When Disney’s highly anticipated “Moana 2” opens in about 4,000 theaters later this week, about 2,000 of the screens set aside for the film will be 3D screens. This might be a bit surprising – the 3D exhibition is not promoted on the film’s poster or mentioned as a talking point in the pre-release marketing materials, but in 2023, 3D ticket sales were $1.7 billion, a record for the film post-pandemic era. And the number of 3D screens for “Moana 2” is a testament to Walt Disney Animation Studios’ continued commitment to the format.

As TheWrap learned during a recent visit to the studio in Burbank, California, a small group of dedicated artists and technicians are committed to ensuring that when you watch “Moana 2” in 3D, you’re fully immersed in the oceanic adventure.

Disney’s process for making 3D animated films is different from that of other studios. Disney’s ten-person team responsible for overseeing the 3D version works closely with the core filmmaking team, ensuring that all adjustments are additive and not distracting or ineffective.

“Because we are comfortable. “We want to stay with the original story, but we want to enhance the story and make it immersive but comfortable,” Katie Fico, stereoscopic supervisor, told TheWrap. “And the way our tool kits are here, we’re able to keep everything at a consistent depth for your eyes. The characters just make you feel like you’re there with them.”

But for Disney, 3D – or “stereo” – is in the studio’s blood.

Beginnings in a fairy tale book

Creating a true 3D image – or at least the illusion of one – has long been a concern for Disney animators.

The multiplane camera, which predated Disney’s involvement but was most famously used by the studio, consisted of multiple panes of glass, each with a different background layer. Photographing them individually, one shot at a time, created the illusion that the camera was moving through physical space. The setup was large and awkward; If you ever make it to the Frank G. Wells Building on Disney property, you can see it in all of its towering glory.

Disney used the process in his influential 1937 short film “The Old Mill” before using it in the first animated film “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (also released in 1937). “The Old Mill” won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” received an honorary Oscar, so Oscars – a major Oscar and seven smaller Oscars. Shirley Temple presented Disney with the awards.

Dimensionality continued to be an obsession for the company, aided by the burgeoning computer-generated imagery that drove sequences like the opening of 1990’s The Rescuers Down Under, the ballroom sequence in 1991’s Beauty and the Beast, and pretty much that all 1999s made possible “Tarzan”, which by that time had developed a new system called Deep Canvas, which simulated the existence of traditionally animated characters and backgrounds in the 3D space enabled.

In the mid-2000s, as an advanced 3D style became more popular, Disney was given the opportunity to create complete animated films in 3D. While some may remember things like Chicken Little coming out in 3D, the studio also took a step back and added a dimension to traditional animation features, which in many ways felt like the natural conclusion to the multiplane camera experiments of the past. Watching Beauty and the Beast in 3D was like going through a pop-up book version, or maybe riding a Disney attraction like it was a small world, or Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride – rides that were both “flat” and dimensional.

The difference between these earlier attempts at stereo 3D and today was that the process was then outsourced to visual effects companies such as Industrial Light & Magic (which became part of the Magic Kingdom when Disney purchased Lucasfilm) and Digital Domain.

However, stereoscopic conversion is now done in-house, with artists working with the filmmakers behind features like Moana 2.

A new horizon

As a stereoscopic supervisor, Fico has worked on shorts such as “Paperman” and “Get a Horse!”, in which Mickey was transformed from a “lost” black-and-white short into full-color CG. She has also overseen work on major feature films such as “Ralph Breaks the Internet” (the first feature the team worked on) and last year’s “Wish.”

“I’ve worked on several in the past, but out of all of them I feel like this might be my favorite. And I feel like when you watch it, you feel like you’re right in the middle of it,” Fico explained.

Fico had 10 people on her team overseeing the work, which was delivered from both the Burbank studio and the Walt Disney Animation satellite studio in Vancouver. Fico said the team’s background is primarily in layout and lighting. “It’s a really unique skill,” she said. One of the team members had just come from DreamWorks, where there was a lot of emphasis on 3D for a while. Two members of her team have been with Disney for more than 30 years. She herself worked for the company for almost 25 years.

Like the other departments, the stereo team also goes on research trips – for “Zootopia” we went to the Wildlife Center and for “Frozen II” to the ice exhibition at the Queen Mary.

The stereo team is able to control multiple cameras at multiple levels in the room, increasing or shallowing depth depending on the shot or sequence. “If they want the space to feel small and claustrophobic, we can control that space and the volume of the characters,” Fico said.

They do this by embedding them into the rest of the production, starting with the layout. They have meetings with the filmmakers who explain what the sequence should look and feel like, how the movement should work and things like that. When the layout is finished, you are already in use with the camera. “We do a rough pass to get that continuity per shot. There will still be animation, but we will have continuity,” Fico said. “Then it goes into the sweatbox (named after the non-air-conditioned room where the film reviews were done, now used as shorthand for animation review) and that’s where the final animation is created. Then we tweak our planes to balance the final animation.” They work through effects (sometimes they suggest adding). more Effects that you wouldn’t see in the flat version) and lighting.

It’s rare in animation to have the 3D team involved in almost every step of the process. But in Fico’s opinion, that’s exactly what makes Disney’s 3D more dynamic. They also think about how the 3D fits into this specific story. With Wish, they drew on their adaptations of traditional animated films such as Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King due to that film’s specific 2D/3D art style. “We wanted it to feel like a hybrid where you think: Oh, is it a painting? It’s not a painting, is it?said Fico. “That was fun.”

This reporter saw two sequences from “Moana 2” in 3D – a musical number for a song called “Beyond,” in which Moana (voiced again by Auli’i Cravalho) makes her decision to embark on a new adventure; and “Can I Get a Chee Hoo?”, a kind of inspirational anthem that Maui (Dwayne Johnson) sang for Moana. Both demonstrated a deep level of immersion and emotional clarity. “Can I Get a Chee Hoo?” uses a very specific style that is brought to life in a way that a flat version simply cannot.

“Moana 2” in 3D is “more emotional,” Fico said. They were able to boost the colors (they actually get brighter in 3D to compensate for the lower lighting levels) and emphasize the scale of things, such as when Moana and her group of merry travelers encounter a fearsome Kakamora ship. They apply everything they’ve learned from previous productions to create the most dynamic stereo presentation yet.

Jared Bush, chief creative officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios (and co-writer of “Moana 2”), explains why 3D is enjoying continued resurgence: “One thing Disney Animation does better than anyone else in the world is people into immersive environments.” . And stereo is the best way to do that, to bring audiences into this world with characters they love.”

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