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F E AT U R E BAYOU BLISS THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG Walt Disney Animation Studios Production Designer: James A. Finch Landscape: The Bayou Set in Jazz Age New Orleans, The Princess and the Frog offers inventive twists on a classic fairytale. When Tiana, the titular princess, turns into a frog, she and her love interest find themselves navigating the wonders and hazards of the bayou in a quest to regain their human forms. Working under the direction of Art Director Ian Gooding, the film's Production Designer James A. Finch notes that he and his team used several locations: the Garden District, the French Quarter, and the bayou. "What was interesting," he says, "was when we went to New Orleans, it was the year after Katrina, and a lot of the trees had been stripped of all their leaves." Finch and Layout Supervisor Rasoul Azadani realized that none of the trees they saw on that trip really reflected the Deep South bayou. So they went to South Carolina where they found a river that had "very unique pockets of combinations of vegetation coming together, and we could see where this would be special and isolated from the rest of the world," says Finch. Finch grew up in Florida, so he was already familiar with the swampy landscape of the Everglades, which he cites as one of the reasons he was given the opportunity to work on some of the bayou designs. "It was fun to dive into that and explore," he says. "[The bayou] is a special place. It has its own unique elements. It's a harsh place to live in for any animal, but it also has its romantic flavors." To achieve these variable qualities, his team brightened up the palette in the daytime "so it had a lot of airy quality to it … a lot of natural light quality [that] made it fun and inviting." For nighttime and the movie's heavier moments, "We were just drying out the color," he says, to give the landscape a more monochromatic feel. He also notes the importance of small details, such as the poetic look of hanging moss versus the typical small leaves on the oak trees. "It's fun to think about all those elements that make something romantic, versus eerie, versus mysterious," he says. In the bayou Finch was excited by the size of the cypresses, with branches so heavy they touched the river bed before growing back up and tangling in the "elbows" that are part of the root system. But when it came to dimensions like this, he notes the difficulties. "When you're looking at the scale of the [small] animals compared to the trees, you're really looking at [ just a section] of the tree." How do you incorporate these shots with the bigger perspective so viewers can fully appreciate the grandeur of the bayou setting? One example is the character of Ray, a tiny firefly with a big heart and an extended family that magically lights up the swamp. Tackling the challenge of making such a tiny creature visible in a massive setting, Ray was like "a pretty big lightbulb flying around," Finch says. He also explains that it was difficult because the environment is all water. Often the characters were traveling through the bayou on the back of Louis, the trumpet playing alligator, but at other times, they needed a sand embankment or something else solid to stand on. One such place belonged to a voodoo priestess, Mama Odie, deep in the bayou. She lives in a shrimping boat lodged in a majestic tree. Finch says there were a lot of ideas about her abode, to make her space fantastical and different, and more than just a little hut in the woods. They had many iterations and artists elaborating on an initial design, and it felt so charming that they didn't want to move away from it. Mama Odie's home also showcased something unique about the New Orleans area: the shrimping boats. This was just one way to satisfy Finch's belief that in every film that looks at a specific culture, it's necessary "to give accolades to particular aspects that are important to that world." this page: Celebrating the magic of the bayou was one of the chief design goals in The Princess and the Frog. opposite page: Scope and scale were captured through the use of light and perspective. 22 KEYFRAME