For his debut feature, director David Soren came up with Turbo.

Ha,Toonstruck, yeah!

I remember that being a computer game that felt really quite out of its time.

If Ive got the chronology right, that was one of your earliest jobs…

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It was the very first, actually.

And she ended up getting me into Nelvana, which is a big studio in Toronto.

I was cleaning cells basically, using toxic chemicals.

[Laughs]

So you have lots of allergies now?

The problems thats caused!

But it got me into the industry, and that was huge for me at the time.

I didnt care how bottom of the Totem pole I was.

It was that or CalArts.

And then during my summer, Id go and work at Nelvana, and my first job there wasToonstruck.

I was an inbetweener in the animation department on that.

Youve come up with a film now that has its fair share of surprises.

So like many, when I saw Turbo, I assumed it was DreamWorks taking on PixarsCars.

And then I got to the film, and its terrific opening shot for a start.

So when you do tackle your first feature film, you do try and do something different?

Toonstruckwas so early that I dont even know if I was aware what it was about really.

And I found out about this contest, I feel my life has been filled with them!

I found out about this on a Friday, and it was a storyboarding test.

How old were you then?

I was 21, 22 maybe?

Four of us were chosen.

Generally, most people want to be animators when they go to animation school.

I always saw it as a means of telling a story.

Peter Ramsey, Rise Of The Guardians director, was a storyboarder as well, wasnt he?

Yeah, a number of directors ended up coming up through storyboarding, but its hard to break into.

But it gave me an edge.

Going into my final year, it allowed me to makeMr Lucky,my thesis film.

A normal thesis film is about a minute long.Mr Luckyis five minutes.

Which must be a bit bewildering, especially given your age then.

If you hadnt realised before that this was your path, surely thats the moment.

It really got the attention of DreamWorks.

I was lucky that I graduated at the top of my class during a boom time for animation.

So literally, it was a feeding frenzy really.

But DreamWorks was the sole studio that offered me a storyboarding position.

The others wanted me to be an animator.

I saw it as a way to continue to train to become a filmmaker.

You put in a shift at DreamWorks, didnt you?

And you worked with Aardman at one point.

Its little secret that DreamWorks and Aardman wasnt always the easiest mix… …but conversely I would imagine that as an education for you…?

Id seenCreature Comfortswhen that first came out, and I was obsessed with it.

They had one storyboard artist, so needed help.

They came over to DreamWorks and did a big blitz, and I got to be part of that.

Was there any mild foundation somewhere in the characterisation work youve done on Turbo in thatTortoise & Hareproject?

Well,Tortoise & Harewas a slow versus fast, but theyre radically different films.

That was more of a mockumentary.

Turbo, though, isnt a film about slow versus fast.

Its very, very slow versus very, very fast, that youre capturing in the same frame.

That must have been one of the toughest things to crack in development?

Just trying to figure it out.

Any film about speed, just trying to capture what it looks like on screen is a challenge.

That was very complex to figure out, but its probably what makes the film.

And yet from our side of the fence, thats one of the things that looks the most straightforward!

It was your six-year-old who was pivotal to the gestation ofTurbo.

Lots of people who direct animated films talk about the miserable middle, in the midst of the process.

But this has stayed on the straight and narrow since it was first made public.

Yeah, its been an incredibly smooth production.

So whats your secret?

A tight script, that was a long time in development.

Is that your first storyboarding job at work, and the ethos that came with that then?

Training as a storyboard artist helps tremendously.

They created a very smooth pipeline for us.

It was a smooth run!

Where next, then?

David Soren, thank you very much!

Turbois out on the 18th October in the UK.