This movie's images were stored on a one gigabyte image card that was capable of holding approximately one hundred frames of animation. Eight roving camera teams, each team including a lighting cameraman, an assistant, a lighting electrician and a set dresser to deal with any art department issues, worked with the animators to set up shots. Each camera team had a "lighting station" workstation, comprising an Apple G4 computer and a monitor to assist in checking lighting and framing, to view TIFF file versions of the camera's images. Once a shot was approved, the computer was removed and the animators were left to shoot the scene using their still camera and "grabber" computer/camera system to check their work. This movie's story department head Jeffrey Lynch explained that the scenes were developed initially from storyboards created by a team, saying: "We shot as close to a 1:1 film ratio (one take per shot) as we could, because there was no time for re-shoots. We did most of our experimentation in the storyboard process, as many ways as needed, to get the scene how we wanted it. There was no coverage, as there would be for a live-action film." Co-director Mike Johnson would go over each scene with the animators, sometimes acting out the scene, if necessary. The animators would create a "dope sheet", in which a shot was broken down, frame by frame, to account for key "hits". The animators would then shoot tests of the scene, often shooting on "2s" or "4s" (meaning shooting just every second or fourth frame of what would appear in the final animation). Johnson explained: "The next day, when they'd finish their test/rehearsal, we'd cut it in and see how it played in the reel and fine-tune from there. We might do some lighting tweaks, performance tweaks or have the art department get in and touch anything that needed it. Then we'd close the curtain and let the animator animate the shot." The animators would sometimes make use of the voice and/or video recordings of the actors and actresses, a practice also common in cel animation. Once photographed, the frames were manipulated by a team of "data wranglers". Using a workflow developed by Chris Watts, the frames were downloaded from the camera image cards as RAW files, converted to Cineon files and processed through a "color cube". Cinematographer Pete Kozachik explained: "The color cube is a 3-D lookup table created by FilmLight Ltd. that forces the image data into behaving like a particular Eastman Kodak film stock, in this case, 5248, one of my favorites. With this film emulation, we could actually rate our cameras at ASA 100, then take our light meters and spot meters and, with great confidence, shoot as if we were using 5248. Sure enough, the footage would come back and look just like it." The frames could be processed further to generate a TIFF file for viewing on the lighting station computer monitors so lighting, composition and color could be previewed.

Film

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