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FINDING
NEMO
ABOUT
THE PRODUCTION |
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| ABOUT
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FINDING
NEMO
PRODUCTION INFORMATION
The Academy Award®-winning creators of the "Toy Story" films, "A Bug's
Life" and "Monsters, Inc." dive into a whole new world of computer-animated
fun, fantasy and heartfelt emotion with their splashy new underwater
adventure, "Finding Nemo." This latest feature from Pixar Animation
Studios, presented by Walt Disney Pictures,follows the comedic and
eventful journeys of two fish - the overly cautious Marlin and his
curious son Nemo - who become separated in the Great Barrier Reef.
Buoyed by the companionship of Dory, a friendly-but-forgetful fish,
Marlin embarks on a dangerous trek and finds himself the unlikely
hero of an epic effort to rescue his son - who hatches a few daring
plans of his own to return safely home.
Written and directed by Oscar® nominee Andrew Stanton, who co-directed
the 1998 Disney/Pixar hit, "A Bug's Life" and is credited as co-screenwriter
on all four of Pixar's previous features, "Finding Nemo" sets a new
"high water mark" for the art and technology of computer animation
with its incredible underwater world populated with memorable characters.
Lee Unkrich, co-director of "Toy Story 2" and "Monsters, Inc." once
again serves in that capacity and lends his filmmaking expertise to
this project. The film was produced by Graham Walters, a nine-year
Pixar veteran who most recently served as production manager on "Toy
Story 2." Based on an original story by Andrew Stanton, the screenplay
for "Finding Nemo" was written by Stanton, Bob Peterson and David
Reynolds. Making his Pixar debut on "Finding Nemo" is multiple Academy
Award®-nominated composer Thomas Newman, whose exciting and sophisticated
score came to be regarded by the filmmakers as a character in the
film.
Lending guidance to the overall project in his role as executive producer
was John Lasseter, Pixar's executive vice president of creative, and
the Academy Award®-winning filmmaker who directed "Toy Story," "A
Bug's Life" and "Toy Story 2," and served as executive producer on
"Monsters, Inc."
According to Lasseter, "This movie absolutely raises the bar for Pixar
and for the art of computer animation. I'm so proud of Andrew for
making a film that carries out his vision and gives us some of the
most charming characters Pixar has ever created.The film is breathtakingly
beautiful and filled with real drama, real emotion and depth, as well
as great comedy. Being the father of five sons, this was definitely
a story I could relate to. As filmmakers, we love to have the emotion
be true and honest. And even though 'Nemo' is a complete fantasy,
it's based on things that are familiar to audiences. The father-son
relationship, going to school for the first time - these are things
everyone understands yet this film is about fish on a coral reef.
"Technically, we've pushed things beyond anything Pixar has done before,"
Lasseter continues. "Just animating fish was difficult, but our technical
team has created an underwater environment that is graceful and beautiful.The
real underwater world is so spectacular that it's already a fantasy
world. Our challenge was to let the audience know that our ocean is
caricatured. We wanted them to know that this wonderful world doesn't
exist, but then using the amazing tools that we have in computer animation
make it look totally believable. Our goal is always to make things
believable, not realistic. By stylizing the design of things, adding
more geometry and pushing the colors, we were able to create a natural
and credible world for our characters."
A talented team of top actors helped the filmmakers find the character
of Nemo and the other members of the colorful cast. Acclaimed actor/
director/comedian Albert Brooks lends his vocal talents and comic
timing to Marlin, the fretful and slightly neurotic clown fish father.
Emmy-winning comedian Ellen DeGeneres gives a memorable and engaging
performance as the vacillating voice of the eternally optimistic blue
tang, Dory. Nine-year-old Alexander Gould (who has been acting since
the age of two and whose credits include "Ally McBeal," "Malcolm in
the Middle" and "Boomtown") is heard as the adventurous young clown
fish, Nemo. Adding bite to the voices of sharks Bruce, Anchor and
Chum, respectively, are Barry Humphries ("Dame Edna"), Australian
actor/comedian Eric Bana ("The Hulk"), and New Zealander Bruce Spence
("Mad Max"). Director/screenwriter Andrew Stanton goes with the flow
and gives a laid-back vocal performance for the unflappable sea turtle,
Crush.
WALT DISNEY PICTURES
presents Academy Award®-winning actor Geoffrey Rush ("Shine") wings
it with a top-flight performance as the gossipy pelican Nigel. Willem
Dafoe (an Oscar® nominee for "Platoon" and "Shadow of the Vampire")
is heard as Gill, the brooding moorish idol leader of the tank gang
who takes newcomer Nemo under his fin. Allison Janney (a three-time
Emmy Award winner for "West Wing") does a "star" turn as the astute
starfish, Peach. Brad Garrett (Raymond's Emmy Awardwinning policeman
brother on "Everybody Loves Raymond") voices Bloat, a blowfish with
a tendency for emotional as well as literal blow-ups. Stephen Root
("King of the Hill") is heard as Bubbles, the bubbleobsessed yellow
tang. Vicki Lewis ("NewsRadio") lends voice to Deb (and Flo), a reflective
black & white humbug damsel fish with an identity crisis. Bringing
the right blend of panic and desperation to Gurgle, a royal gramma
whose fear of germs makes him a royal pain, is film and stage veteran
Austin Pendleton. Top Pixar storyman Joe Ranft (who has previously
voiced Wheezy the lonely squeak toy penguin in "Toy Story 2" and Heimlich
the jolly German caterpillar in "A Bug's Life") adds to his vocal
repertoire with his role as Jacques, a fastidious cleaner shrimp who
loves to muck about.
