Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1434261
F E AT U R E 28 KEYFRAME 36 KEYFRAME When Animation Supervisor Michael Woodside was working on Moana, he paired with fellow Animation Supervisor Justin Sklar to build a curriculum for their team. The mini-classes looked at rehearsals from Broadway shows "because you can get a really honest performance in a rehearsal," Woodside says. This developed further on Frozen 2, when Broadway per- formers were brought in to discuss where their breath- ing came from in a song, and on Encanto, performers and professional singers united with vocal coaches to teach the animators "what's happening to your tongue inside your mouth when you're making a sound," says Head of Animation Kira Lehtomaki. "When you're making a vibrato, what's happen- ing in your throat? Do you see the tendons in your neck strain?" For Isabela, the perfect sister, the animators had to learn how someone who sings with technical perfection breathes, and then with Mirabel, they had to figure out how to ignore those rules. "One of the very first things the directors told us is that Mirabel cannot be a professional singer," says Head of Animation Renato dos Anjos. "And for us it's a little bit like, oh my God, we've been learning these things for years, and now you're telling us we cannot use them. But I think that was a very successful approach to make it so that Mirabel felt relatable to anybody." According to Fox Carney, Manager of Research at Disney Animation Research, understanding singing and breathing isn't just about getting techniques right. Animators also sit in on recording sessions "looking for attitude." He cites the example of Jodi Benson singing The Little Mermaid's "Part of Your World." "There's a certain sincerity," says Carney, "a sense of longing when you see the live-action footage of the recording session. And of course the animator thinks, oh, I have to capture that." B R E A T H E R BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER Animation Supervisor Justin Sklar to build a curriculum for their team. The mini-classes looked at rehearsals from Broadway shows "because you can get a really honest performance in a rehearsal," Woodside says. This developed further on formers were brought in to discuss where their breath ing came from in a song, and on performers and the animators "what's happening to your tongue inside your mouth when you're making a sound," says Head of Animation Kira Lehtomaki. "When you're making a vibrato, what's happen B R E A T H E R BREATHER B R E A T H E R BREATHER B R E A T H E R BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER Michael Woodside was working on Moana, he paired with fellow When Animation Supervisor Frozen 2, when Broadway per BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER BREATHER TAKE A F E AT U R E TO DANCE OR NOT TO DANCE Another task before developing dance sequences is to answer the question posed by Howard: "How much of a musical is it if you're going to use music? Is it a film with songs? From the get-go, all of us wanted Encanto to be a capital M musical." Next comes deciding where to put the sequences, some- thing that isn't always a pre-planned choice. "At some point the movie, the feel of it, the vibe of it, the structure of it says, this is a good place for music, or this is a charac- ter worthy of singing a song," says Director/Co-Writer Jared Bush. "As we were going through the script," Castro Smith adds, "Jared and I would say, okay, we think this is a song moment and kind of talk to Lin about it and see what he thought and trade ideas and thoughts about what the character was thinking and what we needed out of the moment. It was pretty organic." nce a son inds its place, eplains oero o his or on Vivo, "It was important to get visuals and storytelling that kept the flow and the timing of the song as a priority to help the song feel as connected as possible—you're try- ing to connect where the non-musical parts of the film have taken us so far, and fusing that with where the song is going to take us." RIGHT ANGLES Filming choreography is about more than just capturing movements like the turn of a hip or the swish of a skirt. It's also about capturing angles. Woodside felt fortunate, with production during Covid, that he was allowed to attend Encanto's choreography sessions to film different viewpoints. This way, if the directors told the animators, "you're going to animate Mirabel walking through a crowd," Woodside was able to share reference choreogra- phy from various angles that had been shot for that specific sequence. The directors then chose the angles they felt worked best, and this gave the animators the confidence to know that if they used those references, they were working in the right direction. This photography also helped the cinematographers frame the musical sequences. "All dance choreography isn't designed to shoot at 360 degrees," says Vivo's Jhun. "A lot of dance choreography [should be shot] from certain angles. For example, when the dancers are moving back and forth and left to right, if you shoot from the side, it's not going to work. You have to shoot from the front." Jhun appreciated that Hodge's team helped guide him as he shot the choreography sessions "because there's an intention of how they want to dance to show it to the audience," he says. "It was a bit of collaboration between Calvit and his dancers and me and my camera