Diving into uncharted realms of art and the imagination, Walt Disney Pictures and the talented filmmaking trio responsible for such recent animated favorites as ?Beauty and the Beast? and ?The Hunchback of Notre Dame? ? producer Don Hahn and directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise ? take moviegoers on a wondrous animated expedition to ?Atlantis: The Lost Empire.? With its bold, graphic visual interpretation and eye-popping wide-screen animation, ?Atlantis: The Lost Empire? is an exciting and imaginative cinematic journey to a fascinating and mysterious place. Expressive character animation, the Studio?s most ambitious blend of digital and hand-drawn special effects and an action-oriented story add to the film?s extraordinary appeal. With a vocal cast headed by Michael J. Fox, James Garner and Leonard Nimoy, innovative sound effects by seven-time Academy Award?-winning designer/mixer Gary Rydstrom, and a stunning underscore by acclaimed composer James Newton Howard, the film?s sound is as impressive as its look and delivers the right tone of comedy, action and drama.

In ?Atlantis: The Lost Empire,? an inexperienced young adventurer becomes the key to unraveling an ancient mystery when he joins a group of intrepid explorers to find the legendary lost empire. At the center of this action-filled animated adventure is na?ve-but-determined museum cartographer/linguistics expert Milo Thatch, who dreams of completing the quest begun by his late grandfather, a famous explorer. When a long lost journal surfaces, providing new clues to the location, and an eccentric billionaire agrees to fund an expedition, the action shifts into high gear. Milo ultimately leads Commander Rourke and his team to the elusive undersea kingdom, but what they find there defies their expectations and triggers an explosive series of events that only Milo can resolve.

A talented group of actors and actresses were enlisted to give voice to the characters. Michael J. Fox?s bold vocalization of Milo Thatch gave the character the energy, strength, and appeal of an action hero. Veteran actor James Garner lent his genial, avuncular style to the character of Commander Rourke. Leonard Nimoy gave a royal turn as the reclusive King of Atlantis, who alone holds the secrets of his civilization. Providing the vocals for his daring daughter, Princess Kida, is veteran voiceover actress Cree Summer. John Mahoney is heard as the eccentric billionaire, Preston B. Whitmore, who finances the expedition to Atlantis. David Ogden Stiers, a Disney animation favorite, returns to the Studio to voice Milo?s bombastic boss, Fenton Q. Harcourt.

The voices for Rourke?s rough-and-ready team of explorers are provided by an equally diverse and versatile group of vocalists. Claudia Christian (Commander Susan Ivanova on ?Babylon 5?) gives a cold and calculating performance as the beautiful Helga Sinclair. Voiceover virtuoso Corey Burton dishes the dirt with his earthy and humorous portrayal of geologist Gaetan Moliere (aka ?Mole?). Don Novello (Father Guido Sarducci) gives an explosively hilarious performance as the laid-back demolitions expert Vinny Santorini. Actor Phil Morris (?Seinfeld?) is just what the doctor ordered as the voice of the fast-talking Dr. Sweet. The late Jim Varney (who created the lovable nuisance Ernest and gave voice to Slinky Dog in the Disney/Pixar ?Toy Story? films) creates one final character with his vocalizations for the crew?s crusty cook, Cookie. Jacqueline Obradors (?Six Days, Seven Nights?) is Audrey Ramirez, the ?grease monkey? of the outfit and loyal friend to Milo.

Working closely with screenwriter Tab Murphy (?Tarzan?) and a talented story team (supervised by John Sanford), Hahn, Trousdale and Wise began to incorporate new plot points and character development through a storyboard-driven process. Kevin Harkey, Chris Ure, Todd Kurosawa, Kelly Wightman and Dean DeBlois comprised the story team and contributed to this process. David Reynolds is credited with writing additional screenplay material.

From the very inception of the project, the directors had a strong concept of what the film should look like. Mutual fans of a popular comic book artist named Mike Mignola (Hellboy, ?Bram Stoker?s Dracula? ? the official comic adaptation of Francis Ford Coppola?s film, etc.), Trousdale and Wise chose a bold departure for the design and style for ?Atlantis: The Lost Empire.? Enlisting the talents of art director Dave Goetz (their collaborator on ?The Hunchback of Notre Dame?), the directors brought in Mignola to help design the production and freely adapt his flat, graphic and layered style for their purposes. The resulting blend of classic Disney and Mike Mignola ? a style which was internally referred to as ?Dis-nola? ? gave the film a daring and expressive look unlike any of the Studio?s other features. Mignola himself had a hand in designing Atlantis and giving it a distressed tropical paradise look with a Southeast Asian flavor. His design style is felt throughout the film in the look of the characters and the background settings. In keeping with the film?s 1914 setting, the artistic team incorporated elements of the machine age/industrial period with the imaginative graphic style of Mignola.

