10 Secrets That Made Recent Movies Awesome

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem received particular acclaim for the central vocal performances of Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, and Brady Noon as the Turtles, who unlike just about every prior big-screen iteration of the characters, actually felt like honest-to-God teenagers.

And while the filmmakers were absolutely right to cast real teenage actors in the roles, there's one added trick which ensured their palpable, flesh-and-blood chemistry would come across during dialogue recording sessions.

While almost all animated films have the various cast members record their dialogue separately for logistical reasons, this production arranged for Abbey, Brown, Cantu, and Noon to always record together alongside whoever else was in a given scene, lending a more natural flow to their interactions.

Co-writer and producer Seth Rogen said of the process:

"For every session, we lumped people together. So every time the four turtles recorded, they were together. Me and John Cena were Bebop and Rocksteady, and we recorded together... So we really went out of our way and bent over backwards on Ninja Turtles to try to capture that improvisational energy that you get when a lot of people are in the same place at the same time. I actually saw how helpful it was from doing Lion King."

While the Turtles' performances would've likely been solid regardless of the recording process, keeping the actors together ensured their work felt as organic as possible.