Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
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D E PA R T M E N T 38 KEYFRAME CHANGING COURSE MOANA 2 Walt Disney Animation Studios From budgets to story scope to cinematic style, television and feature are such different formats in animation that most studios produce them in separate departments. Because of this, the transformation of Moana – The Series into the film Moana 2 created a unique production process that kept Head of Story Ryan Green and Story Artist Luis Logam on their toes. Green began working as a Story Artist when the project was still what Disney called a long-form musical series. Logam came on shortly after him. But as they screened cuts of the show to various people around Disney, its fun, larger-than-life style kept standing out. "Why is this not a movie?" was a common reaction. Eventually, the studio pivoted. But going from a format typically watched on tablets and small screens to something shown in theaters across the globe was not as easy as just stringing all the episodes they'd made together into one cut. It required a shift in the visuals of the project— literally zooming out for wide angles and sweeping cinematic sequences. "Once we were going to the big screen, we could pull the camera way back," says Logam. In Moana – The Series, they were often cutting between medium shots and reverse shots. In Moana 2, they could do a wide shot overlooking the whole ocean. And while the television show bounced between many different stories and sets, the feature spends significant time with all of its characters on one life raft. "Having to frame the characters on the boat taught me how to maximize the use of space," says Logam. One benefit, however, of having spent so long on the series, was the amount of character work the team had done. In television, character is king, and the nuanced, developed takes on each of the characters that had been built for the show made working with them that much easier in the feature. The team already knew how the characters interacted with the world and how they interacted with Moana. They knew each character's comedic potential. The characters were as familiar as old friends. Moana, three years older in this project, was especially fun to explore. "She's a little bit more mature, confident, sure of herself," says Green. Her movements are steadier, less clumsy. She carries a certain bravado into all of her interactions, such that even in scenes with Maui the trickster demigod, who's more than twice her size, she's his physical equal. In more quiet, emotional scenes, the artists boarded them in shots together, rather than cutting back and forth between them, to show the intimacy and trust they forged in the first film. Maui himself was a complex, yet essential part of building the film. In early versions, he didn't show up until closer to the Shifting from TV show to movie allowed for more dramatic wide shots. 38 KEYFRAME Moana with her sister, Simea. F E AT U R E Images courtesy of Disney.