Helping to achieve this distinctive look for the film was an artistic team that included background supervisor Lisa Keene, layout supervisor Ed Ghertner and artistic coordinator Chris Jenkins. The film?s other artistic leaders were computer graphics imagery supervisor Kiran Joshi, visual effects supervisor Marlon West, cleanup supervisor Marshall Toomey, scene planning supervisor Tom Baker and color models supervisor Karen Comella. Ellen Keneshea was the film?s editor. Another key player on the production team was associate producer Kendra Haaland.
In order to do justice to the film?s vast landscape and lavish settings, the filmmakers chose to present ?Atlantis: The Lost Empire? in CinemaScope?. This wide-screen format has only been used in animation on rare occasions (?Lady and the Tramp,? ?Sleeping Beauty,? and the Disney/Pixar film, ?A Bug?s Life?) and the impact is extraordinary. A wide-screen presentation requires a special approach to composition plus additional animation to utilize the larger screen area. Hahn notes, ?The CinemaScope screen is 30% bigger than a regular movie screen and it delivers a visceral moviegoing experience that transports audiences. Action/adventure films are ideally suited to the wide screen and ?Atlantis: The Lost Empire? uses this expanded canvas to maximum advantage.?

Adding a whole other level of credibility to the Atlantean civilization, the filmmakers turned to real-life linguistics expert Marc Okrand to create an original, readable, speakable language. Okrand, who had previously created words for the Vulcan language (for ?Star Trek II?) and went on to invent the Klingon language (used in ?Star Trek III? and on ?Star Trek: The Next Generation?), made up hundreds of Atlantean words for this film that are spoken by Michael J. Fox, Leonard Nimoy, Cree Summer and others. The Atlantean language, which has a corresponding 29 letter alphabet, is rooted in Indo-European but essentially has a set of rules all its own.

In keeping with its reputation as an action-adventure film, ?Atlantis: The Lost Empire? represents the biggest animated effects film the Studio has ever done and the best integration of traditional 2D and digital 3D effects in Disney?s history. Artistic coordinator Chris Jenkins estimates that there is some form of effects in 6000 of the 7600 feet of film. Digital effects (362 in all) are seen in 30% of the film and ?Deep Canvas? (a digital approach to painting backgrounds which was created for ?Tarzan?? to add a sense of depth to the scene) was used in at least half a dozen scenes. Among the dynamic visual effects seen in ?Atlantis: The Lost Empire? are explosions, lava-spouting volcanoes, fire-setting fireflies, glowing crystals, laser beams, atmospheric effects, tidal waves, bubbles, and crowd scenes, among others.

Also adding to its impact as an action-adventure film is a dynamic score by James Newton Howard. Director Kirk Wise notes, ?He gives the film such scale and sweep and really huge emotion. He treats the film as he would a live-action film and his contribution is truly amazing.?

In addition to writing the film score, Howard also lent his musical talents to composing the end credit song in collaboration with acclaimed songwriter Diane Warren (who also wrote the lyrics). Entitled ?Where the Dream Takes You,? it is sung by hit recording artist Mya.

Another major highlight of the film is the vast amount of imaginative land and sea vehicles that was created for it. Ranging in shape and size from the massive Leviathan (the mechanical Crustacean-like guardian of Atlantis) to the sophisticated Ulysses (the explorers? submarine, estimated to be 1000 feet in length) to the crystal-powered flying Stone Fish, used as a means of transportation by the Atlanteans, the vehicles play a major role in the film. The explorers bring a caravan of 1914-vintage steam powered trucks and machines that include Mole?s Digger, Cookie?s Chuckwagon, and other transport vehicles. The film?s finale even features a Gyroscopic Emergency Evacuation Air Ship (or gyro-evac), an inflatable escape device complete with propellers.

Animation on ?Atlantis: The Lost Empire? began in late 1997 with the production team eventually reaching a maximum of about 350 artists, animators and technicians. Although most of the production took place in California, Disney?s Paris Animation Studio also made a major contribution to the effort with the animation of Helga Sinclair and some of the film?s backgrounds, cleanup animation and effects.

