Christmas is coming early!! Check out Arthur Christmas, new CG animated feature from Sony Pictures Animation/Aardman Animations, releasing in theatres Nov 23, 2011.
This also happens to be what I (Jericca Cleland csc) spent most of the year working on... I started on the film about a year ago, when Twenty One Inc was contracted to do some previsualization. Twenty One Inc Previs Supervisor Zondac Gibson and I went down to LA to work with Sony Imageworks, who handled production of the film.
Soon after, I was asked to join the film as the cinematographer, establishing the filming style and designing the camerawork, lens palette, staging, and compositions in collaboration with director Sarah Smith, head of layout Dave Morehead, the camera crew, and the other creative keys.
Twenty One Inc provided the CG camera rig that enabled us to achieve most of the big, sweeping camera rig movement and the animated handheld camera movement. Anthony Di Ninno, a senior previs/camera artist who has worked closely with me and with Twenty One Inc on a number of feature projects, joined the camera crew and made a significant contribution to the styling of the camera work. We also shot a fair amount using Sony's virtual camera system, which allowed us to operate a camera physically and use motion capture to bring the performance into the CG world. The whole camera department pulled together and worked incredibly hard to create the roughly 2000 shots in the film (thank you thank you!!).
(Official 'Waker Scene' Clip)
I have not been so motivated and inspired by a great story since working on Toy Story 2 and Finding Nemo at Pixar... This film is exciting and funny and smart while maintaining a lot of underdog charm and British wit. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with both Sony and Aardman on the project and to have built relationships and worked alongside such dedicated and hard-working people. The production was challenging on many levels and took tremendous effort to complete (congratulations, everyone!). The result, I hope, you will find worthwhile... and a bit of a holiday treat! Enjoy!!
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