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Fade to Black: Jim Morris, Producer

Jul 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Ellen Wolff

Producer Jim Morris vividly remembers his turning point during production of WALL•E, the ninth film — and ninth hit — of the Pixar/Disney partnership. Although WALL•E was his first foray into CG features (after nearly two decades at Industrial Light & Magic [ILM]), Morris recalls knowing something looked wrong in the dailies he was watching one day. “There was a pan shot that didn't look right, so I asked, ‘Is that a nodal shot?’ I was told, ‘Of course. All our shots are nodal.’” Morris countered, saying, “In the real world, there's a lens in front of the film plane, and there's always changes in convergence as well as changes in field of view.” To investigate the difference, Director Andrew Stanton and Morris staged a test shoot of Styrofoam models, and the results were compared with mathematically correct CG camerawork. Ultimately, Pixar's tech wizards figured out how to mimic what real lenses photograph, and as a result, WALL•E has a look that is distinct among computer-animated films.

“We certainly didn't want to make a slavishly photorealistic film,” Morris says. “But we wanted to give WALL•E a heightened believability; to make you feel like you're watching a real movie.” Morris is no stranger to real movies, having begun his ILM producing career in the late 1980s on films such as The Abyss. After rising to the presidency of George Lucas' ILM/Skywalker group of companies, Morris left the executive suite to return to producing, joining the WALL•E team three and a half years ago. He brought to Pixar a Rolodex that significantly affected how Andrew Stanton “photographed” his film. Stanton, who directed Finding Nemo, wanted to manipulate things such as depth of field to convey emotional intimacy — citing the cinematography of Harris Savides in Finding Forrester as an example. Morris says that Stanton and DPs Jeremy Lasky and Danielle Feinberg wondered how Savides got that look. “I said, ‘Why don't I call him?’ and they said, ‘You can do that?’”

Morris arranged to visit Savides. “We basically asked him how to introduce cinematic artifacts into our shots,” Morris says. “He was bemused by that because he's constantly trying to figure out ways to decrease artifacts!” When Stanton expressed the desire to explore the issue further by having a DP visit Pixar, Morris invited Roger Deakins to conduct seminars in which he shared his photographic strategies. The aesthetic, Morris says, “was that WALL•E was filmed instead of recorded.”

Less surprising than Deakins' input was the contribution Morris facilitated from Skywalker Sound veteran Ben Burtt. When Stanton kept referring to WALL•E as “R2-D2: The Movie,” Morris arranged a dinner between Stanton and Burtt, who had created the voice of Star Wars' famous droid. Burtt subsequently voiced WALL•E and has since joined Pixar, although he still consults at Skywalker. (“We have a very Kumbaya culture,” Morris says of the arrangement.)

A longstanding relationship between Morris and ILM visual-effects supervisor Dennis Muren also brought the multi-Oscar-winner's talents to bear on WALL•E. “Dennis came here as a photo-graphy expert,” Morris says. “He brought his unwavering ability to observe reality. He's always able to look at something and within an eighth of a second tell you why it doesn't look right. Since there wasn't a lot of history of live-action photography at Pixar, Dennis helped us figure out the line between photorealism and stylization that we wanted.”

In the end, WALL•E displays a level of visual flair that Morris doesn't think falls far from the visual-effects movies that have dominated his own résumé. “Our visual-effects people at Pixar are doing almost the same things — the explosions, dust, and rain — that they would be if we made live-action films,” he says.

Morris, who is now Pixar's general manager, does admit there are some fundamental differences. “Progress in effects was always easier to track,” he says. “When it felt like WALL•E was moving at a glacial pace, I'd hear, ‘It's under control. You just have to have confidence.’ So I drank a little Kool-Aid and, lo and behold, they were right!”

Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
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