The filmmakers assembled a top team of animators to bring their large ensemble cast of characters to life. Many of the supervising animators (including John Pomeroy, Ron Husband, Dave Pruiksma, Tony DeRosa, Mike Cedeno and Shawn Keller) have been associated with Disney Feature Animation for two decades. Several have supervised characters before (Mike Surrey, Russ Edmunds and Randy Haycock), while others (including Anne Marie Bardwell and Yoshi Tamura) stepped up to the plate with first-time supervising roles on this film.
?We had a great group of people working on this film,? notes Hahn. ?There was a lot of experience in the ranks, from Gary and Kirk on down, and this was a team which had largely worked together before on ?Beauty? and ?The Hunchback of Notre Dame.? They communicated well and they had a lot of fun in the process. We had a lot of depth on our bench in terms of creative talent and we discovered some really great new talent as well.?

Thomas Schumacher, president of Walt Disney Feature Animation, observes, ??Atlantis: The Lost Empire? presented our creative team with a great opportunity to explore the action-adventure genre in animation and Don, Kirk and Gary have taken full advantage of the medium to tell a great story. They are masters at what they do and this film reflects a new level of maturity and storytelling excellence for them as filmmakers. The film itself has a look and style all its own with a great ensemble of characters that we think audiences are going to love. Everyone seems to have a different theory about Atlantis and it was fun for us to learn about some of those exciting notions and come up with our own mythological take on this fascinating subject.?

Not many films can claim to have had an entire language created for it, but in the case of ?Atlantis: The Lost Empire,? that is exactly what happened. In order to add to the credibility of the civilization, the filmmakers turned to linguistics expert Marc Okrand to invent a readable, speakable language that is used by the Atlantean population. Okrand, who has dabbled in Vulcan and had previously invented Klingon for the ?Star Trek? films and television shows, took the challenge. Veteran Disney designer John Emerson had a hand in working with Okrand and the filmmakers to come up with a written alphabet that included lots of interesting doodles and vowels with dots over them.

?Atlantean is an important element in the film and not just window dressing,? notes Okrand. ?It is a language of real people as opposed to creatures from outer space. The filmmakers wanted the Atlantean language to play a major role in the film. It wasn?t just that these people were from somewhere else and spoke something else. The language itself is a character. So we talked about how to incorporate what the language ought to be and how it was going to be used. Some of our conversations were specific to the film and the plot and some were about how languages and writing systems work in general. With Klingon, the sound systems didn?t have to fit human languages, whereas with Atlantean it is the exact opposite.

?Phonetically, Altantean is an easy language,? continues Okrand. ?But grammatically, it is very different from English. It does things that English doesn?t do. Partly, the word order is different; partly the way the suffixes work are different. The verbs are highly inflected. As a written language, there is also a major difference. Atlantean goes back and forth. You start in the upper left-hand corner and work your way across to the right. At the end of the line, you drop down, still on the right, and read the second line right to left. The characters themselves are very complex. There are 29 letters plus ten characters for digits 0 through 9. In Atlantean, there is no letter ?c? because the same sound can be created using either an ?s? or ?k? substitute. Additionally, we have a single letter for the ?sh,? ?th? and ?ch? sound.?

Bearing in mind that Atlantis was supposed to be the root of all modern civilizations and following the film?s premise that it is located near Iceland, Okrand used Indo-European as his starting point in creating the language.

?The people who currently live in this region of the world are descendants of a group of people that anthropologists and linguists call Indo-Europeans,? says Okrand. ?Although Indo-Europeans no longer exist, I was able to study the reconstructed language that is what they probably spoke. Using that as a basis, I looked for sounds that are common in a lot of languages and ones that were not associated with a particular language. Grammatically, I wanted something different than English, so we did things like put the verb at the end of the sentence. I created hundreds of words specific to the dialogue in the film and even created an Atlantean dictionary. If a word didn?t have a basis in Indo-European, I would look at other ancient languages to get an idea. I didn?t take any words intact.?

Actor Leonard Nimoy has spoken Okrand?s invented languages before and once again proved adept at picking up a new tongue. Okrand observes, ?Leonard is my favorite. I taught him how to speak Vulcan in ?Star Trek II? and he did a brilliant job with the Atlantean as well. One of the biggest challenges in creating this language was to make it sound like a real language and not gibberish. All of the actors were terrific at making it sound believable.?

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