Bee Movie is Jerry Seinfeld’s brain child—an animated, high-concept B-movie in which a smarty-pants honey bee sues humans for theft. Naturally, though, any project which is co-written and produced by (and stars) Seinfeld has anything but a B-movie vibe to it.

Recently, Seinfeld and the film’s directors, long-time Dreamworks veterans Simon J. Smith and Steve Hickner, buzzed through Seattle on a promotional tour for the movie—well in advance of the completed film being screened for the press. Smith and Hickner talked about what it’s it like to work on an animated film, particularly with a cast that loves to ad lib. However, these high-energy guys manage it well. (A note of caution: Smith is British, so catching everything they said wasn’t easy. But here’s my best shot at it…)

Smith: I think you’d like to have a little bit more ad libbing so that things don’t seem so manufactured. What I think we were very lucky with was that Jerry was with us the entire time. That usually doesn’t happen because it’s so impossible to get these people’s schedules together. They’re very busy, so to coordinate schedules is very tricky. With us, Jerry was with us most of the time—you know, seventy-five to ninety per cent of the time. So later, when their schedules matched up with Jerry’s, it was “Great! Let’s go in and have some fun!” So it was fantastic, really. That’s the sort of stuff you really wish for.

You know, we’ve seen a lot of animated movies, and you want to have something special about your movie when you’re working on it. You felt it in the scene when Barry meets Vanessa on the rooftop. That felt like them having a real conversation. It’s because they were. Half of those scenes were ad-libbed.

In terms of directing, you’re just sort of shepherding. It’s a little bit like playing ice hockey with a blancmange… It’s fantastic. You have a plethora of riches at the end of it.

Hickner: But you know, we have a script that we work from. It’s not like we’re making things up on the spot.

Smith: We do have lines, and you do “coverage.” Just like with live action, you do, “Let’s make sure we cover these lines separately.” And for us, we didn’t waste too much of the other stars’ lines, as far as time, because we’d get Jerry whenever we wanted. As Steven has pointed out at different times, it’s lovely having one of the stars know the movie, and be one of the writers of the movie—and so you don’t have to worry too much about that person’s performance. Obviously, you want to make sure it’s in the right range, because he’s making the other person react. But you don’t have to worry so much. You can concentrate on who’s in today. Is it Renee? Is it Matthew? Is it Patrick Warburton? Whoever it is, you can concentrate more on that performance rather than working on them all at the same time.

Bee Movie hits theatres November 2. Be sure to check back next week for our review.