From a visual standpoint, "Finding Nemo" is a stunning achievement
that is both aesthetically appealing and groundbreaking. Production
designer Ralph Eggleston (an Oscar®-winner for his direction of the
Pixar animated short "For the Birds" and production designer on the
original "Toy Story") set the look and style for the film.The film's
dual directors of photography, Sharon Calahan and Jeremy Lasky, added
to the look and excitement of "Nemo's" underwater setting with their
innovative approach to lighting and layout. Calahan's lighting helped
to give the film a modern 3-strip Technicolor quality and enhanced
the underwater effect with soft backgrounds, vibrant colors and beautiful
glows.
Lasky's expert handling of the layout (camera movements, staging)
added to the sense of being underwater and took full advantage of
the film's dramatic possibilities.
"Finding Nemo" provides a spectacular showcase for all the members
of Pixar's technical and creative teams. In order to tell the story
convincingly, the technical team had to discover new and improved
ways for animating underwater imagery in the computer. Extensive research
and development was done to study water properties and new tools were
created to provide the full range of possibilities required by the
script. Supervising technical director Oren Jacob led an incredible
effort to capture the look and feel of an organic coral reef and a
vast ocean that would respond in a realistic way to the action of
the characters. Early on, Jacob and Pixar's global technical wizards
(supervised by Michael Fong) identified five key components that suggest
an underwater environment - lighting (patterns of caustic lighting
that dance on the ocean floor and fog beams that shine from the surface),
particulate matter (the ever-present debris that appears in water),
surge and swell (the constant movement that drives plant and aquatic
life), murk (how the color of light filters out over distance and
the distance appears dark), and reflections and refractions.Add in
bubbles, ripples, drips and rings, and you have the makings of a very
complex environment.
Jacob explains, "This film is far more complicated than 'Monsters,
Inc.' in that almost every shot involves some kind of simulation program
or simulated movement. On average, there are more things going on
per frame in this movie than we've done before by a pretty significant
amount.There was more interdependency between the various departments
than ever before and we often went back and forth to make sure the
lighting and other components looked just right."
Producer Graham Walters adds, "'Finding Nemo' was an amazing film
to work on and it exceeded our expectations at every step of the process.
Throughout the production, people on the crew would walk into the
dailies and be blown away by what they were seeing. The coral reef
is particularly beautiful and it ended up looking as if someone had
opened Ralph Eggleston's mind and poured it on the screen.Andrew was
a great leader and inspired us all.
He has a tremendous amount of respect for the audience and never underestimates
them. He is always pushing the Pixar films to get more from the language
of film and expand the boundaries of the medium. Lee Unkrich was a
great partner in helping him make the movie that he envisioned up
on screen."
Production on "Finding Nemo" began in January 2000 with the crew ultimately
reaching a maximum of 180. All of the animation was done at Pixar
Animation Studios' beautiful new state-of-the-art facility in Emeryville,
California.
David Stainton, president of Walt Disney Feature Animation, concludes,
"The talented team at Pixar continues to amaze and entertain audiences
with their incredible technical accomplishments and their ability
to tell stories that touch us all. 'Finding Nemo' is another triumph
for the Studio and a great debut for Andrew Stanton as a director
in his own right.We're proud of our continuing relationship with John
Lasseter and all of the great filmmakers at Pixar and feel that this
latest effort represents another milestone for the art of computer
animation."
THE STORY
Life along the Great Barrier Reef is full of dangers when you're a
tiny clown fish. And for Marlin, a single parent determined to protect
his only son, Nemo, there are constant fears and anxieties.When it
comes time for Nemo to leave the protective shelter of his sea anemone
home for the first day of school, Marlin nervously accompanies him
and agonizes over his every move. When Nemo defies his father and
swims beyond the reef's awesome "drop off" to investigate a boat,
he is suddenly scooped up by a diver as Marlin helplessly watches.
Marlin's sinking feeling turns to desperate action as he frantically
swims off in search of his son. As he passes a school of fish, he
literally bumps into Dory, an agreeable blue tang who offers to help.
The only problem is that Dory has severe short-term memory loss and
forgets things as quickly as they happen. Together, this aquatic odd
couple set out on an impossible mission.
Meanwhile, in a dentist's office overlooking Sydney Harbor, Nemo has
landed in a fish tank that is home to a colorful group of characters.
The leader is a tough moorish idol named Gill, who also came from
the ocean and dreams of one day returning.The other tank-mates include:
a starfish named Peach; a temperamental blowfish named Bloat; Bubbles,
a bubble-obsessed yellow tang; a germophobic royal gramma named Gurgle;
a compulsive cleaner shrimp named Jacques; and Deb, a black & white
humbug damsel fish who believes that the reflection in the tank glass
is her identical twin sister, Flo. When Nemo is officially initiated
into the gang, he rekindles Gill's dormant desire to escape.
