Is this thing on? We are going to the Mambo Cabana! The Mambo the what-what? Vivo, this is really important. Martha needs to hear this song. What difference can one song make? What difference can one song make? That's the question we're on a mission to answer on The Vivo Songbook, a show where we dive deep into the story and songs of Vivo, the movie from Sony Pictures Animation, now streaming on Netflix.
No Vivo came into my life a really long time ago. He's one of those characters who just shows up and you want to write for him. I'm your host, Martina Castro, and what better way to kick off this series than to dig deep into the opening song of Vivo. One of a Kind, that first song, right? It was in the movie.
from the very start. You have hip-hop, you have this reggaeton beat, you have Andres. We were just going to declare ourselves a musical and open up on that song right away. But this opening number would prove to be one of the most challenging... Because in this one song, Lin-Manuel Miranda sets up the whole world of our heroes, Vivo and Andres. So right away through his brilliant writing, like we know we're in Cuba, we know...
who Vivo is, where he's from. We know who Andres is. He's able to just within this four minute song, just like welcome us into the movie. So the filmmaking team was going to have to make sure that you and I and everyone else watching the movie knew right the start. This animated musical was going to be unlike
anything we had ever seen before. We're trying to be real and to give people a real sense of the places that we're going. At the beginning, I was like, we'll create different animation styles for every song. That is a hard thing to do in animation. It's a challenge. Today, we'll hear from the filmmaking team that tackled that challenge and many more challenges, including one that caught the whole world by surprise. But then you enter a global pandemic.
And everybody goes home, including Lynn. Whatever it takes, whatever it takes to try to make this movie the best as possible. Do you think music can bring people together to make an unforgettable movie? Well, we're about to find out. That's all coming up on the Vivo Songbook.
Okay, we're ready to start at the beginning. Yeah, let's start there, because before any movie ever becomes a movie, there has to be an idea. And in the case of Vivo, this special idea popped into the mind of a very special person. My name is Lin-Manuel Miranda, and I'm the songwriter for Vivo. In case you don't know who Lin-Manuel Miranda is, he's the creator of a pretty famous Broadway musical called Hamilton. Ring a bell?
And over 10 years ago, way before there was a script for the movie, before there were drawings of Vivo, Lin-Manuel Miranda was working on his first Broadway musical, now a hit movie, called In the Heights. And then... The idea of Vivo came into his life. It's always sort of been about one thing, which is this incredible friendship, and then Vivo's sort of journey. And that's about it. A story about two friends who make music in Cuba.
and then get separated. Lin-Manuel stored that away in the old vault and got to working on songs for Hamilton. My songwriting process is very simple. I sort of, we talk and talk and talk with my collaborators about what the moment is.
where we are starting the moment, where we are finishing the moment, and where that character is in their lives at that moment, then you talk to yourself until it feels true. And when it feels true, you write it down. That's as simple and as complicated as songwriting gets. And as he's writing the songs for Hamilton, little bits of other songs start popping into his mind, like tiny sparks. Sparks that would turn into songs that would eventually tell.
the story of Andres the musician and Vivo the kinkajou. Oh, you might be wondering, what is a kinkajou? Well, a kinkajou looks a little bit like a raccoon, and they normally live in the trees of Central America. Not really supposed to set up shop in Cuba, but this little one quickly adapted to his new habitat. Hey, let go. Pause to yourself. His name, Vivo, is the Spanish word for alive.
Andres names Vivo when he finds him in a tree and decides to take him home. Where did you come from, chiquito? Over the years, Vivo and Andres become a unique pair of buddies. One of a kind, you could say. Friends who are joined at the hip who do everything together. You might have a friend like that. But there's one more thing that makes this duo special. Music.
When Lin-Manuel starts writing the songs of Vivo, a story emerges. Andres and Vivo are friends who are connected by their love of music. And they have a routine. Every day they go to the plaza in La Habana Vieja, the old part of Havana. They play their music for the people. Then they come home. They eat together, go to sleep, then the next day they get up and do it all over again. They're true partners. Good show as usual, Vivo. Are you hungry? Do you want a croqueta? Maybe mangoes?
