We cant… We always get each other’s ideas confused.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I likt this, I like this score right there that’s like ahhh, which from the music and sound effects spotting, I said when you see the title card, it should be like ahhhhhhh! And then they, Jeremy did that. It’s pretty cool.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: [Referring to a shot of the Gaang playing in the water] And then now it’s so calm and peaceful, and ice floating.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So our first, our first pass on that, Aang making a little ice cube around himself, hid head was in there too.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Oh that’s right.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And then I told Justin Ridge the storyboard artist… I think I came up with it, but then I was like I think he, I think he wouldn’t be able to breathe. So why don’t we keep his head outside.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: This is the third episode I got to write, and it’s the second time we start in water, with Katara’s hair down.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, what’s up with that, Josh.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: I don’t know, you know, it just seems to work.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: It does.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So this is a mistake of mine, the desert is colored just like the water, so it’s a little confusing. It looks like there’s a third lake.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Sorry about that, people.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: People have been up in arms about that.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I’ll go with George Lucas on that, maybe in the box sets I’ll go fix that.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Cool.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: So this was like, I really like this episode too because of Aang’s kind of emotional story of he’s lost Appa in the last episode, he was all crazy and going into the Avatar State, and now he’s kind of gone the total opposite way and is like you know what, I’m just, I’m cool, everything’s fine. Detatching.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: He’s detatch… He’s in denial though.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: These are all the stages of losing Appa.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: Great, we can travel through the Serpent's Pass together.
YING THE REFUGEE: The Serpent's Pass?!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Rahhhhhhhhhh!
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Weren’t these people in um, episode 2.07?
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Two of them were. The husband and wife were in uh 2.07, “Zuko Alone”, They were the couple that uh cooking up a meal that Zuko smelled when he was starving.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: And then he decided not to uh, do something about that.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Attack them.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Steal their food.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to a wide shot of the ferry harbor] Yeah this is a really cool location. This is the Full Moon Bay, which is um, kind of like this big Goonies cave, you know?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah. I really like it. I think it was originally called Half Moon Bay, but then there’s an actual place called Half Moon Bay.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, it’s a beautiful place in the Bay area of San Francisco.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: So uh, we changed it to Full Moon.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Which is cool, because at the top of the cave, there’s a circular opening. So. There you get the name. Full Moon Bay.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
IROH: Who would have thought, after all these years, I'd return to the scene of my greatest military disgrace…]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: That’s a good gag.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
IROH: As a tourist!
ZUKO: Look around, we're not tourists, we're refugees.]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: I love that Uncle is returning to his, you know, his old, his old war site.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yep. And then we bring back…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Mimics a bugle call]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: The handsome, stylish Jet.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Devilish. Hello.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, I’d always wanted Jet and Zuko. I knew that would be a great combo at some point, and we finally had a good reason to have them together when we figured out that there were going to be all of these refugees going to Ba Sing Se and stuff, it made sense that they could have run into each other on the, on this ferry to Ba Sing Se.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to a kind of boing sound] Great sound effect by Ben Wynn there, Uncle’s drool sound. [Referring to Zuko throwing his bowl over the side of the ferry.] You know, I don’t think Zuko should have littered. I know the food was bad and… It just doesn’t set a good example.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: I thought it was a leaf bowl and it just…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: There you go, it’s biodegradable. It’s an algae bowl.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
OFFICIAL: I've told you already, no vegetables on the ferry! One cabbage slug could destroy the entire ecosystem of Ba Sing Se! Security!]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Oh the cabbage man.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: This is uh Mike DiMartino awesome, awesomeness with the platypus-bear.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: So if you, if you toggle through that in slow motion, I think a cabbage slug does fly in front of the camera.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah!
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: It originally was that the two guards set the cabbage cart on fire and I think we couldn’t do that for some reason, and I was like why don’t we just have a platypus-bear with the guard.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Smashes it! And it turned out way funnier, so.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah it was fun putting him in the, putting him in the costume too. [Referring to a shot of bunch of people dressed as Aang] So yeah that’s Mike next to the guy picking his nose.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: I dressed up as Aang for Halloween one year.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: There’s a couple people right, that design…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, some Halloween people.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referrring to a shot of Momo seeing the platypus-bear crush a cabbage and then shrinking down to hide behind Aang’s shoulder] I love that Momo animation, it’s very cute.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
AANG: That won't be necessary.