Marlin and Dory soon find themselves in troubled waters contending
with such hazards as a trio of sharks (embarked on a self-help program
to improve their image from mindless eating machines); a mesmerizing-but-deadly
angler fish; and a tangled forest of jellyfish.The duo also have a
close encounter with a blue whale, surf the East Australian Current
(EAC) with a herd of hip sea turtles, and fend off an attack by ravenous
seagulls, as they make their way to Sydney Harbor. Their adventures
become the stuff of legends, and soon fish and fowl alike are buzzing
about this extraordinary pair.Word of this heroic clown fish traveling
the ocean in search of his son even reaches Nemo back in his tank.
Nemo is surprised and thrilled when he learns of his father's search
for him. With Gill's encouragement and motivated by a strong desire
to return to his father, Nemo moves forward with a daring escape plan.
But time is running out; the dentist's rambunctious niece Darla (a
destructive dynamo who has been known to shake her pet fish until
they go belly up) is set to pick up Nemo the next day.
Arriving at Sydney Harbor, Marlin and Dory get a major assist from
Nigel, a friendly pelican who has also heard the amazing stories of
this brave clown fish searching for his son. With the clock furiously
ticking and numerous forces at play, the father and son remain oceans
apart in their efforts to reunite.
ORIGINS OF THE PROJECT
The story of "Finding Nemo" was very personal for director/writer
Andrew Stanton, derived from a series of events in his own life.A
visit to Marine World in 1992 started him thinking about the amazing
possibilities of capturing an undersea world in computer animation.This
was three years before "Toy Story" made its debut, but Stanton was
fascinated with the prospect of creating such a wondrous environment.
Another piece of the puzzle came from Stanton's childhood memories
of a fish tank in his family dentist's office. He recalls looking
forward to going to the dentist just so he could look at the fish.
Stanton remembered thinking, "What a weird place for fish from the
ocean to end up. Don't these fish miss their home? Would these fish
try to escape and go back to the ocean?"
The final piece of the puzzle for Stanton was his own relationship
with his son. He explains,"When my son was five, I remember taking
him to the park. I had been working long hours and felt guilty about
not spending enough time with him.As we were walking, I was experiencing
all this pent up emotion and thinking 'I-miss-you, I-miss-you,' but
I spent the whole walk going,'Don't touch that. Don't do that.You're
gonna fall in there.' And there was this third-party voice in my head
saying 'You're completely wasting the entire moment that you've got
with your son right now.' I became obsessed with this premise that
fear can deny a good father from being one.With that revelation, all
the pieces fell into place and we ended up with our story."
Pitching the story to his mentor and colleague John Lasseter was the
next step in "Nemo's" evolution. Stanton prepared a roomful of elaborate
visual aids and launched into a pitch to sell his story idea. After
an hour, an exhausted Stanton asked Lasseter what he thought. "You
had me at 'fish,'" Lasseter replied.
Lasseter recalls, "I remember when we were working on 'A Bug's Life'
Andrew had this great little drawing that he did over his desk which
showed two small fish swimming alongside a giant whale. And I always
liked that. He told me it was something he was thinking about but
I didn't hear anything more about it until the pitch. I've been a
scuba diver since 1980 and I just love the underwater world. When
he pitched this idea, I knew that it was going to be amazing in our
medium. We always pride ourselves at Pixar on matching the subject
matter of our movies with the medium. I really did know when he said
'fish' and 'underwater' that this film was going to be great.
"Andrew is such a great storyteller," adds Lasseter. "He has an absolute
fantastic devotion to making sure that the movie is not predictable.
He's always added that to all of our films and I've learned a lot
from him in that area. He believes that if something is getting too
schmaltzy, he has to turn it on its ear.He has a way of getting sincerity
through insincerity, but it's not so insincere that it doesn't have
heart. He tends to be a little cynical but, in the end, there's so
much heart underneath what he's doing."
Stanton concludes, "Telling a story where the protagonist is the father
got me excited. I don't think I've ever seen an animated film from
that perspective. It made me interested in wanting to write it because
I knew I could tell that story. I also thought that the ocean was
a great metaphor for life. It's the scariest, most intriguing place
in the world because anything can be out there. And that can be a
bad thing or a good thing. I loved playing with that issue and having
a father whose own fears of life impede his parenting abilities. He
has to overcome that issue just to become a better father. And having
him in the middle of the ocean where he has to confront everything
he never wanted to face in life seemed like a great opportunity for
fun and still allowed us to delve into some slightly deeper issues."
He adds, "My dad gave me some good advice about parenting. He said,'The
tough choice you have is you can either be their parent or their friend.
Pick one.' It's a lifelong dilemma and I love indulging in that truth
with this film. I'm considered the most cynical of the group here
at Pixar. I'm the first one to say when something is getting too corny
or too sappy. Yet, I'd say I'm probably the biggest sucker romantic
in the group, if the emotion is truthful. I just loved the idea of
doing a father-son love story.They're in eternal conflict."
