Soul
It was an immense honor to work on this film. I am so proud of it, definitely a highlight in my career. This is a scene I painted, Joe playing during his audition for the Dorothea Williams quartet.
All images copyright Disney/Pixar
Audition
Joe's audition was such an important sequence, it set the jazzy mood for the film and the cinematography style for the "real" world. I was able to explore higher contrast than usual in search for very graphic compositions. The idea was to have a heavily choreographed lighting style throughout the film; Characters could strategically move through areas of light or shadow to reinforce a composition as needed, treating every shot as an opportunity to make a clear statement. The lighting department did a beautiful work following through with this idea.
Another important concept we set to achieve from our early conversations with DP Ian Megibben was using "single source" lighting setups. This is something that I wasn't very familiar with and was really hard to paint initially but I came to love it!!
The intention for this sequence was to reveal Dorothea Williams as an incredible jazz icon that initially seems unapproachable and intimidating to Joe. When he starts to play, he is literally put under a harsh spotlight in a very vulnerable position. By the end of his improvisation in the zone, the lighting becomes more gentle as he is welcomed into the quartet.
Celebrate
Joe is walking on air after his successful audition. I tried to depict his euphoria by enhancing all the colors around him: the leaves are impossibly yellow, the sky is as blue as it can be, the shadows are full of warmth!
The idea was to turn these dials up to the limit of believability even if it became a little garish. At the beginning of the sequence Joe is also bathed in red light filtering through the Jazz club's canopy. We used red as a symbol for Joe's desire to follow the steps of the greatest Jazz musicians (You'll notice the club's stage curtain was also red). This is a color we modulate throughout the film as Joe searches for that missing piece in his life.
The soul world
I only did a tiiiiny bit of work on the soul world. All the heavy lifting was done by other amazing artists in the department. Kyle Macnaughton spent a lot of time here and did such beautiful work... You wouldn't believe the amount of beautiful work. Here are a few of my contributions in which I tried to assemble a lot of the ideas that were being discussed. My pitch here, based on the wonderful research Dave Strick had been doing, was to sell a world that functioned with different physical visual rules. Whereas things in the real world work in a "subtractive" way, meaning incoming light is absorbed by objects, I thought it would be interesting to try to the opposite here, using an "additive" behavior. What you see is the result of light building up on top of itself without being stopped. I tried to put this to the test with this style of painting which became very technical, starting with pure black and building up the image exclusively with the addition of coloured energy. The "trees" do the opposite, removing energy like some sort of spectral shadows. I really like where this was headed, but we didn't want things to become too abstract and solemn. This was supposed to be more of a comforting, innocent nursery for baby souls, so the more "vaporous" approach you see in the film was ultimately more successful than this "spectral"one.
Alive
Joe and 22 find themselves on a hospital bed back in New York. This is the return to the real world after having spent some time in the soul world, so the intention was to go for maximum contrast. In opposition to the very soft blues and magentas, I played with "earthly" tones throughout (pun intended). The edges are sharp and there is quite a bit of high contrast.
I was mostly concerned with the way 22 was feeling at this moment, since this is the first time she/he's ever experienced reality. I wanted things to feel disorienting, harsh and very uncomfortable. The city outside is blindingly bright and painful to look at, there are plenty of metallic and glass instruments, as well as beeping machines that create visual noise and don't allow you to focus. I purposely tried to put high frequency of details and high contrast throughout each frame, maybe at the expense of simplicity and readability but I thought it would help feeling disoriented!
Hospital escape
This sequence was pretty challenging to work on! We needed to feel the stress of Joe and 22 potentially getting caught as they sneak out. In order to do so, I made it so they are totally exposed with a really flat lighting along the hallways. The evenness of the lighting made it feel like a labyrinth they needed to escape from, every right or left turn looking exactly like the previous one.
Another thing that I wanted to play with was staying within a tight range of warm artificial light temperature, implying there is no natural light from the outside anywhere to be seen, the exit proving difficult to find.
Hopefully this helps build up the tension, almost like holding your breath. Once they get down to the lobby there is a release with all the cool natural light coming from the outside. The sets team made this great decision to put this sort of semi transparent sticker on the front doors that make them look almost like sanded glass. This provided a great opportunity to make all the light come in very softly, almost acting like a diffuser, and also, building the anticipation for the next sequence, with a lot of violently moving blurry masses out in the street.
Finding Moonwind
This is all about the comedy and being able to read all the gags very clearly, so we didn't want to go for anything too moody! Very basic lighting (not easy to paint), making sure the shots are clear in their light/shadow composition. I feel sequences like this one are more like connective tissue between moments with higher dramatic stakes, helping establish the right visual rhythm and flow for the film.
