Director Fred Savage referenced his own summer camp experiences as a kid to help him in directing Daddy Day Camp, the sequel to the Eddie Murphy film Daddy Day Care. Savage said he loved his camping experiences as a kid. ?Those experiences definitely helped inform this, that?s for sure,? explained Savage. ?It was not the fanciest of places, but a place where you could still have a good time. I went to a camp outside of Chicago, where I?m from, called Tamarack.

Their colors were green and yellow and white, so I used that. That was my nod to my days at Tamarack.?

Tackling a Sequel: Asked if he had any reservations about doing a sequel featuring an entirely different cast Savage replied, ?I felt like the situation we were in with the movie gave us the best of both worlds. I feel like we were part of a franchise that everyone knows, that was very popular, that parents trust, that kids enjoy. Coming into our movie, you?ll know the characters and their background. So, we have all that going for us.

At the same time, using new actors for the same characters and aging the kids up, I feel like we were liberated in that we could make our own movie. It didn?t have to look the same as the first one. It didn?t have to feel the same. We didn?t have to reference it. We had the same characters and the same brand title, so we got all the benefits of that with none of the negatives. We didn?t have to be beholden to the first one. I felt like it was really liberating that we could use Cuba and use new kids, and tell our own story.

We can stand on our own, as a movie, but we still get the benefits of being the cousin to this huge hit. The Daddy Day name means something to the parents and means something to the kids, and we can only benefit from that.?

On Working with Kids: Savage had no problem at all adjusting to directing younger actors. ?For me, it was very natural. I felt very comfortable. Given my background, obviously, I really feel very comfortable working with young actors,? said Savage. ?That?s what I grew up doing, so I felt very comfortable. Given my experiences as a young actor, it really helped to inform how I worked with the kids. When you?re younger, you?re very aware of what approaches work, and you?re really aware of what doesn?t. I tried to take the best of what I liked about working with directors when I was a kid, and tried to eliminate all the stuff I hated. I?ve let that guide me, in working with all actors, in my directing career. Not just young actors, but with adults as well.?

Savage explained how he tries to run his set. ?The set?s got to be a positive place for any kind of work, but particularly comedy. Not just for young actors, but young actors are particularly sensitive to moods that are on the set. When I?d come on the set, from school or wherever I was, and someone was in a bad mood, or someone was ticked off about something, you?d feel that. For me, I just instinctively turned inward. I didn?t want to upset anyone. I didn?t want to exasperate the situation. I wasn?t sure what was going on. I just felt like it wasn?t a comfortable place. I just don?t think that gives any actor - but particularly young actors because they?re so attuned to that stuff - the opportunity to succeed and give their best performance. The only way to do that is to make the set a positive place that they feel comfortable going go, where they?re happy to be, where they?ll feel comfortable enough to take risks and make themselves vulnerable, and play and try things.?

Directing Oscar-Winner Cuba Gooding, Jr.: Savage said directing Gooding Jr was a wonderful experience. ?He is just as you would imagine him to be on a set. He?s just so full of energy and enthusiasm, and he?s just gung-ho. He throws himself into it. He was wonderful with the kids. He was so patient. A less confident actor would worry about working with kids, or worry about them being too cute. He worked so hard to make the kids the best they could be. He was that confident. He was that self-possessed. He wanted the kids to do a great job. It wasn?t about him. It was about those kids. He was just so generous with them, and just wonderful.?

Helming a Feature Film Compared to Directing TV: Savage believes his work on TV shows was a great training ground for helming a movie. ?The schedule and the pace of television directing is just brutal. There are huge page counts and you?re just going all day. ?You?re shot out of a cannon, from first call. So you learn to be very well prepared, you learn to roll with things, you learn to improvise very quickly. There?s really not a lot of time to mull things over. What I liked about feature directing was that, even though our schedule was very tight and the budget was tight - everyone could use another week and some more money - television served as a good training ground, but film was more relaxed. You could breathe a little bit more. The page counts were smaller, so you could take more time with a scene, in rehearsing it. You could find things a bit more. You could cover a scene a little more properly. You just could finesse things a little bit more than you could in television. But, I love working in television. I find the pace kind of exciting.?

What?s Up Next?: ?It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia comes out next month. I kind of went back to my roots. I went to Disney Channel and we started a new show over there called The Wizards of Waverly Place and that comes out in November. I'm actually shooting the season finale of that show next week. A bunch of television?up to Vancouver to shoot some shows for the CW. I'm there to shoot a show called Aliens in America, a show for the CW, then back here to shoot Cavemen for ABC. Try to stay busy whether it's in features or television, just trying to keep shooting, keep shooting, keep shooting.?

People are really worried making the GEICO Cavemen campaign into a TV series will ruin the concept. Laughing, Savage promises he won?t mess it up. ?People say that to me every time I start a job. That's what Cuba said to me here before we did this movie. ?Don't mess it up.? Everybody tells me, ?Don't screw it up.? I don't know, I hope I don't but I don't know what I've screwed up to make people always tell me that.?