American Cinematographer - July 2008 - 28

Right: The lonely robot ponders his place in the vast universe. Below: WALL·E is overjoyed to learn that he’s not alone after all. lighting designer will do; layout artists use the same lighting studies and storyboards as the lighting directors, but neither has immediate access to the other’s work. Animating lighting is one of the last steps a shot must go through. “Roger didn’t understand how we could possibly make the movies we make doing things this way,” Lasky recalls with a laugh. One of Deakins’ first suggestions was that the camera and lighting departments be combined so the camera team could set their frame and make lighting suggestions and the lighting team could rapidly respond to their requests. The departments could not be combined for logistical reasons, but Feinberg’s team did feed lighting information to Lasky’s team, bringing the departments much closer. “That gave us a lot more flexibility,” Feinberg says. Pixar’s films tend to be lit so audiences can see every detail of the animation. “Everyone wants his or her stuff shown in the best light, so everything gets a high-school-portrait kind of attention,” notes Stanton. Not surprisingly, he had different ideas for WALL·E. Feinberg built a test shot from scratch; the scene was set inside the robot’s truck before the set or the robot was even finished. Deakins encouraged Feinberg to work primarily with the scene’s practical sources: some Christmas lights and a television. “It created a lot of shadows and had a very stark feeling,” says Feinberg. The second and third acts of the film take place on a massive, Vegasstyle spaceship called the Axiom. There, at Stanton’s request, Feinberg tried to maintain a minimalist aesthetic, letting the digital actors move through the scene rather than lighting the scene for the actors — an idea inspired by Savides. “Lighting the Axiom was very different than lighting Earth,” she recalls. “It was closer to how we traditionally do things, but we didn’t overpolish anything.” Meanwhile, over in layout, Lasky was tinkering with new ways to operate the camera. With the upgraded optical system and a properly oriented camera, he had to treat his virtual camera more like a real one. One of Deakins’ recommendations was that the team avoid moving the camera in ways that wouldn’t make sense to the audience, breaking the illusion of reality. With that in mind, Lasky created two different styles of movement for the story’s two environments; for action set on Earth, he created a handheld look accentuated by subtle frame adjustments and shifts in focal length, and on the Axiom, he created sleeker, more graceful moves. “I’m really impressed by what Jeremy and Danielle have done,” says Deakins. “There are sequences in the movie that are just so filmic.” And Stanton couldn’t be more pleased. “I don’t know if it’s going to be obvious to the audience, but we feel the difference,” says the director. “It’s as though this story really happened, and we were there to capture it.” I 28 July 2008

American Cinematographer - July 2008

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - July 2008