From the filmmaking team of Ron Clements and John Musker (“Aladdin” and “The Little Mermaid”) comes the brand new Disney animated film “Moana.”

“Moana” tells a story about a young girl who must learn who she is in order to journey across the sea to save her people and the islands of Oceania.

To learn more about the film, The Hofstra Chronicle got a behind the scenes look at the making of “Moana” and an interview with Walt Disney Animation Studios senior creative executive of development, Jessica Julius.

Before the interview, we got a chance to watch a small presentation with details about the research that provided the location, music, casting process and animation of “Moana.”

In order to create an accurate representation of the Pacific Islands, the creation team of “Moana” had to travel to the islands to learn more about the beauty of the people, culture and landscape.

The team that included Clements, Musker and Julius, traveled multiple times, starting in October 2011. On this trip, they visited Fiji, Samoa, Tahiti and Mo’orea, among others. On these islands, they met many people and listened to their stories and music, and became enveloped by the mesmerizing culture and beauty before them.

“We learned from a fisherman that you must speak gently to the ocean because for the people of the Pacific the ocean is alive,” Julius said. “It unites the islands, it doesn’t divide them.”

The team met a wide variety of people, including anthropologists, linguists, fishermen, tattooists, dancers and elders. These people became part of a group of advisors that the team called the Oceanic Story Trust.

The casting process was long and difficult because the filmmakers were committed to finding actors and actresses who could sing, act and had roots in Oceania. Some of the incredible actors and actresses that met up with these standards include Rachel House, Temuera Morrison, Nicole Sherzinger, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and for the voice of Moana, the Hawaiian native Auli’i Cravalho.

“Not only can she sing and act, she has the confidence to hold her own against The Rock,” Julius said. “We are so lucky we found her.”

During the presentation we were shown some animation tests for the character Pua (Moana’s pet pig) and Hei Hei (Moana’s unlikely shipmate).

When it came time to animate the character Maui, the animation team created a hand drawn 2D animation mapped onto the 3D animated Maui. This 2D animation is a character all on its own called Mini Maui, one of Maui’s lively tattoos.

Towards the end of the presentation, The Hofstra Chronicle got a chance to sit down with Julius to discuss the movie and how she got the chance to be a part of it.

Hofstra Chronicle: The detail that was put into the hair was stunning. Hair in general is extremely hard to draw, so I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to animate.

Jessica Julius: It’s very, very hard. It’s one of the hardest things to do. Which is why so often the hair on animated characters is not long for one thing – “Tangled” not included – and often why they don’t interact with their hair very much.

It’s also why the hair is usually straight because curly hair has to be really detailed and it has to interact with the movements and stuff.

HC: You worked on “Frozen” and a bunch of other movies, so what’s it like taking your experience from working on movies like that and bringing it into “Moana?”

JJ: I’ve worked on every Disney movie since “Bolt” and all of them have been different because I’ve been at a different stage in my career almost each time and I think you always learn from what came before and you build on that.

You build your skill set and you build your experience on that. I studied story in school; I studied screenwriting and characters. So I just try and take all that with it but I also try and learn from the people who came before.

HC: Just tying it all together. There is so much experience you can take for each thing. Just going into college and then going into Disney Production Company, how did that transition work for you?

JJ: So when I moved to LA, I had never been to Los Angeles, I didn’t know anybody there – it was really scary and my mom was terrified – but I knew that I wanted to be in the film industry. At the time I thought I wanted to be in more of the physical production side … But I realized for me that I couldn’t live the freelance lifestyle.

I like routine so I realized I needed to find a job that had more regular hours and I could count on a paycheck every week. I tried a lot of different things and each one of those things I learned something from and I think that it’s just as important to know what you don’t want to do as what you do want to do.

I did a lot of soul searching and I tried to think about what really drives me, what is my passion, what do I love more than anything in the world and for me the answer was reading.

That’s when I realized, “Oh! That’s what I’m supposed to be doing!” I started to do a lot of informational interviews with different people who were development executives at different companies.

Then a job opened up at Disney Animation and I interviewed for it and they liked me enough to hire me.

One of the things as a development person that you have to do a lot is read a lot of scripts because you have to find writers, and so she would hand me a script and ask me what I thought.

So I would go home and read the script then come in the next day and tell her what I thought then she would give me another one.

So it’s a little bit of put your money where your mouth is and follow through with what you say you want to do. It’s a little bit of luck, but it’s a lot of passion and a lot of hard work.

You have to study too. I know that sounds obvious in a way, but learn your craft. Everyone is talented, but talent only gets you so far. The ones that are really successful are the ones that put the time into learning their craft.

HC: Did you ever think you were going to end up in the animation industry?

JJ: No, I had no idea. Honestly that was a fluke, I was really lucky that that’s where the job opened up and so that’s where I ended up.

Somebody was watching out for me because I love what we do and I love the process of how we do it, and I am so grateful. But you know, the reason that I’ve been here as long as I have is and the reason I think I’ve been successful, to the degree that I’ve been successful, is that the people who are at Disney Animation are not fakers.

They’re very sincere and everybody who is there has a deep love for the art, has a deep love of creating this and has a deep love of wanting to tell meaningful stories to people.

HC: Do you hope she becomes as big as a Disney princess?

JJ: Oh, I hope that she’s wildly popular and that people love her. I think she’s awesome. There’s that one scene where she’s standing in the wind after her water moment, and I’m just looking at her thinking, “Oh, she’s so awesome!”