OFFICIAL: Next!
TOPH: I'll take care of this.]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: So Josh what do you think when you’ve written an episode and then it comes back? Because you don’t get to see all the great processes that Bryan and I are involved in. Is it like magic to you, it comes back just…
JOSHUA HAMILTON: It is! I… I can remember, uh, this episode, because this was one of the first ones I didn’t get to see it until it was completely done, and it was just like awww man!
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So Josh, can you guve us your impression of how the animation process happens?
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Some people draw things on paper, and then flip like a booklet in front of a camera…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO and BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Laughter]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: I believe is how I grew up learning… You know what, I don’t know.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: You know what, that’s close enough.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: That’s closer than when everyone says oh you work in animation, so computers do everything. So you’re actually more accurate.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SUKI: I've seen your type before, probably sarcastic, think your hilarious...]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Who’s this girl? I don’t know. I got to say, I love her without her makeup, maybe even a little bit more.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Really?
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Mmhmm.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SUKI: You mean you don't remember? Maybe you remember this.
SOKKA: Suki!]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: The one… The first of many kisses in this episode.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yes, this is the kissy episode. So this was conceived as a two part episode, um, 2.12, and then 2.13 is “The Drill” which comes after it, sort of a couplet. Getting to Ba Sing Se. And this one’s sort of the more emotional half, and then 2.13 is the just crazy action adventure half.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: One thing I do remember about the serpent, they name the Serpent’s Pass was a name that was used in 2.02 and then later cut.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Oh that’s right. Was that the name of the Cave of Two Lovers?
JOSHUA HAMILTON: No it wasn’t… It was just some name that was thrown in there for like someone’s backstory was like they had to cross the Serpent’s Pass, and then later on Mike was like that’s what we’ve got to name this!
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I did not know that.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
YING THE REFUGEE: Avatar Aang, you have to help us! Someone took all of our belongings. Our passports, our tickets. Everything's gone!]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Except for these two backpacks.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, they should have just looked in their backpacks, their stuff might have been in there.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Aang’s like maybe you just switched backpacks? Halfway through The Serpent’s Pass they did find them in their backpacks.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Sometimes we don’t notice little inconsistencies like that until much later, so.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: We do our best.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Aaron asked me after this episode was done what I liked best about it, and I said I liked the bureaucrat. She’s just… Or which I was most proud of, and I said the bureaucrat.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: She is pretty fun. She was a fine character, and seemed like a real pain in the butt lady that would make it difficult for you to get to Ba Sing Se, that’s for sure.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Yeah, certainly dealt with her before.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And she was sort of the foreshadowing of what Ba Sing Se would be like, which is tonnes of bureaucracy, tonnes of read tape. Everything has to have forms and be approved, and go through, you know, weeks of paperwork. And her speech about you know, if we didn’t have order, there’d be no civilization, is sort of inklings of tot- what they’re going to run into. Long Feng, and…
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: It says, abandon hope.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: After I did that, I had to, I got the calligraphy from S. L. Lee our, calligraphy expert, but then I had to make it look all scratchy, like graffiti, but then I needed to show it to someone who could read Chinese and make sure it was still legible, or didn’t say something bad, so luckily it worked out.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Isn’t like abandoning hope an actual Buddhist, um, philosophy, or some sort of… I know you gave me some, some pamphlets…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Mike had been reading some stuff.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, yeah, that’s the thing that’s kind of… tricky about Buddhism is that they say you’re supposed to abandon hope, but that doesn’t mean to not feel, not have emotion and stuff like that, it’s about…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Aang sort of took it too far.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: He sort of used it as a way of blocking his emotions so he wouldn’t have to deal with them. But I think the idea is so that you’re not, um, pining for something, and hinging all of your…
JOSHUA HAMILTON: You’re focusing on the now.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, exactly.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: It allows you to be more adaptable, I’d say, if you’re not set on only one outcome.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: [Referrring to Toph saving Suki from a rock slide and Sokka getting worried] So maybe there’s some inklings of some, um, shipping.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, there’s a little Toph/Sokka, you know, something going on there, you know, but it’s also a little Goonies.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Yeah, you’re right. You are right.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to shots of the Serpant’s Pass rock formations from above.] So these paintings are some of my favorite in the whole series. Uh, they just came out really beautiful.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: [Referring to Ying the refugee’s husband massaging her feet] Sore feet.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to a shot of Suki spreading out her bedroll, the dusky sky in the background] This uh, that shot right there. That’s one of my favorite shots in Avatar.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SUKI: Sokka, I'm fine. Stop worrying!
