SYNOPSIS
As he scrambles to the sea shortly after his birth on a beach in California, Sammy the sea turtle finds and loses the love of his life, a pretty hatchling called Shelly. On the epic journey across the oceans that all turtles accomplish before returning to the beach where they were born, Sammy dodges every danger in the hope of meeting Shelly again. With best buddy Ray, he sees close up how humans are hurting the planet. But then he is rescued by other humans. He battles with piranhas, escapes a fish eagle and searches for a mysterious secret passage. And, one day, after so many adventures and close shaves, Sammy finds Shelly. She has never forgotten him either...

ABOUT THE CHARACTERS

Sammy
Our hero Sammy is a delightful little sea turtle. Far from being a superhero, he's just an ordinary turtle who has some extraordinary adventures. He was born in 1959 on a California beach and since then, has travelled the world's oceans for 50 years. On his long voyage of discovery, Sammy runs into many dangers. He becomes the mascot for a hippy community, comes face to face with an oil slick and witnesses the splashdown of Apollo 11 in the Pacific Ocean.
His goal: To brave the currents, the tides and the years to find Shelly, the love of his life who he lost on the beach where they were born.
His character: Sammy is brave, he has a real taste for adventure and he is able to stand up to a challenge. He's not afraid of a fight, he's a loyal friend, he trusts his instincts and he's a forward looking turtle.
BEN STASSEN: "When he was born, Sammy was so tiny he couldn't heave himself out of the nest. But he's a fighter. He is determined to succeed in his mission, no matter what, and nothing's going to stop him. He also knows he can travel the whole world. You just have to put one fin in front of the other and keep going like that and everything will be fine!"

Shelly
Shelly is the most beautiful sea turtle Sammy has ever seen. She is the apple of his eye, his reason for living and his inspiration to carry on. She's also a very determined turtle, who wants to discover the world in her own way, with no constraints and without worrying about tomorrow. She has no ties until the day she crosses paths with little Sammy once again. He is all grown up now and the two hit it off right away.
Her goal: To discover all the wonders of the undersea world and to one day uncover the mystery of the legendary secret passage.
Her character: She's got a mind of her own but she's a very willing little turtle. She's scared of nothing - or almost nothing; she's impetuous, a real fighter and she's always game for anything. Bursting with energy, she's got a definite taste for adventure and for deep-sea exploration.
BEN STASSEN: "Sammy fell head-over-heels in love with Shelly the second he opened his eyes at birth. They are separated on several occasions but he never loses hope of being reunited with the one he loves!"

Ray
Another adorable sea turtle, Ray is Sammy's faithful companion during the first years of his life. He's the guy who Sammy can rely on. He's kindly and wise and acts as Sammy's mentor, opening his eyes to life, girl turtles and the world as a whole.
His goal: To take care of Sammy during his first decade as he learns about life in the water.
His character: Full of enthusiasm and energy, he's intrepid and he's a flirt. He loves nights out with his pals, having fun and helping others have fun, too. He's easy to get along with, he's never a drag and he always does things his own way. He's constantly looking for new adventures and new sensations.
BEN STASSEN: "Ray is the friend with whom Sammy spends part of his childhood. He's always in a good mood and always a lot of fun. Their relationship highlights the power of friendship.

Fluffy
Fluffy is a big grey tomcat with a very strong accent. He takes things easy in the California sunshine. He's the faithful companion of a small hippy community that cares about the environment and fights for animal rights. He's not happy when Sammy starts encroaching on his patch. Without actually getting his claws out, he decides to act.
His goal: To tease and confuse Sammy in the hope the little turtle will leave his adopted hippy family and will head off back into the ocean as quickly as possible.
His character: Fluffy's a bit of a snob who is suspicious of other animals, trying to preserve his territory and the rights he has secured from his masters. Sly and cunning with a weird sense of humour, he tells stories and cracks jokes that nobody finds funny apart from him.
BEN STASSEN: "Fluffy is a very interesting character. He's the mascot of a hippy community which lives on the beach at Big Sur. When Sammy arrives, Fluffy feels threatened and wants to get rid of him as quickly as he can and send him back to the bottom of the ocean where he belongs!"