GONE FISHIN':
PIXAR'S ANIMATORS DRAW INSPIRATION FROM VOICE TALENTS, A FISH EXPERT
AND A TANKFUL OF FISH
Pixar's expert team of animators have had their share of challenges
in the past bringing life to toys, bugs and monsters, but their assignment
on "Finding Nemo" proved to be the toughest yet. Visits to aquariums,
diving stints in Monterey and Hawaii, study sessions in front of Pixar's
well-stocked 25-gallon fish tank, and a series of in-house lectures
from an ichthyologist all helped to get them into the swim of things.
The animators also looked at some of the Disney classics that involved
underwater scenes - "Pinocchio," "The Sword in the Stone," "Bedknobs
and Broomsticks," and "The Little Mermaid" - for inspiration. In the
end, it was the naturalistic portrayal of animal life in "Bambi" that
left the biggest impression.
Stanton explains, "We kept coming back to 'Bambi' because of the way
the filmmakers adhered to the real nature of how these animals moved
and what their motor skills were.They used that as the basis for getting
as much expression, activity and appeal.We wanted our characters to
work in that same way.We thought of it as 'Bambi' underwater."
Supervising animator Dylan Brown, an eightyear Pixar veteran, and
directing animators Mark Walsh and Alan Barillaro were responsible
for guiding an animation team that fluctuated between 28 and 50. With
a large cast of characters - ranging in size from the petite cleaner
shrimp, Jacques, to the enormous blue whale - this group had their
work cut out for them as they learned about fish locomotion and discovered
how to create believable behaviors for characters without arms and
legs.
Brown explains, "Each film has its own unique set of challenges and
we always begin by trying to figure out what they are and how to solve
them.With 'Nemo,' we had an entire cast of fish characters with no
arms or legs. Since they didn't have the traditional limbs to allow
strong silhouettes, we had to invent a whole new bag of tricks. In
the beginning it was a bit daunting and frustrating.We began analyzing
what was appealing in terms of posing fish.We put a lot of work into
the face and getting the facial articulation just right.We didn't
want them to be just heads on sticks like in a Monty Python sketch.
Their faces had to be integrated with the entire body language. Where
a human character might just turn his head to look at something, a
fish might turn his head just a little and the entire body would pivot
along with it.
"Another big factor for us was timing," Brown continues. "With characters
like Buzz, Woody or Sulley, you have an earth-based gravity. But fish
underwater can travel three feet in a flash.You blink and the thing
is gone.We were wondering how they did that and studied their movements
on video. By slowing things down,we could figure it out. Our timing
got very crisp as we learned how to get our fish characters from one
place to another in the course of a frame or two. We always tried
to incorporate naturalistic fish movements into the acting. By putting
things like one-frame darting and transitioning from one place to
another into our acting, the characters became very believable."
In the past, animators were always told to "ground their characters"
and avoid letting them "float." With "Finding Nemo," they had to figure
out the exact opposite - how to make them look like they were floating,
but in water - not air.
Alan Barillaro observes, "It became fun and challenging to come up
with a whole new range of how to communicate and gesture. You don't
have gravity to deal with underwater, so we discovered things like
when a character gestured, he would tend to drift a bit more. I found
that a lot of the gestures humans make could be boiled down to eye
and face movements. I would look at my own face in the mirror and
imagine I had a tail on the back of it."
Mark Walsh recalls,"The first thing that Andrew did on the film was
to sit with us in front of the fish tank and basically pitch the story
to us. He explained that the magic of the world was going down to
the perspective of a clown fish and imagining him going through an
entire ocean and encountering sharks, turtles, jellyfish, etc.You
imagine moving in closer and seeing this little fish and how hard
he is trying."
To ensure that their characters would have the range of expressions
and movements needed, the lead animators linked up with modelers and
riggers from the character department and served as their "animation
buddy." With direct input from the animators, the technical directors
created new and improved tools and controls (known as avars) to enhance
the overall character performance.
Brian Green, the Characters CG supervisor, explains, "This was the
first time that Pixar has had a character department and it allowed
us to serve the animators' needs better. The animation buddy might
give us a drawing and say 'For acting purposes, I need it to look
more like this.' We would go in and adjust it. This made for a very
close relationship. We also tried to create automatic dynamic motion
for some of the characters. Our goal was to try and automate everything
we could - things like the movement of dangly bits on some characters
- so the animator could concentrate on the performance."
Helping the animators get up to speed on fish behavior and locomotion
was Adam Summers, a noted professor in the Ecology and Evolution department
at the University of California at Irvine.
Summers notes, "I'm what is called a biomechanic or sometimes a functional
morphologist. My specialty is applying simple engineering principles
to how animals move and eat.They asked me to come in and talk about
things like fish shapes and colors, and I ended up teaching an essentially
graduate-level ichthyology course to the Pixar staff. There were at
least twelve lectures. It was really an incredibly rewarding thing
because I found that these folks like their job as much as I like
mine. They were infinitely curious about fish and they were flat-out
the best students I had ever had. By the end of each lecture, they
would be asking me questions that I didn't have answers for.
"I remember speaking with character designer Ricky Nierva about a
fish character and he asked, 'Where would the eyebrows really be?'
