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MillimeterBFCA nominees
Dec 30, 2003 12:00 PM
Finding Nemo
 Photo: © Disney Enterprises,Inc/Pixar Animation Studios. All rights reserved. |
In its embryonic stages four years ago, Pixar's Andrew Stanton considered Finding Nemo, "our little arthouse picture, and worthy of a good research trip to help me learn to scuba dive," which he did, at the Great Barrier Reef. Stanton, the film's co-writer and co-director, never imagined the CG fish story would set global box office records for animated feature films and earn high critical acclaim, nor did he have an understanding of how technically complex the film would be for Pixar to produce.
"We assumed animating fish would be easy because they are really just floating heads," he says. "But they were harder than any previous characters we had done because the damn things are never still, and because the acting has to be accomplished primarily through facial animation. By the time this project came along, [Pixar was] much more accomplished at the process of making CG features, but it nevertheless posed a host of new challenges to keep our engineers and artists busy."
Those challenges involved such issues as underwater light, facial animation, fish tank reflections and blurs, splashing water, schooling/flocking of fish and birds, texturing and light issues for semi-transparent fish, and dozens of color issues related to the underwater palette.
"It was all very strategic and more laborious than a live-action film," Stanton explains. "The meetings and discussions and creative issues are very similar to live-action, but the execution is totally different—it's slow motion compared to live-action. We can't leave anything to chance—everything on screen, every pixel, was painstakingly planned and previsualized."
—Michael Goldman
In America
 Photo: Barry Wetcher |
Director:
Jim Sheridan
DP: Declan Quinn
Production Designer: Mark Geraghty
Costume Designer: Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh
Editor: Naomi Geraghty
Declan Quinn, who shot such diverse films as Leaving Las Vegas, Monsoon Wedding, and U2: Unforgettable Fire, gives the multi-Oscar-nominated Jim Sheridan a personal canvas lit with intimate, sometimes wistful detail. Production designer Mark Geraghty, who can do big and fanciful (Count of Monte Cristo) and simple and stage-like (Dancing at Lughnasa), likewise honors Sheridan's vision with detail that balances reality and memory.
Big Fish
 |
Director:
Tim Burton
DP: Philippe Rousselot
Production Designer: Dennis Gassner
Costume Designer: Colleen Atwood
Visual Effects Supervisor: Kevin Scott Mack
Editors: Chris Lebenzon, Joel Negron
Music: Danny Elfman
Director Tim Burton, with the help of DP Philippe Rousselot and effects supervisor Kevin Mack, conjures a vision of two worlds—one bright and rich with the colors and flourishes of the imagination, one wan and desaturated (literally) with disillusionment.
Lost in Translation
Lost in Translation's cinematographer Lance Acord and director Sofia Coppola strove to achieve a romantic, intimate feel for the delicate story, set in Tokyo, of two out-of-place Americans who form an unexpected bond. Shot entirely in Tokyo on a 27-day schedule, the film unfolds at a deliberate pace allowing the audience to spend time with these two characters. Acord shot on the streets, in taxicabs and noodle houses, in sushi bars, and in various areas inside the luxurious Park Hyatt hotel.
The short schedule and location constraints required that Acord use a minimum of lights, even at night. He was able to shoot this way, he says, in great part because of the flexibility of Kodak's (now discontinued) 5263 emulsion, a soft-contrast film that provided a high level of detail deep into the shadows. Sold as a 500-speed stock, Acord was able to rate it beyond 2000 and print it up without suffering from the grain or milky blacks that would normally result.
"I think some of the new stocks are enabling cinematographers to approach their work in a completely different way," he declares. "You can do things now with film speed that still photographers have always done with shutter speed.
"I started out in still photography and it is an incredibly liberating thing to reach up and change the shutter speed knob, hold the camera still and have your subjects stay still. It allows you to work with available light and practical light in natural environments and capture the mood and feel of a place in a very beautiful way."
—Jon Silberg
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