The world of Ben Stassen (director and producer)

INTERVIEW

Where did the desire come from to tell the story of a sea turtle's voyage of discovery from birth to adulthood?
A few years ago, I went on vacation to Mexico with my six-year-old son. At sunset, we saw a crowd on the beach. The hotel staff were transporting a clutch of turtle's eggs in the process of hatching. The mother had laid them on the lawn, in the exact same spot where she had been born 30 years previously. The hotel hadn't been built back then.
The problem was that these minuscule newborns couldn't heave themselves over a concrete path to reach the sea - it was too high for them. As we watched these baby turtles taking their first steps towards the sea and then being washed back onto the beach by the waves, the hotel staff told us that they stay on the surface of the ocean for the first ten years of their life. During that time, they travel incredible distances carried by the currents. When I saw the reactions of both children and adults that evening, I thought it would make a great 3D animation.

Did you then do a lot of research about the lives of turtles, the dangers they face and their predators?
We did a huge amount of research into sea turtles whilst we were writing the script and also during the pre-production process. The Internet gives access to a huge amount of information so we watched a lot of videos that showed their behaviour in the water and on dry land.

What kind of adventures did you want to direct?
Less than one baby turtle in every 1,000 manages to survive into adulthood after hatching. The newborns barely measure 5cms and Sammy, the film's hero, is even smaller. So there really wasn't much chance of him surviving. I wanted to follow him from birth to adulthood. His adventures tell the story of a journey towards maturity. Along the way, we meet a lot of other characters. Many of them only appear in one single scene in the film because Sammy then heads off again. But a handful of characters play a bigger role in his life and reappear on several occasions. Among them are Ray and Shelly, two other sea turtles, and a cat called Fluffy.

What did you want to achieve in terms of how the characters look?
Each time nWave Pictures has made a computer-aided animation, we have always pushed ourselves to create an image that is as realistic as possible, rather than focusing on a stylistic approach. Once again with this film we have given a very authentic feel to the characters and the environments they live in. But we weren't making a documentary - this is a family entertainment film so we took quite a few liberties. For example, all our characters have bodies that resemble those of their species but we gave them a face with human characteristics.

Aside the humour, of which there is a lot, what kinds of emotions were you hoping to inspire?
I hope that the audience will smile during the film and that they'll laugh heartily from time to time, but above all, I really hope it will give rise to some real emotion. I didn't want to create a laugh-a-minute movie with characters who are constantly overflowing with vitality wherever they find themselves. I was also trying to equal the quality of the great Disney classics like FANTASIA and BAMBI. The wonderful thing about getting into a 3D film is that it creates a huge amount of pleasure. Very dramatic scenes can even become "pleasant". In other words, a real 3D film can give you a lot of pleasure other than just laughter.

What educational messages did you want to get across to younger generations through this film?
Spending 50 years deep in the oceans with all the film's heroes gave us a chance to tackle certain questions about certain important environmental issues, such as the destruction of underwater life, climate change and deforestation. Granted, we don't offer the answers to these problems, but in raising people's awareness, especially amongst our younger audiences, maybe we have a chance to take a small step in the right direction. Through this film, we tried to ask questions about cause and effect. When our heroes are confronted by an oil slick, they realize that human beings are strange creatures: Some turn the oceans into a dumping ground, whilst others are busy trying to clean them up. It's the same for the whale hunting scenes. There are men who harpoon whales and others who do everything they can to try and stop them.

After exploring outer space in FLY ME TO THE MOON, you are examining all the oceans on the planet in your second feature. Why the choice of these infinite places?
3D is the second revolution in the history of cinema after the shift from silent movies to talkies. It can be viewed as a totally new cinematographic language. When an audience watches a 3D movie, the sensation of immersion they experience is ten times as powerful as with a regular film. They are plunged right to the very heart of the filmic space.
They have a feeling of total physical osmosis. To me, outer space and the depths of the oceans are places which, combined with 3D, allow you to push back the limits of physical immersion.

Did directing this film in 3D push you to rise to certain technical or artistic challenges?
Animating organic matter like water is extremely complex to do using computer-aided animation techniques, and this film takes place entirely under the sea! So making a film like this with an international scope, a fairly limited budget and North American norms to respect was a nightmare in technical terms. There is no miracle solution to help with such challenges - the whole team just worked really, really hard!