I told him fish don't have eyebrows. They don't have any muscles in
their face except for jaw closers. Ricky said,'Adam, fish don't talk
but talking is going to be a requirement for the movie. So we're going
to have to be taking artistic license with science all the time.'"
Summers also gave the character designers and animators some important
insights into fish locomotion by explaining the difference between
flappers and rowers. Clown fish are rowers who tend to propel themselves
by moving their pectoral fins in a horizontal motion.At higher speeds
they wiggle their entire body. Blue tangs, like Dory, are flappers,
who flap their fins up and down to move and almost never wiggle their
entire body. The result was that Father's movements were more fluid
and graceful, while Dory tended to flit sharply about."
Summers adds,"In most animated films with fish, the characters move
back and forth with no visible propulsive device and that really offends
the eye.You don't need to be an ichthyologist to know there's something
wrong with that kind of locomotion. It'd be like watching a horse
trot with two of its legs still. In 'Nemo' if a fish is moving, its
fins are moving.There's a sort of kinetic feel to the characters that
tells you they're underwater. They're not acting in air. When they
flap around, it has consequences for their whole bodies. They did
a heck of a job making clear the differences between living in an
incompressible fluid like water and compressible fluid like air. I
was completely knocked out.This was an amazing group to work with
and we had a lot of fun in the process."
The starting point for any good animated performance is the vocal
talent, and with "Finding Nemo," the filmmakers had some of the very
best.
According to Andrew Stanton, "With Albert Brooks you get more than
a voice, you get an established persona. He always knows how to maximize
the entertainment value of any moment. Even when his character wasn't
asked to be funny in a scene, he knew exactly how to play it for entertainment.
At the recording sessions, he would bring his own sensibilities to
the material and just kind of run with it.We learned to just start
the tape rolling and give it a tail slate at the end.We didn't want
to interrupt his creative flow. He would just get these ideas and
go again and again. He's such a hard worker and very eager to please.
"Ellen DeGeneres was someone I wanted for the role from the start,"
adds Stanton. "Even before the character was named Dory, I knew I
needed someone to help Father find his son. In the middle of thinking
about this character one evening,my wife was watching the "Ellen"
show on TV and subconsciously I could hear her doing her schtick of
changing her mind five times before a sentence finishes. Usually I
don't like to trap myself into writing specifically to a character,
but this seemed like such a good match that I decided to go with my
gut and hope the planets would align. I called Ellen up to see if
she might be interested and I basically told her that I had written
the part for her and that I'd be in trouble if she didn't take it.
She was so nice and she said, 'Well then I'd better take it.' She
brought a real kindness and gentleness to the part, along with the
rhythm and the quirkiness. Both she and Albert have a way of saying
things that are unique to them.
"Alexander Gould brought a genuine, untainted quality to the voice
of Nemo," recalls Stanton. "It's amazing how many kids sound prepped
or have some preconceived notion of what a good actor should sound
like. Alex sounded real and he totally understood direction. We were
really lucky to find him."
TECHNICAL TRIUMPHS:
A NEW HIGH WATER MARK FOR COMPUTER ANIMATION
Water has traditionally been one of the most difficult things to create
effectively and economically in computer animation. Faced with a film
that was set largely underwater, the technical team on "Finding Nemo"
had to find new ways to meet the enormous demands of the production
and solve some of the problems that had been encountered by others
in the past. Supervising technical director Oren Jacobs led the effort
to give Stanton and his team exactly what they wanted.
"Our starting point was to watch a lot of films with underwater scenes
and analyze what made them seem like they were underwater," explains
Stanton. "What made them not seem like they were in air? It was a
bit like getting a great cake and trying to figure out how somebody
baked it by breaking it down.We came up with a shopping list of five
key components that suggest an underwater environment - lighting,
particulate matter, surge and swell, murk, and reflections and refractions."
Jacob adds, "Even before we had a finished script, we knew we had
a story about fish in a coral reef.That was enough for our global
technology group to begin coming up with tools for making water move
back and forth. Coral reefs are organic living things so it's not
a static set like the door vault in 'Monsters, Inc.' Early on, we
took a diving trip to Hawaii with some of the film's key players.Then
we looked at every Jacques Cousteau, National Geographic and 'Blue
Planet' video we could find.We also studied every underwater film
from 'Jaws' and 'The Abyss' to 'The Perfect Storm' to understand what
the filmmakers chose to caricature. We came up with our own idea of
what audiences expect to see with water and developed our own ratios
and proportions."
Under Jacob's supervision were six technical teams specializing in
different components and environments seen in the film. Lisa Forsell
and Danielle Feinberg were the CG supervisors responsible for the
Ocean Unit. David Eisenmann and his team handled the models, shading,
lighting, simulation, etc. for the Reef Unit. Steve May headed up
the Sharks/Sydney Unit, which tackled the submarine scene, shots inside
the whale and most of the above-water scenes in the Harbor. Jesse
Hollander oversaw the Tank Unit, which created all the elements for
the fish tank. Michael Lorenzen was in charge of the Schooling/Flocking
team, which created hundreds of thousands of fish plus key elements
for the turtle drive sequence. Brian Green led the Character Unit,
which created the look and complex controls for nearly 120 aquatic,
bird and human characters.