When they each have a little piece of mango and they sort of like hit it together and they start to eat it and then they both freeze at the same time and they kind of tilt their head in the same way. In that moment, you realize, oh, these two are... They're the same. Somebody likes mangoes. Yeah, I love that moment.
The story of Vivo and Andres lives in the songs that Lemonwell wrote, but the music wasn't going to be enough to bring this movie to life. Making a movie was going to need a whole lot of other people. Thankfully Lin-Manuel is pretty good at bringing special people together.
When you get a chance to work with somebody like Lynn, you don't pass it out. I often tell people that if Lynn is on a project and he calls me, I will just say yes because I know it's going to be fun. That guy, I mean, he's got that special ingredient that... pulls people together creatively and they feel inspired.
One of the people that got pulled in by Lin-Manuel Miranda was playwright Chiara Alegria-Hudis. Lin and I had already written together before. We had written a musical called In the Heights, and then we made it into a movie. Kiara also has a lot of experience writing plays. She even won a very important prize in 2012, the Pulitzer Prize. So she was just the right person to build the story of Vivo in the movie from Lin-Manuel's songs.
really fun about working with him is we're really different, but our goals and our vibes are similar. After the story, the songs themselves would need some extra help, too. How would they sound in the film? Who would play them? So Limonwell called the one person who gets him musically more than anyone else, his good friend and musical partner, Alex Lacamoire. My name is Alex Lacamoire, and I am the executive music producer of Vivo. Lynn said, hey, I'm working on a movie.
And I told them that the only way I'll do the movie is if Alex Lacamoire does the music for it with me. To play with Alex Lacamoire, who was my collaborator on In the Heights and Hamilton, who grew up in Miami and knows Cuban music better than I will ever know. it. It's been just a joy to sort of play in this particular sandbox. Okay, so we've got the script and the music taken care of, but...
This is an animated movie. For the animation, you need a ton of people to design, draw, and animate the characters, and then to make all the sounds, hire the actors, schedule voice recordings. Oh, it's already making my head hurt. They needed someone to organize this. Hi, my name is Lisa Stewart, and I am one of the producers of Vivo. My name's Michelle Wong, and I'm one of the producers on Vivo.
Ah, yes, producers. Together, they made sure everything that needed to happen, happened. It's kind of like being the captain of a ship. There's a bunch of people working on the ship. They all have very important jobs. And your job as a producer is to make sure the ship is going where it's supposed to go and it doesn't sink. There could be as many as 450 people on the movie.
It's a ton of people. And there was another person that would be essential on the filmmaking team. Vivo needed a director. You know who I'm talking about. The person you see sitting in a folding chair behind the camera who yells, action. Well. Vivo started out being directed by... My name is Kirk D'Amico, and I'm the director of Vivo. But pretty early on, Kirk realized he was going to need some help. Maybe Vivo needed more than one director. I'm a screenwriter.
I know that having an artist around that can draw out ideas was really a part that I needed help with. And Brandon Jeffords was one of the best story artists out there. This is Brandon. And I remember going, I wonder, you know, I wonder if Kirk would want me to be co-director on this movie. And so it was a natural thing for me to say, hey, do you want to do this? And he's like, yes.
We were like, you know, words and music. We complimented each other. So Lin-Manuel, Kiara, Alex, Lisa, Michelle, Kirk, and Brandon became part of the team that would work behind the bigger team of artists. actors, animators, and musicians that would eventually join the movie. And through it all, there's one thing this huge team never lost from its sight.
They all wanted to do justice to the music and story of Vivo and Andres. And to do that, they had to do right by the music and the people of Cuba. The movie opens up with this... view of the Malacón and the fact that right from the beginning it's Cuba represented in the movie. The team knew they had a big responsibility to get everything right. We're trying to be real and to give people a real sense of the places that we're going.