SOKKA: You're right, you're right. You're perfectly capable of taking care of yourself...Wait! Oh, never mind. I thought I saw a spider, but you're fine.]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: I love this read by Jack.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: It’s great.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Jack DeSena, the voice of Sokka. I believe it was the first read he did.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Wow.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: He just nailed it.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Referring to the ferry that Iroh Jet and Zuko are riding] So it looked lite the paddle wheel was going the wrong way, but is that that weird visual effect where like a propeller looks like it’s spinning the wrong way?
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Probably.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: That’s what we’re going to stick to.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: That’s exactly what I believe is going on. That’s what the animator said.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah that’s what it was. So when he flipped the paper in front of the camera, he flipped it the other way.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: He just flipped it upside down. [Referring to Zuko covering and stacking the bowls of food for transport] I love how he stacks those things. I’m always like…
RYAN KONIETZKO: Thank you.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: You can do so much with those swords.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, I remember Bryan in the storyboard meeting was like he’s like, he’s doing take out.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Which is exactly, which is exactly what it looks like.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Well I thought this was a cool little sequence, you know, to show Jet and Zuko kind of bonding, and you know, and steal some food in the way that Jet and the freedom fighters would do that. So they had the little, little lookout, Smellerbee was the lookout, and you know, Longshot helped them out at the end.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: What's going on with you? In the desert, all you cared about was finding Appa, and now it's like you don't care about him at all.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to a shot of Katara talking to Aang as he looks out from the cliff over the lake at night] That’s another great shot. One of my favorites.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
AANG: You saw what I did out there. I was so angry about losing Appa…]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: These scenes are some of the hardest scenes to write, I sometimes feel.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: The emotional ones.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Yeah, getting the timing, and…
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: I know sometimes it hurts more to hope…]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: They’re always rewritten heavily.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, because you know, you walk a fine line between too cheesy and too emotional…
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Exactly.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: You want the emotion, you want that, that feeling that you get from these scenes.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I think they’re great.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: They’re definitely aren’t terrible.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: They are great. I love this, this is Sokka looking at the moon, which is Yue.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, we’re always joking, like yeah that’s my girlfriend up there.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: My girlfriend’s the moon.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: She’s the moon.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SUKI: Look, I know you're just trying to help, but I can take care of myself.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: We should have had Sokka like covered in makeup after the kiss. Just all over his face.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SOKKA: Something happened at the North Pole, and I couldn't protect someone.]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: So some people might wonder, Josh, how did two people write an episode. How’s it work?
JOSHUA HAMILTON: [Laughter] Well, um, oh yeah, how did we write this? I believe you wrote most of the B story… Oh yeah, you wrote the ending and the B story, and I wrote like maybe the first two acts?
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Some people might be wondering what a B story is.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Well the B story for this episode is the Zuko Uncle… Anything with Zuko. I think that’s kind of how it works with all the stories, we kind of have the B story… Oh wait, I got to see this.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SOKKA: I can’t.]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO, JOSHUA HAMILTON and BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Laughter]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to Sokka almost kissing Suki under the moonlight] Did you think she was going to be jealous?
JOSHUA HAMILTON: I really thought they were going to do it this time.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, I thought they’d kiss, but… See animation doesn’t work that way. [Laughter] It’s not a choose your own adventure.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: [Referring to the cut back to the ferry with Jet and Zuko] So this would be considered the B story, which is this separate story that is happening at the same time as the A story, which is Aang. Mike wrote all of this, and um, I thought it was awesome. And then we, at the end after we wrote them, then we sat down together for a few days, or a few evenings, and just rewrote the whole thing together.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yep, and that’s how it’s done, just like that.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And then all the writers, like...