The Ocean Unit was responsible for such scenes as the school of moon
fish, which form different objects (an arrow, a lobster, a boat, etc.),
the angler fish chase, and the turtle drive in the East Australian
Current. The unit's most challenging and impressive scene, however,
was the jellyfish forest.This rich and colorful moment finds Marlin
and Dory in an ever-expanding and increasingly dangerous sea of deadly
pink jellyfish.
Forsell explains, "This scene involved several thousand jellyfish.
Our unit built the model for a single jellyfish and put a lot of work
into the build-up of jellyfish density.This involved creating a simulation
for the group that controlled the movement of the tendrils, how quickly
they swam and in what direction. We had some great reference footage
and were particularly fixated on one species from Palau that we found
at the Monterey Aquarium. David Batte wrote a whole shading system
we called 'transblurrency.'
Transparency is like a window and you can see right through it.Translucency
is like a plastic curtain that lets light through but you can't see
through it.
Transblurrency is like a bathroom glass; you can see through it but
it's all distorted and blurry."
For David Eisenmann and his team on the Reef Unit, the challenge was
to create a caricatured version of the coral reef that would suit
the purposes of the story. They were responsible for the film's rich
and vibrant opening scenes and building the anemone home of Marlin
and Nemo.
"Our group started with a realistic approach to the reef," he explains.
"We were able to do that relatively easily but Andrew and Ralph [Eggleston]
felt it was way too busy and distracting.There was just an immense
amount of stuff. In order to get the characters to read and act against
the background, we began to simplify things.We figured out how many
different things we should build and how much variation there should
be.The director wanted about 30% of whatever you see on the screen
to be moving to make it feel like it was underwater. For the reef
scenes, this meant simulating movement for sponges, moss, grass and
other kinds of vegetation.
"The reef is very stylized and almost dreamlike," adds Eisenmann.
"The color palette opens with purples and blues and jumps to vibrant
reds and yellows.There is a real storybook, fantasy quality to it.
As the story progresses to the drop-off, things become more real and
less colorful. Because this is a journey film, our main characters
travel quite a distance through the reef. Our modelers were able to
keep the reef scenes interesting and exciting by mixing together different
shapes and textures. We had a whole grab bag of vegetation we could
use to populate a scene and, by putting different textures and shaders
onto the catspaw and staghorn coral and the sponges, we could make
it feel like completely different models from scene to scene. We spent
about a year researching corals and sponges. In the end, we were able
to take one basic form of sponge and shape, shift and mold it into
more than twenty variations."
"Instead of building a reef set and flying a camera around, David
and the Reef Unit had an amazing system for building the reef on a
shot-by-shot basis," explains producer Walters. "They had an entire
nursery of coral, plant life, etc. that they could throw together
in different configurations and custom sculpt each shot for the needs
of the story. They did an amazing job."
Picking up where the Reef Unit left off was the Sharks/Sydney Unit,
under the direction of Steve May. This group took on a wide variety
of scenes with diverse locations, including the submarine set where
the sharks meet, the fishing net scene with hundreds of thousands
of grouper fish, the scene inside the blue whale, and all of the shots
in Sydney Harbor from the boat marina to the sewage plant.
May explains,"The submarine is supposed to be like a haunted house.
It's very spooky and creepy. There are nearly 100 mines surrounding
the sub and we worked hard to cover them all with moss and have them
move with the surge and swell of the ocean. Inside the sub, it's supposed
to feel very tight all the time. It's crammed full of knobs, valves
and pipes. Because we had our own layout and modeling people, we were
able to quickly build and dress the sub as we went.We knew what we
needed and built customized parts along the way."
One of the big challenges for May and his team was simulating the
splashing water inside the blue whale. "Pixar really hadn't done splashing
water before," adds May."We had to figure out a way to do three-dimensional
water, develop the software and new techniques for running simulations
to compute the motion of the water, and then render it to look realistic.
And the entire time, the whale is swimming and going up and down.Water
had to explode and splash all around as the whale's giant tongue lifts
Marlin and Dory out of the water. This was a whole different water
dynamic than the film's underwater scenes, and we had to allow for
the large-scale behavior of the crashing water and the very small
detailed behavior of our two fish characters. Those different resolutions
were very difficult to accommodate. Lighting that scene was probably
the hardest thing we've ever had to light because the entire set was
moving, organic and filled with splashing water."
Jesse Hollander and the Tank Unit were responsible for all of the
lighting, modeling, shading and rendering associated with the dentist's
office and the fish tank. Creating the tank itself and dealing with
issues of reflection and refraction were a major challenge for this
resourceful group. They also built a wide range of set pieces for
their scenes ranging from dental equipment to the tiki heads and volcano
in the tank, and nearly 120,000 pebbles on the tank floor. Their work
included new breakthroughs in the way cloth, human hair and skin are
accomplished with computer animation.