Doing the research is imperative because if you're setting a show in a real world, this is where people live. This is their lives. You want to... present something that feels authentic and real and true. And we were stewards in a way too, of the story, but also the world and the beauty of the world.
The filmmakers wanted to show this care for Cuba and for Vivo and Andres right from the start of the movie. At the same time, they wanted to create an opening that would grab you, bringing you into the world of Vivo. So how do you do that? In this musical about musicians, you do it with a song. We drop you right smack dab in the middle of Plaza Vieja. where Andres and Vivo perform every day. These guys are like a well-oiled machine.
And it is the heartbeat of the movie. So they set out to make the most awesome version of One of a Kind, an unforgettable musical number that would feel larger than life, and take us right to Plaza Vieja. to meet Vivo and Andres. And so we went on a research trip to Cuba. After arriving in Cuba, the team explored the streets of Havana to figure out how to make the world of Vivo authentic.
The beautiful thing about Havana is it is this island that had this musical history and this great past that Vivo is part of. And so he is like carrying on this tradition. Vivo carries this tradition because it came to him from Andres. So when the team saw local musicians playing a very traditional Cuban guitar called the tres, they immediately thought that this would be the perfect instrument for Andres. But guess who came to the rescue? Did you catch that? Andres with his tres. It's a guitar.
It has six strings, but they're in pairs of two, which is why they call it a tres, which means three in Spanish. And if you listen for it, you'll realize, oh yeah, that is a very distinct guitar sound. And it's specific to Cuba, so it's just one of those things that came together that I really love. Another thing you can't help but notice when you walk around Cuba is the dancing. It's everywhere.
For one of a kind to be the big Broadway opener it needed to be, it couldn't just have the perfect instruments, it also had to have the right moves. So... We had a choreographer named Calvert Hodge. All the choreography in our film is unique to Calvitt. He came up with signature style for Vivo, for Andres. Calvin Hodge has worked with big artists like Rihanna, Camila Cabello, and Major Lazer. His work calls on his Caribbean roots and mixes them with Miami moves.
For one of a kind, Calvick created a special dance, a choreography. Then he staged this whole scene with real people. Then he filmed it. In the recordings, you can see professional dancers dressed up as if they were in Havana on the Plaza Vieja watching Vivo and Andres perform. And they're doing this choreographed dance around them. This video became essential for the animators. We're actually following Calvitt's choreography and, you know, the animation team.
use all his footage as reference. So when the movie opens, right off the bat, you see all of Havana on display. The tourists and the locals, all the characters are dancing just like real people dance. Every time I look at one of a kind, I think about Calvin and the choreography. And there's one more trick the filmmakers used to put you right in the middle of this scene. Look closely next time you watch the movie. Andres and Vivo are dancing, but they're also singing.
rapping. They're playing the flute, the percussion, the tres. They're working the crowd. Did you notice it feels like you're part of the crowd and you can follow Andres and Viva with your eyes the entire time? They almost never disappear from the screen. It's like there's a single camera following all the action. following Vivo as he goes around the fountain in the middle, capturing it all as if you were there. It's practically one shot, and in animation, that means one shot.
animator has to do the entire thing. And that is a big task for our animators and our lighting guys and everybody down the pipeline. It is, it's a challenge. It's all a virtual world, but we talk about it and treat it as if it were real. You are in it. You understand the kind of movie we're making. You get the joy. You get the connection. You see the connection between Andres and Vivo and their love.
By the end of One of a Kind, I hope the audience knows that Andres gave Vivo his home and his life and taught him everything about music and that these two fulfilled each other. is how you do it in Havana, Cuba. Precision, timing, not a moment out of place. Even though One of a Kind was the first song to be written for Vivo. It took years of many, many creative decisions and even more challenges to overcome before they would finish this scene, let alone the movie.
By spring of 2020, the team was feeling good. So much of the work was behind them, and they were just rolling up their sleeves again for the final sprint. But then you enter a global pandemic. And everybody goes home, including Lynn. Yeah, the COVID pandemic. It kind of messed up everyone's plans, right? Grownups started working from home. Kids did virtual school for the first time.
