Hi, I’m Rob Marshall. And I’m the director of “Mary Poppins Returns.” “Gather round, everyone — spit spot.” So we’re here, in 1930s London, in the nursery of the Banks family. And we’re about to enter an adventure. [music] These flowers that are coming off the bowl become animated. And it was very important for me to be able to include a live-action animation sequence in this film, especially because I feel it’s in the DNA of Mary Poppins. I used myself as a barometer, the entire time I was working on this film — what would I want to see in this film? And as you see, it’s all hand-drawn 2D-animation. In a way, it feels fresh now. We haven’t seen it for a long time. And I really like the artistry behind it. It actually costs a lot more to do this way and, also, was much more time-consuming. It took over a year. But it was important. And we actually brought animators out of retirement to do it. [laughter] “Oh, Georgie, head up and feet beneath you. You too, John.” You’ll see here, we’re talking to hand-drawn animated characters that are voiced by Chris O’Dowd — and then the horse by Mark Addy. And obviously, this is Emily Blunt, and Lin-Manuel and our three fantastic kids who are in this film. We have a hand-drawn 2D world. But we are working through and moving through the environment in a 3-dimensional way, which is something we could do now that wasn’t able to be done in the ‘60s. And so what happens is — the integration of that actually involves visual effects, because we have to integrate our actors and our camera movement into the 2D world. It’s a way to keep it fluid and feel like we’re inside the environment, instead of sitting apart from it. “This should do it.” Sandy Powell, as you’ll see, as our costume designer, made this decision to hand-paint all the costumes, to more specifically integrate the clothes into the 2D world. So for instance, if you look at Emily Blunt’s dress, which is all tiered, there’s no tier. It’s one flat piece of material that, literally, is painted on, like there are tiers — same with the tie — same with the buttons. It’s all in an effort to make it feel like they’re part of the 2D world. “The Royal Doulton Music Hall please.” “Where?” “What’s that?” “We’re on the brink of an adventure, children. Don’t spoil it with too many questions.” We’re about to go into a song here, called “The Royal Doulton Music Hall,” by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. And what was incredible was we had to work to create so many layers that were part of this process. We started with just sketches from our animators, who worked from Pixar and from Disney Animation. But then, it moved into storyboarding and then into pre-visualization, which is really just a video version of the storyboards come to life. [MUSIC - “ROYAL DOULTON MUSIC HALL’] “(SINGING) There’s a cuddly and curious, flirty and furious animal watering hole, where — “ This shot here, actually, with the hummingbirds, was the first thing we tested, to see how it would work — how we could integrate these two worlds. “(SINGING) — always encore-able Royal Doulton Music Hall.” “Ooh, that one tickled my tail. Nearly there, Mary Poppins.” “(SINGING) Yes, in this marvelous, mystical, rather sophistical Royal Doulton bowl — “ “There’s a lot of birds queueing up, a lot of hams chewing up, scenery they swallow whole. There are lots of cats tuning strings — ” “Nightingales in the wings — ” “Waiting for their big drum-roll — ” “At the super sensational — ” “Standing-ovational — ” ” — Royal Doulton Music Hall.”