"One of the biggest things that our unit had to develop for this film
was the reflections and refractions connected with the tank," recalls
Hollander. "Our starting point was the actual physics of what happens
to light when it enters not just water, but a glass box filled with
water.This meant computing for glass, then water, then glass into
water. But in our movie, we're not dealing with just physics, we need
to be able to have control over those physics. Most of the time we
were able to achieve the effect we wanted by offsetting the camera.At
certain angles inside the tank, there is something called TIR - total
internal reflection - where the glass becomes a perfect mirror.We
play off this quite a bit with the characters of Deb and Flo. At other
angles, the view from the tank shows double imagery. Whenever we're
inside the tank, we always use reflections. Refractions become more
of a selective thing and we only use them where necessary."
As with all Pixar films, attention to detail is critical. Hollander
explains,"As far as the objects in the tank, we tried to give them
a very cheap, kitschy Vegas feel - lots of color and cheap plastic.We
went to a lot of effort building fake molding lines and flashing for
the plastic items."
Another key contributor to the film's overall technical advances was
Michael Lorenzen, who oversaw a group of animators and technicians
in the Schooling/Flocking Unit. This unit helped to create spectacular
crowd scenes that included tens of thousands of fish.They also populated
the turtle drive sequence with up to 200 background turtles. Jacob
concludes, "The thing about 'Nemo' that makes me most proud is that
we were able to get to a place where the director was able to concentrate
on the filmmaking aspects of the film and was less hassled by technical
limitations or frustrations.We were also able to give the animators
faster models, many in real time. This was another major breakthrough.
Overall, we reduced the render time for each frame and gave the director
the visual richness he wanted and within the schedule and budget allowed."
FINDING "NEMO'S" LOOK AND STYLE:
PRODUCTION DESIGN AND CINEMATOGRAPHY
Overseeing the production design for "Finding Nemo" was Ralph Eggleston,
a Pixar veteran who had served in a similar capacity on the original
"Toy Story" and had gone on to direct the Studio's Oscar®-winning
short "For the Birds." He prepped for his role on this film with several
diving trips and a visit to Sydney Harbor to get the lay of the land
and sea. The film's two directors of photography - Sharon Calahan
and Jeremy Lasky - brought their expertise to the areas of lighting
and layout, respectively, to help capture Stanton's vision for the
film on screen.
"The music, the color and the lighting, to me, are the things that
really give the underlying emotion of every scene," says John Lasseter.
"And the lighting and color in 'Nemo' is always used for storytelling.
Ralph Eggleston is a master at that, and Sharon Calahan knows how
to get that on the screen."
"One of the biggest decisions we had to make was how much to caricature
reality," recalls Eggleston. "Fish have an almost caricatured shape
to begin with and Andrew was fairly adamant that he didn't want to
overly anthropomorphize the characters. And so we actually had to
go the other way and bring the world closer to the caricatured nature
of the fish. If we put these fish in anything that looked even quasi-real,
it wouldn't work. The characters and the world had to be on a parallel
track.
"One of our first priorities was to make the fish seem appealing,"
he adds. "Fish are slimy, scaly things and we wanted the audience
to love our characters. One way to make them more attractive was to
make them luminous. We ultimately came up with three kinds of fish
- gummy, velvety and metallic.The gummy variety, which includes Marlin
and Nemo, has a density and warmth to it.We used backlighting and
rim lights to add to their appeal and take the focus off their scaly
surface quality. The velvety category, which includes Dory, has a
soft texture to it. The metallic group was more of the typical scaly
fish.We used this for the schools of fish."
Eggleston and Calahan shared a love for the soft, bright Technicolor
films of the 1940s and had frequently discussed making a brand new
CG animated film that looked like it was from that period of time.
With "Nemo" they got their chance. The underwater setting lent itself
to soft backgrounds and characters with a glow around them.
Eggleston says, "'Nemo' doesn't look like a three-strip Technicolor
film, but rather a modern version of the quality you could achieve
with this process. Another big inspiration for us was Disney's 'Bambi.'
It's a very impressionistic film.Things fall off in the backgrounds,
and you focus on the characters. That's the approach we adopted.The
film begins with an intense Garden of Eden coral reef. From there,
the underwater backgrounds tend to become more impressionistic with
just a mountain or sandy bottom in view."
Describing "Finding Nemo" as the most complex film Pixar has ever
made from a lighting perspective, Calahan observes, "A big part of
our job was creating believable underwater environments. And that
took on many forms since we had clear water, super-murky water and
even water in a fish tank.We had to figure out the common elements
so that stylistically we could tie them all together."
Calahan credits Stanton with "having an amazing eye for forms and
designs. Design themes and strong graphic elements are really important
to him and he really gravitates towards them.Which is great because
it creates a strong visual structure for the film. He's also a lot
of fun to work with because he is willing to take some risks and experiment.
Andrew also took a real interest in what lighting could do to plus
the emotional content of the movie."
In the end, Pixar's technical team exceeded even their own expectations.
Eggleston notes, "Seeing the coral reef up there on the big screen
is simply amazing. Every piece of coral is backlit and the entire
set is like a jewel underwater. I always thought it would look good
but I had no idea it would look like this. I was the third person
to work on this film, so I've been part of the technical process since
the beginning, and still I found myself sitting in the theater thinking
'How did they do this?'"
