American Cinematographer - August 1983 - 85

the studio, the story work
done and the story boards

would be
sketched
out, and at that point we'd review the
boards with the animators, particu¬
larly those who were responsible for
those parts of the picture, find out
how they felt about the character, and
did they have anything to add to it?
Always they did. They'd always go
away and come up with 'Well, I've got
a

better idea!' And out of that pro¬

I think

cess,

tions than

had

we

explored more direc¬

we ever

would have done

not taken that tack." An ani¬

we

mator's offhand doodles

might influ¬
ence story development, as when
Mike Merrill's drawings of his own
creation, one Uncle Mikey, a TV host
whose kid show engages in the alter¬
nate rewarding and punishing of cows
for the moral education of its

au¬

dience, entered ROCK AND RULE in
time to effect the
one

enlightenment of

of Mok's moronic henchmen.

Keith

Ingham describes the similar

process of developing a special ef¬
fects sequence: ''We had a certain
idea of what it might look like in our
collective mind's eye.

Clive had one
idea, I had another idea, Patrick
would have another idea, Norm would
have another. As we started to do ini¬

tial

testing we would do up some
quick experimental artwork in order
to visualize our ideas. Once we saw

the tests, we were able to separate
the wheat from the chaff. Once we

had

direction, we would spend more
pushing the extremities, to see
just how far we could go and to de¬
velop something beyond what we had
a

time

seen.
we

So

tried

we

had

never

an

initial idea, but

to leave it at that. We

always tried to push things a little fur¬
ther, adding other techniques to it, to

layer up effects.
So, regardless of specific title, staff
members at Nelvana found a wide-

atmosphere for unlikely-sound¬
ing ideas that were worth trying at

open
least

once.

When clouds

were

needed, Brown

and his assistant, Gordon Hill, raided
the decorative fish tank in the camera
room for its water filter, a fiberglass
wool, or ''angel hair," concoction, set
it on the floating planes of the com¬

gle down toward a massive, finely-de¬
tailed 6' x 4' painting that background
artist Louis Krawagna spent three
months making, for its first pass; for
the next three passes, it repeated the
same movements through the same
angel hair toward: first one black 6' x
4' plexiglass board keyed to the back¬
ground painting, equipped with tiny
computer-controlled LED lights flash¬
ing, blinking, changing color, and
passing for street lights, house lights,
and electric billboards (the lights re¬
quired two passes by themselves;
"We even had a spotlight that
changed from red to green," says
Bown, ''but I'm sure nobody saw it");
then another board equipped only
with tracks (corresponding to the
black streets on the background
painting) on which ran magnets with
headlight flares painted on them
(pulled by clock motors and con¬
trolled, of course, by another com¬
puter). Combined with water effects

puter stand, and threw it into soft
focus, and they had clouds more

and other decorations, it took seven

credible than any airbrush could
create. For a recurring downshot of

work, and the number of retakes was

the vital locale of Ohmtown, the com¬

you

puter-controlled camera shot through
moving layers of angel hair to an¬

little faster.
The angel

two

passes

altogether to make this shot

much

higher. Fortunately, every time
reshoot a scene like this, it goes a
hair was hung from fish-

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83
American Cinematographer - August 1983

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