Home
It was really impressive to see how the whole sets team was making sure the different locations felt authentic. Joe lives in Jackson Heights in Queens, and I wanted to be faithful to the feeling of the place through color and light as well! I went to visit friends in NY during the production of the film, stayed in Queens, and made sure to get a good feeling for the place! It was a wonderful trip in which I spent some time visiting jazz bars as well!
In any case, once Joe and 22 arrive at the apartment, the idea was for them to feel safe there after all they went through back in Manhattan. There was a really funny gag about the cat falling asleep on the patch of sunlight, so I went with it as a lighting guideline and made sure all the interior felt really nice and toasty. This is another instance in which I really pushed the use of a single source light setup, the whole scene is being lit up exclusively by that patch of light hitting the floor and bouncing around the room. The stairwell was left cool for contrast, and also in preparation for the following sequence...
Lessons
I really really like this sequence. With all the running around and cosmic happenings in act two, it always felt very refreshing to have a more intimate and slower paced scene here. We kept the enclosed stairwell lit with a refreshing skylight above, and as Connie starts playing, there is a little bit more warmth coming through, almost like a cloud finished passing by. I love that in this scene we first start seeing what the message of the film really is.
For the final shot, I tried to keep 22 (in Joe's body) as a low contrast silhouette against the lighter background, with the hopes of communicating her/his internal struggle through body language.
Barber
This was just an early exploration image before we had any actual shots for the sequence. I was exploring these as we were preparing some options for the first teaser! The actual lighting keys for this sequence were beautifully designed by Paul Abadilla, and the result is amazing! I love how this sequence ended up looking! Another notable thing is, apart from art directing all the set design for the film (A titanic endeavor for which I will be forever grateful for since it gave me such an amazing playground to play in), Paul's passion and knowledge of street art and graffiti permeate the entire project! So inspiring!
Arrival
The first renders I saw of Terry in the real world sort of broke my brain a little. I had painted these, but it was so exciting to actually see the two worlds we had kept so separate in the same rendered frame! The lighting department did such a beautiful job!
Suit
As Joe gets into an argument with his mom at her tailor shop, we choreographed the positioning of the lights in the back room very carefully. At first they are separated by two different light conditions, Libba is directly under her working light while Joe is lit by the natural light coming from the window. It was actually pretty challenging to make that big separation work in such a small room!! When mom comes to understand Joe's predicament, she literally walks into his pool of light. By the end of the sequence they are all together as a family under a unifying light.
Tour
Joe’s dream comes true as he if finally able to perform at the half note club! Designing the choreography for the musical segments was such a challenging and gratifying assignment. I tried to take my design cues from the pieces of music themselves: First, an introductory piece puts the audience under the spell, there is then a more complex jazz piece, for which I drew inspiration from the very graphic and bold colors of jazz album covers (Could I make green, orange and purple work together?). Dorothea’s solo, a melody piercing through silence, is represented by the strong shine of her dress and saxophone through the darkness. For Joe’s improv solo, I went as RED as possible! As I mentioned earlier, red is the color we chose to symbolize Joe’s hopes of becoming an accomplished musician, so this is the epitome of red!! Finally, there is an englobing warm light for the finale, bringing all the band members together at the close of a killer performance!
Lost
This sequence is driven by the absence of red with a greenish tint present throughout. Joe has lost what he thought was his purpose, which we had previously represented using red.
I had to do a lot of research into the kind of lighting used for public spaces in NY. Nowadays, cheaper and more efficient LEDs have taken over, but they are nowhere near as romantic as older types of lights. In other sequences I used sodium lights with a warmer glow, but here I was looking into Mercury vapor lights which give a more greenish tint which was more suitable for our message. I still can’t believe I got away with painting such dark scenes, very uncommon in animated family features, but this sequence required it!
This shot was cut from the film but I love it: Dad taking little Joe to a jazz club for the first time.
Epiphany
This was such a wonderful montage to work on. From early on, it was clear that the “lost” and “epiphany” sequences would pack emotional one-two punches. I tried to deliver by using subtle and unexpected colors rather than anything too saturated. It’s easy to fall into the trap of overdoing it with color and ending up with something that looks like a motivational poster! Such a hard thing to balance!
Earthbound
I initially went for something you could find in a space documentary: With 22’s life starting with a sunrise over the edge of the earth, the light slowly wraps around the globe. This is also the first time Joe and 22 are lit by the light of the real world in their soul form, so I tried to make that warmth evident on their vaporous bodies! Ultimately, as interesting as it was to explore this approach, it didn’t really hit the right emotional note. It felt too solemn, so we used the iconic look of the earth as a full blue planet, which more accurately conveys the excitement and joy of 22’s new life!