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Right, yeah that’s just for the first draft.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: then we all give our notes on the scripts, and then all the writers including Aaron Ehasz the head writer, sit in the writer’s room and they have a projector, and they put the script up on the projector, and then they go through all the notes, and everybody pitches different dialogue tweaks…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah so it’s all very col- all the writers are a very collaborative process. Even when we’re coming up with stories, we’re always throwing ideas off each other, and adding to each other’s ideas, and rewriting lines, and pitching different lines and stuff, so, so in the end, it’s everybody.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: One or two person script, but you know, a lot of people have contributed to that.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And I think that… You know, our writing team has been pretty similar, uh makeup throughout most of the series, so um, it keeps the characters’ voices pretty consistent, you know, the way they talk, the words they use, and their attitudes…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, I think with a series like Avatar, it’s imperative that we all work together that closely, because it’s not the type of show you can just send someone off to like oh go write a script about…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah definitely.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Whatever, it’s like… So many things have to hook up, and if you do one thing in one episode, you got to make sure it follows through to the next one, and stuff, so. That’s always a challenge.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to a shot of the gaang walking underwater in the waterbent bubble] So here’s some beautiful effects animation by Yoo Jae Myung in Korea, at JM Animation, and um… [Referring to Momo jumping through the bubble wall to swim] I like this Momo… I believe Ethan Spaulding, the director of this episode storyboarded this section.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah these Momo, little beats are some of my favorite.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: We call them Momoments in the writer’s room.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So this serpent, if you got the box set of season one, um, this serpent was from the pilot of Avatar that Mike and I did about I don’t know, four years ago.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah. It was always a cool creature that we knew we wanted to use somewhere, and finally we had a moment for him to emerge.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: The Serpent’s Pass, that’s perfect!
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: So to speak.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah seahorse pass just… It wasn’t as cool.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: What is the creature cr- is it a seahorse?
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Kind of a leafy dragon mixed with a seahorse. Made really big.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: My favorite joke of the episode coming up.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SOKKA: Suki, you know about giant sea monsters. Make it go away!]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Oh. We have to wait a little longer.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: The Momo one.
Oh that was your favorite joke Josh?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: JOSHUA HAMILTON: No! [Referring to Sokka picking Momo up and offering him to the serpent] This one!
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Is this a Momoment?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yep, totally is.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: The other really corny thing often said in the writer’s room is what’s the aangle.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Yeah, I was trying to think of the other one, but for some reason…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: What’s the A A N G…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Nothing better than some puns. So this is a fabulous action sequence storyboarded by Ethan Spaulding. And I love this little… I remember coming up with this, oh Katara’s got to fight this sea monster, what’s she going to do, and I was like, she needs like a jet ski! Yeah! And then Ethan and Bryan and Kisu all made it come to life and look cool.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So was it this past comicon when… That we were not there that they showed a clip of this show?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: And when everyone saw Katara on that ice jet ski thing, they just went crazy.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yep, Katara is awesome, there’s no doubt about it.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Katara surfing man, I love it.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SOKKA: You're doing great! Just follow the sound of my voice!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: So the idea is Toph can see through vibrations through the ground, through earth, but not on ice, since that’s not her element.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Water and sand…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: And we realized, you know, she would have never had an opportunity to learn how to swim.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: She would have stayed away from water for sure.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah. Much more comfortable on land.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Her dad was much too protective.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: So this is a…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to a shot of Toph underwater and Suki grabbing her] Love that shot.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah underwater.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Cool sound design by Ben Wynn.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
TOPH: Oh Sokka, you saved me!]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: [Laughter] Was that the second kiss? I think the first kiss didn’t happen.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: But there’s the… Suki kissed Sokka…
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Oh!
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: And the Suki almost kiss, then there was an almost kiss, then an actual one.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Okay, I got to give a shoutout to Mike for that joke, the you can let me drown now, which I think is hilarious. Good job Mike.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: It might have been someone else, I don’t know.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Or it could have been someone else. Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was you, but maybe, just in case, let me thank John O’Brien and Tim Hedrick…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: That’s always the problem.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: And Aaron Ehasz and Liz.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Good job everyone. Yeah sometimes we’ll be like yeah remember when I said that joke, and they’ll be like no, that was me. No that was me.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Oh really?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Then you can’t remember who actually came up with it.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: But I came up with the first part.
So there’s the first glimpse of the six hundred foot wall that surrounds outer Ba Sing Se.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
YING THE REFUGEE: The baby's coming!
SOKKA: What! Now! Can't you hold it in or something?]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I love Jack’s read on this.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: Sokka, Calm down. I helped Gran-Gran deliver lots of babies back home.