Just imagine what it did to the production of this huge movie. You know, we were trying to figure out how we would make this film as well as being apart from each other. So many things had to change. Nobody went into the studio anymore. The team couldn't brainstorm together. And all the voice actors had to set up recording at home.
Many of the voices and vocals you hear in the movie were recorded in people's living rooms and closets. We were all thrown out of our rhythm. There's not one person that's naturally born to this rhythm. And so everyone is trying to readjust and find new things. Mute your audio. We're going to start with the one-of-a-kind. That was good. We should have the mic on for that one. Making an animated movie is already a huge project.
But when this team faced something as big as a pandemic, they had to find something to keep them going. Making movies is an incredibly collaborative endeavor. And when you have... people that you work with that you can rely on and bounce ideas off of, it just makes it all the better. And the fact that we are able to create, even from a distance, during the pandemic has probably helped us to move forward as well.
Now I've gotten to make a movie with Lin-Manuel Miranda and Alex Lacamoire and watch them create music. That's been extraordinary. So, Lin, are you cool to just actually sing it? Yeah, I've never been cooler in my life. I love it. All right. Meet you at the end. All right. Thanks to Vivo's one-of-a-kind filmmaking team, this movie did end up getting finished.
I mean, duh, right? Like you and me and many, many, many people have watched it by now. But my point is, it's amazing to think that there was a moment, many moments, when things were not looking that good. And teamwork and music brought Vivo over the finish line. Because even though Andres and I might not have spoken the same language...
When it came to music, we became so in sync that, well, we finished each other's musical phrases. Here's Chiara Alegria-Hudis again. Music is a language that really helps and brings joy and emotion. When English and Spanish isn't quite connecting. You know, when Andres just shakes his rattle a little bit. What he's saying to Vivo is, you're safe, chiquito. You're safe.
I'll be gentle with you. He shakes the rattle gently to say, I'll be gentle. One of a Kind is the beginning of Vivo and Andres' friendship and of Vivo's journey. It sets the stage for what's to come next. An unexpected invitation, a shocking loss, and then an ambitious mission that will change FIVO's life forever.
Next time on the Vivo Songbook, an old friend from Andres' past shakes up this perfect musical duo. You might look at us and think, those guys got a perfect life. And you'd be right. That is. Until the letter came. You'll hear from the Afro-Cuban star Juan de Marcos, the voice of Andres, who will tell us how he discovered the music from his country's past and secured its future by sharing it with the rest of the world.
When I was about 20 years old, I decided that it was time to turn my eyes to the music I grew up with. The power of music to take us on a journey through time on our next episode of the Vivo Songbook. But we're not quite done yet. Don't touch that dial. We've got something extra for you. With each episode, we're giving out a bonus episode. A bonus-ode. It's a short, playful musical game that's made just for you. Today, we'll show you how to spot the rhythm that makes Latin music so unique.
And if you want to spot all the things we talked about in this episode, you can still watch or re-watch or re-re-re-re-re-watch Vivo streaming now on Netflix. Ladies and gentlemen, the show is right this way, right this way. This episode of The Vivo Songbook was written by Martine Chaussard.
who's also our lead producer and sound designer. Our editor is Natasha Ruck. Luis Gill is our production manager and mastering engineer. And we had additional mixing and sound design from Giovanna Romano Sanchez. Special thanks to Adelne Media's Mariano Pachela, to Garth Burkhardt and Paige Borsos from Sony Pictures Animation, Charlie Yader from Sony Music.
And to our consultants, Natasha Crandall from Crandall Consulting and Andrew Barkan and Polly Hall from the Ear Snacks podcast. And most importantly, thank you to the entire Vivo filmmaking team. The Vivo Songbook is produced by Adonde Media for Netflix and Sony Pictures Animation. I'm your host and executive producer, Martina Castro. Nos vemos. Thank you. I'm rocking this.