INTERVIEW PIXAR
stuff in there, but it’s a rough preview of what it will be.” While animation, in theory, allows complete freedom, one of the secrets to Pixar’s success is how grounded its films are within familiar cinematic grammar, and how rigorously the filmmakers apply the rules of the physical world. This (alongside brilliant storytelling of course) helps audiences relate to and empathise with CG settings and characters. But to achieve it can take discipline and restraint, says Aspbury. “Because it looks so realistic, especially if you’re talking about Toy Story 4 and 5 , we have to try to adhere to real-world sensibilities. We are trying to be faithful and think: a camera wouldn’t do this. We’re trying to be physically based.” This even extends to building in certain imperfections to ensure that the end result feels genuinely photographic. “We can add in lens flares, bokeh and different type of artefacts – and some of that stuff is comped in later – but it’s all little layers. It’s never gratuitously done, and you might not even be overly conscious about it as the audience, but it’s absolutely in there.” In Toy Story 5 , where the central plot revolves around a tablet device usurping the once-beloved analogue toys, the film’s visual language was designed to reinforce Woody and co’s growing sense of anxiety and displacement. “The way I look at this movie is that it actually closely mirrors what happened in the first film, where Buzz was this threat to the old toys,” he explains. “Now, the
no matter how fantastical the animated world it’s creating. To do that, it needs a cinematographer, which is where Matt Aspbury comes in. He’s worked at Pixar as an in-house DOP on some of the studio’s best-loved films including Cars, Wall-E, Ratatouille and the third and fifth Toy Story films. But how exactly does cinematography work in the context of animation; where there are no physical cameras, lenses or lights? “We have a virtual camera model which behaves basically like a live action one: we can lay down a dolly track, play with lenses and depth-of-field, make it look handheld,” begins Aspbury. “What we can do is almost unlimited, but it’s essentially a virtual representation of what you’d do in live action. “To take Toy Story as an example; we have Bonnie – she’s been in the last two movies, so we’ve carried her house over from those previous films – that’s essentially our set,” he continues. “We have all the characters in there, rigged in such a way that we can pose and animate them. My department is responsible for doing all the rough initial blockings, so that we can get an idea of how to stage things with the camera.” In some ways, the process sounds very similar to traditional filmmaking (albeit inside a fully digital environment), with the DOP figuring out blocking and timing, composition and the lens look. But a key difference in the workflow is that the traditional role of cinematographer is split into two: layout DOP (Aspbury’s side) and lighting DOP, which comes later. “Since animation is such a time- consuming, expensive art form to
produce, we do the reverse of what they do in live action: we basically edit our movies up front,” comments Aspbury. “For years they’re writing and storyboarding the film, and then once it comes into our court, we start working with the characters and environments and essentially shooting it, working closely with the editorial department and directors for months. We’re getting the blueprint of the film down before it goes through the expensive part of animation, lighting and everything else.” That separation may sound surprising to any DOPs out there, when you think about how fundamental lighting is to the craft of cinematography, but Aspbury says lighting still informs the process from the very beginning, even if the final version comes much later in production. “We do have it in our work,” he elaborates. “We have a preview of it, and the truth is, they’re doing colour keys and lighting studies while we’re working, so we always know if it’s going to be a nighttime scene or if it’s going to be staged in some very bright daylight. So we definitely have that
THE REAL DEAL Imperfections were added to the image for Toy Story 5, creating greater depth and authenticity
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