THE SOUNDS OF "FINDING NEMO":
THOMAS NEWMAN'S SCORE AND GARY RYDSTROM'S SOUND EFFECTS MAGIC
Music and sound effects are integral parts of any motion picture experience
and the filmmakers at Pixar have always used these elements to maximum
advantage. With "Finding Nemo," Andrew Stanton got a chance to form
a new collaboration with composer Thomas Newman, and continue a long-standing
relationship with multiple Oscar®-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom.
Newman, a five-time Oscar® nominee and a recent Emmy winner for his
theme for "Six Feet Under," was a major inspiration for "Finding Nemo"
even before he came on board. Stanton wrote the screenplay for the
film while listening to Thomas Newman scores on his headphones. During
the editing process, Newman's music was used in the scratch track
as much as possible.
Co-director Lee Unkrich describes Newman's music for "Nemo" as "a
very lush orchestral score that has a lot of very quirky and interesting
instrumentation layered in.There's an unexpected quality about it.You
don't always know what you're hearing or what some of the sounds are.
He does a lot of overdubs, where he'll gather a group of musicians
together apart from the orchestra session and have them play lots
of interesting percussion and instrumentation. Then he'll layer that
into the music that's been recorded on the soundstage with the orchestra.
"It's been a real joy to work with him and he's been working with
us very much as if he's a part of Pixar," adds Unkrich."We wanted
him to have as much freedom as possible. He's been an amazing collaborator
who wants to support the film in every way he can. He knows how hard
we've been working on it and wants the film to be great. This is really
the first big action film he's scored. His music often has a moody
and darkly humorous quality."
Producer Walters agrees, "Thomas would play everything for us on his
keyboard sequencer at his house. Towards the end of production, we
would go down there almost once a week and hear all the music to picture
mocked up in his studio. It was an unbelievably good working experience.
By the time we got to the recording sessions,we had heard everything
but it sounded so much better with a 105-piece orchestra. For our
film, he also did his signature overdubs, where he goes in with his
posse ahead of time and records things to go on top of the orchestral
stuff. With the turtle drive scene, the music breaks into a full-on
classic surf rock sound. His score is very classy and it plays the
emotions a lot."
The filmmakers came to regard Newman's score as being practically
a character in the film. His reputation for originality and intensifying
mood and character through music added an additional level of entertainment
and enjoyment.
Seven-time Oscar®-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom has worked
on every one of the Disney/Pixar features released to date and preceded
that with work on such Pixar shorts as the 1989 favorite, "Knick Knack."
He once again lends his incredible talent to complete the experience
of "Finding Nemo." Complementing the visual excitement of the film,
Rydstrom's inventive catalogue of sounds adds to the sensation of
being underwater. "This was a movie with no feet, no footsteps and
no traditional foley," says Rydstrom. "So one of the basic things
we had to do was make a believable movement track for all the various
fish, and give each of them their own character. One of my favorite
sounds was the one we came up with for Nemo's damaged fin. It has
a little flutter almost like a wing flap. I created a very simple
flapping sound with a paper towel. There's almost a hummingbird quality
to it. Marlin propels himself with tail flaps so he sounds a bit neurotic.
For him, we basically used the sound of the fish character in the
Pixar short "Knick Knack." Dory makes more of a smooth cutting sound
as she moves through the water. She's just going through life having
a good time. We tried every trick in the book to differentiate the
main characters with sound.
"For the sharks, I used a device where I could modulate real sounds
with my voice," continues Rydstrom. "I took real water sounds of various
types and growled into a microphone so that my vocal characteristics
would shape the river-gurgle sound or whatever we happened to be using.
This gave a deep scary feeling to their water movement. If you listen
carefully during the shark chase, the water sounds are saying 'Nemo.'
It's kind of my own subliminal Beatles trick.
"One of the things we discovered early on was that things actually
recorded underwater are boring, so we ended up manufacturing a lot
of the sounds.We did go to a pet store with a lot of aquariums and
stuck our mikes in the tanks and moved them through the water. For
the fish tank in the film we wanted a contrast with the wide-open
ocean. Occasionally, you hear weird, cheesy filter buzzes, goofy bubbles
and things that happen in real aquariums."
Rydstrom recorded sounds in the ocean, in jacuzzis and even in a coastal
cave to get the sound of water sloshing and crashing.The latter ended
up being used to approximate the inside of a whale.The sound of Marlin
and Dory bouncing on jellyfish proved to be a bit elusive. Rydstrom
finally got the desired effect when he bounced his finger on a hot
water bottle to get the nice little muted, watery "glug" sound he
wanted.
In a true example of suffering for one's art, Rydstrom's assistant,
Dee, even recorded her own visit to the dentist.The brutal dental
drill heard in "Finding Nemo" is actually Dee getting a filling done.
According to John Lasseter,"Gary Rydstrom has done the sound design
on every one of our films since 'Luxo Jr.' and he's always taught
me how the sound can help our films and help the worlds in our films
to be more believable to the audience. And on 'Finding Nemo,' Gary
has done some of his very best work. Water swishes can get repetitive,
but he worked so hard to make it very special. He is a great collaborator
and he always adds so much to our films." |
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