Stitch vs Rocket | Director Notes The ultimate goal for this episode was to have people smiling the entire time. They're such fun characters and both so beloved. Even with some of the sadder, even darker, elements of their stories, in my opinion it just makes them more lovable. The darker moments make the bright spots shine even brighter. And I think that translated into the fight: the more cartoony bits could be very silly and fun, almost like Wile E. Coyote moments (like Stitch looking to camera before the rocket goes off) and then the more serious moments could be grounded and brutal as they need to be. Chad and Ben said it best in the commentary. These characters are perfect for Death Battle. We had a lot of fun with the forest montage. It just made so much sense to have a montage considering how musical these characters are but also because their movies feature great ones as well. We pulled heavily from Rocket planting traps for the Ravagers in GotG Vol 2 and I pulled heavily in my shot list from the montage in Lilo & Stitch where Lilo is trying to introduce Hawaiian/Human culture to Stitch. So, we definitely hung a lot of our hats on that moment and I think we nailed it if I do say so myself. I mentioned this in the commentary but I really do love these specific characters a lot and when we were planning for this season last year there was a moment where this episode's director was undecided. So I specifically asked Erin, our amazing producer, if I could direct this one. I think I said it would be "a dream" to direct this one. lol And they let me do it! We gotta talk about the score. Aaron did such an amazing job. Literally, I had no notes for him when he submitted the track. We had talked a lot about it in the kick off and I had a lot of ideas but honestly, he just understood the assignment. It was perfect on arrival. And not easy I'm guessing! He mentioned that the temp track (Pretty Girl by Bo Diddley), which we had specifically timed a lot of the moments to, wasn't recorded to a metronome. So the timing of the track itself was all over the place. It works as a piece of music, it's awesome, but it was a big hurdle Aaron had to jump over. But in the end, he nailed it, obviously. It's also the Death Battle debut of his vocals. Amazing right? The perfect vibe for this fight. How about our amazing voice actors for this episode right? Jeff Schine as Rocket...I mean...what? How is his Rocket voice so good? I was blown away by his audition and I was so glad he had a good amount of lines in this fight. And then Delton Engle-Sorrell as Stitch??? I couldn't believe it. It was SO good. We were just looking for more efforts and alts for him at the end of his session. I was just like, we need more Stitch in this episode! Thankfully, Liam wrote in that audio drama ending with Stitch interrupting Wiz to declare himself the winner. This was my first episode to work with our new editor, Parker, and man, was it awesome. I told him this on Friday but I truly never got tired of watching the cuts of this episode as they were taking shape. You gotta understand that when you work on a show like this, you end up watching the episode a million times. So it's natural for it to feel like work every once in a while. But this time, it never did. He picked such great music for the character rundowns and really figured out how to make it feel energetic and lively. Just a fun watch every time. One of my only contributions to the script (Liam wrote another great one so he didn't need much from me, if anything at all) was the line about him worming his way into other Disney properties. I mentioned this in the commentary but I feel like it was one of the first and clearest signs of marketing working on me as a kid. I saw those ads and was just SOLD on Stitch as a character immediately. I ran out to see the movie as soon as I could convince my mom to take me. So I really wanted to include it in the episode because I figured if that meant a lot to me, it probably meant a lot to other people watching. It's what I would want to see in the episode if I wasn't making it. And then I think it set us up really well for that ending. It was really fun to have GotG Vol 3 come out while we were making this. Caleb saw the movie opening weekend and immediately slacked us about how they approached Rocket's origin story. And we were already going back and forth a lot. Listen to the commentary to hear how fired up Ben and Chad got about it. They both really love Rocket, so it was heated, in a good, classic, Death Battle way. So one day while working on this specific episode, I hear my dog barking its head off. Which is kinda unusual. She's more of a growler when she sees someone walk by our windows or something. So I get up to check on her and what do I see but A FREAKING REAL LIVE RACCOON ON OUR PORCH IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY! It was crazy. A whole new meaning to the Death Battle curse. And believe it or not, there is so much more to the raccoon story. A story for Cast perhaps... One really great thing about the production of this episode was how many people spoke up about how much fun they were having. It just made me so happy to know people were enjoying the work. A lot of people from the audio team even mentioned that this was one of their favorite fights in general. Ugh, so great! One of our Viz Post artists, Autumn Elizondo, even reached out to suggest that Stitch should drag the ice cream across his tongue at the end because that's what he does in the movie. And Luis and I were like, OF COURSE! That's an amazing idea. I think that just speaks to how much fun we were having. We all felt encouraged to add a lot of fun details. Speaking of details...anyone catch all of the easter eggs??? Maybe check back in a few episodes...WINK WINK