SOKKA: his isn't the same as delivering an arctic seal! This is a real... human.... thing!]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Oh, you get the idea that when this was happening at the South Pole, Sokka was out fishing as far away as possible.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: Aang, get some rags. Sokka, water. Toph, I need you to make an earth tent. A big one. Suki, come with me.]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Dramatic baby music.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Baby being born music, dun da-dun dun da-dun, Baby is coming! [Referring to the profile closeup of Zuko’s face, scar towards the camera with Jet behind him as he asks Zuko to join his gang] This is one of my favorite shots, right…
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Here?
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Right here. Great layout. We call that far eye. Just a glimpse. It’s almost profile…
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: On Zuko there.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: It’s almost a five eighths view, very precise.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: So yeah, you see that little glimpse of the other eye.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: It does give it a little extra depth.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: You're doing great Ying. Sokka! Where's that water? Get ready to push. One, two, three...PUSH!
[Sokka faints]
KATATA: It's a girl!
TOPH: [To Sokka] So, you want to go see the baby, or are you going to faint like an old lady again?]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: I love it where Sokka’s like… The animation of him like wiping his sweat off.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, it’s great.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SOKKA: Nah, I'm good this time.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I like how Aang sort of waits.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
KATARA: Aang, you have to come see this.]
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Very unlike Aang.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Usually he’s very, you know, full of life and into other people, and creatures, but.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SOKKA: It's so...squishy looking.]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: It makes him think of Appa.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, that baby totally looks like Appa.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: [Laughter]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Especially the fifth and sixth legs really push it over the edge.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: [Mimicking the music] Boop boop boop boop!
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I like the little heart glis there.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
AANG: But you've made me… hopeful again.]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: So this baby was a girl for a while. Or is it a girl now?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: No, it was a boy, and then we changed it to a girl.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Yeah.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: And named it Hope.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: What was the other name, the Chinese name?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Well there was… Originally there was a Chinese name for the baby that meant hope, but obviously no one was going to get that reference, except for… No one like us.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, No one in the United States.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Well not no one, I mean there are people who speak...
BRYAN KONIETZKO: No one in the world.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: You know what I mean.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Point taken.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: [Referring to Aang and Katara hugging] This is a very touching moment.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I like the theme here. It’s really pretty. Uh, Jeremy Zuckerman.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
AANG: I promise I'll find Appa as fast as I can. I just really need to do this.
SOKKA: See ya in the big city.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I like how Momo’s like, you ready to go Momo?
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Oh yeah, I know, Momoment, just with the wings.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: They’re all over the place in this episode.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: He’s like [high pitched voice] yeah I’m ready Aang, let’s go. Meow, told you I was ready.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SUKI: Sokka, It's been really great to see you again.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Oh, here it comes, Josh!
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Finally.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: This is the greatest kiss, animated kiss…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Just look at them! Look at them, the tendon between Sokka’s ear and his clavicle is flexed in such a realistic way.
[Interjection of dialogue from the show:
SUKI: Listen, I'm really sorry about last night.]
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I like how she blushes through her makeup.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, her pancake makeup.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Serious blushing.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to the animation on Sokka as he kisses Suki] Look at that, neck flex! It’s crazy!
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Wow. I never noticed that. Now I can’t look away.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: [Referring to the shot as Sokka and Suki kiss and Suki pulls Sokka close] So that looks referenced.
JOSHUA HAMILTON and MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Laugher]
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Oh…
BRYAN KONIETZKO: Someone at JM Animation did some video referencing on that I think. [Referring to a shot of Aang flying vertically up the wall] We wanted to show how tall this wall was. The Great Wall in China is amazing, but when Mike and I went there, it’s really not very tall. So when we had a chance to make our fictitious great wall, we made it six hundred feet tall. And then here’s The Drill!
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: That’s one of mine.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: When this episode was over?
BRYAN KONIETZKO: The Drill, awesome.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Based on tunnel boring machines.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: TBMs, I like to call them.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: I won’t I won’t be here for the next episode to talk about slurry.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Neither will we. Oh well. I’m just glad we brought slurry to the world.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: You know, we didn’t make it up, but people need to know about it.
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Spread the slurry knowledge.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: When I asked S. L. Lee, our calligraphy expert, when I asked him to translate slurry, I, that was one I thought he would kick back and be like there’s no Chinese character for slurry, and no complaints, like one hour later, got the Chinese translation.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: What is the word for slurry?
MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: You don’t know.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: I don’t know. I just put the art in the background painting. But you know, slurry is you know, it’s water and chopped up rock.
JOSHUA HAMILTON: Say it Bryan.
BRYAN KONIETZKO: No, we’re not doing that.