At Pixar, moviemaking is no walk on the beach. The
studio’s always attempting to dive to undiscovered
depths.
So even though Pixar Animation Studios has four feature-length
films under its belt, the studio continues to push the limits of
computer animation with new challenges. With “Finding
Nemo,” the scope of the project goes as deep as the great
blue ocean it’s set in.
The idea for “Nemo” started with co-director Andrew
Stanton in 1992, during a visit to Marine World, a Northern
California marine life amusement park not too far from
Pixar’s studios. Combined with his childhood memories of his
dentist’s fish tank and his experience as an overprotective
father, Stanton’s exposure to the underwater world sparked
his basic idea for the story: a neurotic father fish searching for
his son in the vast nautical world.
“The ocean was a great metaphor for life,” said
Stanton. “It’s the scariest, most intriguing place in
the world because anything can be out there. And having (the
father) in the middle of the ocean where he has to confront
everything he never wanted to face in life seemed like a great
opportunity for fun and still allowed us to delve into some
slightly deeper issues.”
But Stanton delved into the script for “Finding
Nemo” with more than just specific issues in mind. Unlike the
previous films, Stanton was writing many of his characters for very
unique and specific voices: Albert Brooks as Marlin, the
apprehensive father clownfish, and Ellen Degeneres as Dory, the
optimistic blue tang.
“I broke a taboo rule,” he said. “I took the
risk, which is really scary because you can paint yourself in a
corner and not get somebody. It’s the most singular
I’ve ever written before.”
“Everybody in this movie was my first choice. I
couldn’t believe we got them all,” Stanton added.
One voice Stanton knew he had to get was Degeneres. However,
even for a woman who had done years of stand-up comedy, working
alone in a recording booth over the course of three years proved
very tiring.
“It’s exhausting to be by yourself and to do maybe,
at the most, ten lines in a row, but usually they like to do it one
line at a time, saying a line over and over again,” Degeneres
said. “You have to have a conversation and leave that space
even though your instinct is to talk over or to respond the way
people actually talk.”
Meanwhile, on the visual end of the project, the creative team
performed research to get “Finding Nemo” to look just
right, from watching “Blue Planet” documentaries to
scuba diving in Hawaii to studying with ichthyologist Adam
Summers.
“What we wanted to analyze was: is there a different type
of camera work? What are the things that have gone into the
collective unconscious of viewers over the years that make you know
you’re underwater?” said Stanton.
The animators used that knowledge to tackle the natural
movements of fish, the difficult surface movement of water, and
their most difficult sequence, a forest of photo-realistic
jellyfish.
“I don’t even understand the technology side of
it,” Degeneres said. “But they’re smart enough
stories to make you care about fish. I love the fact that
it’s about this world that, unless you scuba dive all the
time, you don’t really think about.”