A dive into nWave Pictures :  from 3D revolution to 3D evolution...
Production company and distributor nWave Pictures was created in 1994. Ben Stassen is company director and also co-founder along with Eric Dillens from the Brussels-based D&D Media Group. Stassen very quickly understood the appeal that a standalone 3D cinematographic language would have for audiences. He also took the company into the world of films produced for the giant screen, such as THRILL RIDE, MISADVENTURES IN  3D and ALIEN ADVENTURE. There are currently over 180 screens of this type in the world. In 1996, THRILL RIDE figured on the list of the 50 best films and it stayed there for 70 weeks in a row. SOS PLANET was seen by more than 50 million people worldwide.
Today, nWave Pictures is the world's leading producer of 3D spectacular films, mainly for IMAX cinemas and theme parks. Its global box office receipts from IMAX theatres have exceeded US$200 million.
Directed by Ben STASSEN, FLY ME TO THE MOON was released worldwide in 2008. It was the first feature length animation produced by nWave Pictures, and the first animation entirely produced in 3D. Unlike other films, no images were converted from traditional 2D into 3D relief. The hunt for a feature-length script that would benefit from this process took two years.
Back to the role and the aims of nWave Pictures in terms of the 3D revolution and evolution with Ben Stassen, director and producer of SAMMY'S ADVENTURES,THE SECRET PASSAGE…

GETTING INTO 3D
"I always wanted to turn nWave Pictures into a mini studio using computer-aided imagery. I wanted us to be able to create our own content and distribute it ourselves around the world.
"In the early 1990s, we wanted to keep our feet firmly on the ground and not get involved in producing films for cinema. Instead, we focused on a few specialist areas like digital simulation films in IMAX and 3D/4D for theme parks. We started financing, developing and producing them and then began distributing them around the world.
"We quickly became the world's leading independent supplier of specialist films. These first films were mainly in 2D but in 1997, we decided to only make films in 3D."

THE 3D REVOLUTION
"In the past, 3D cinema never got beyond a passing fad. This is explained by the mediocre technical quality and the "gadget" nature of these films during the 1950s and then the 1970s in Hollywood. But the main reason why 3D never took off is because of the reticence of directors and exhibitors to make the third dimension a real revolution in the way films are made. 3D was considered like a simple evolution, an innovation comparable to the shift from black and white to colour or from 1.33 format to cinemascope. It was fun but not indispensable to the pleasure of watching a film."
"To better understand the true nature of 3D cinema and the real appeal, one must go back 20 years to theme parks and IMAX cinemas. Hundreds of millions of people have watched films in 3D since the 1986 launch of "Captain EO", Francis Ford Coppola's movie starring Michael Jackson and directed by George Lucas, which was a major attraction at the EPCOT centre in Florida; and the inauguration of "Transition", the very first IMAX 3D film at the 1986 World's Fair in Vancouver."
"All around the world, tens of thousands of people see one of our films every day. The appeal of 3D cinema is less about the artificial effects of things coming out of the screen into the audience's faces and more about the experience of total immersion."

THE EVOLUTION OF 3D
"In order that the 3D revolution continues to be successful, directors must change the way they conceive a film. Imagining that a film could be just as good in 3D as in 2D comes back to reducing 3D to those artifices that we could do without.
"Last summer, five big hits each brought in 200 million dollars to the US box office. They were all in 2D. Our aim is not to turn our backs on 2D but to create a viable 3D entertainment platform in parallel. We are in a transitory phase. The studios cannot make films that are only for the 3D market because there aren't enough theatres that are equipped to show them yet. The majority of theatres that screen in 3D are unsuitable. The screens are too small and a large percentage of the audience have to look upwards or lean over to look at the screen. Wide shot effects work well but the 3D effect is non-existent. Theatres should be equipped with giant screens that go from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall that are as close as possible to the front row. All the seats should be facing the screen and should be steeply tilted."
To optimize 3D, we need to extend the filmic space to the physical space. By that, I mean filling the audience's visual field with the image and making them forget their environment. That is what IMAX has offered for several years.
"There is a lot of interest in 3D right now. Unfortunately, this might only be a passing phase. To leave their comfort zone and go to a movie theatre, people expect two things: To be physically or emotionally involved in the story and to enjoy a social experience. 3D cinema allows that. With it, one can be part of the action of the film together with one's family or friends."

THE ART OF ANIMATION

HOME