Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1512296
WINTER 2023 27 FRAME OF REFERENCE One of the concerns of creating such beautiful illustrations is that "you don't want anything in the background to become the star of the show," says Womersley. "It's the characters you really want to follow because it's their story." But you also want to make the most of the striking illustrations. To do this, he says: "We always try to get in as many beautiful establishing shots [as we can]. That's a thing that comes from the older [Disney] films." Fawn Veerasunthorn, who directed Wish alongside Chris Buck, describes the emphasis on composition and framing for shots like these: "Our look is very stylized, and the way we frame our shots should reflect that as well. … When we look back at the illustrations from the turn of the century, there's such [a] distinctive way of framing." She says the filmmakers worked with the production design team to break down the techniques of early Disney animation illustrators. This was done in black and white so the filmmakers wouldn't be distracted by color and could focus on how to use framing to help define a character. They also studied how the multiplane camera was used in classic Disney films. Invented at Walt Disney Studios in the 1930s, this camera could film several planes (layers) of drawings for the foreground, middle ground, and background, and then the lens could focus on the relevant plane to create an illusion of depth. "This led us to the conclusion that when we shoot [Wish], let's practice self-discipline on not moving the camera [as freely as] we usually do in a CG movie," says Veerasunthorn. While Wish is nostalgic, the filmmakers wanted it to feel like more than a blast from the long-ago past. This can be seen in numerous ways, from the pop soundtrack—there's even an electric guitar in King Magnifico's big scene—to the color palette. "Fairy tales tend to be set in Middle Europe, Northern Europe, kind of gothic," says Womersley. But Wish is set on a fictional island off the coast of the Iberian Peninsula, "and with that you have [the] light, the azure Mediterranean Sea, the incredible colors of the foliage. That really pushed a lot of the freshness." "I love the duality that we always keep two things in mind." says Veerasunthorn. "How do we honor the legacy, and how do we make something new." "Our look is very stylized … When we look back at the illustrations from the turn of the century, there's such [a] distinctive way of framing." –Fawn Veerasunthorn WINTER 2023 31