"DREAMS DO COME TRUE IN NEW ORLEANS…" Disney Designers Do a Little Hard Work to Make a Big Easy
On a crescent-shaped bend in the Mississippi River 120 miles from the Gulf of Mexico is a moody city full of history and mystery, of music and magic. Founded by the French, succeeded to the Spanish, it is a city rich with African and West Indian influences, a vein of Roman Catholicism, and the fusion of worldwide culture found in a seaport city. Behind it all is a certain transience based in the nature of its livelihood.
A robust immigrant population in the early 20th century only added to the abundance and texture of this already rich and unique environment. Oceangoing trade nurtured the development of early jazz music, the legalized vice of Storyville, the artistic ferment of the Vieux Carré (French Quarter), and even some of the earliest organized efforts in the historic preservation movement.

"One of the unique things about 'The Princess and the Frog--it's not just a fairy tale, it's Disney's first American fairy tale. It's actually set in a real time, in a real city. That's been really fun, it allowed us to actually go to this place and research, and a lot of environments in the movie are places you can actually visit."

John Musker, Director

As a setting for the fantastic, the enchanted, the musical, and even the villainous, nowhere on earth seemed quite so right for the setting of "The Princess and the Frog."
"New Orleans is a shockingly different place. It's just so different from anywhere else in America," says art director Ian Gooding. "I think San Francisco has a lot of character, and New York is certainly, undeniably full of New York character. But if you blindfolded someone and put them on a plane that landed in New Orleans, and they'd never been there, you could tell them they were in another country--and they'd probably believe you."
The sense of otherworldliness within a distinctly American setting was a component of the filmmakers approach to developing their New Orleans fairy tale. Within the geography and history of the region were all of the elements and setting the required, and the real places themselves inspired further additions and refinements to the storytelling.

THE GARDEN DISTRICT
Within the "single" locale of New Orleans, the filmmakers defined three distinct environments: As the residential setting for the ostensible "royal family" in this American fairy tale, the filmmakers found a locale that evoked, within its New Orleans setting, the ideas of luxury, solidity and tradition that are embodied within the classic story imagery as the stout walls of a majestic castle--The Garden District, the first suburban neighborhood of the city of New Orleans. Originally developed from 1832 to about 1900, the Garden District evokes the stately homes and mansions of the sugar barons and cotton kings, wealthy newcomers building opulent homes reflecting their prosperity--and that of New Orleans in that era.
In approaching the design of the Garden District, the filmmakers faced the challenge of taking a very ordered, architectural real-world inspiration and making it into a lush and nostalgic fairy-tale realm. Additionally, the human environs had to seamlessly co-exist with the extreme naturalism of an uncultivated bayou that also plays such an important role.
Art director Ian Gooding added an element of caricature to the design, in order to relieve the innate rigidity of the horizontal/vertical statements of real architecture. Ornamentation, turnings, scrollwork and posts were exaggerated, but without compromising the solid look of the buildings. Verticals were not always drawn parallel, but tilting side to side, which actually appears balanced in the composition of the final shots. Older buildings in particular were given a more pronounced tilt or bow on the vertical, have more curved lines, and appear concave in overall shape. The result was caricatured, but solidly constructed, architecture.

THE FRENCH QUARTER
North of Canal Street is the picturesque French Quarter (Vieux Carré) of the old city, now one of the best-loved attractions in the American South.
Many of the multi-storied French Quarter buildings feature ornate balconies and elaborate cast-iron work, frequently festooned with hanging and potted plants. Most buildings are built with brick or plastered brick, painted in bright colors, and feature window and door shutters for protection against tropical storms. At night, the warm, flickering glow of gas lamps and lanterns light the cobbled alleys and courtyards, and cast shadows that stimulate the romantic, the imaginative--and the apprehensive.
This undercurrent of wickedness and black magic, the presence of sin in the shadows of virtue, of darkness lurking behind the graceful, sunny wrought-iron balconies helped define the key element of enchantment in the story. While sinister, this element is not unattractive--especially to the youthful and spirited prince.
In designing these more ominous settings of the city, the artists developed a visual vocabulary that would reinforce both the mood of the spaces and the characters that inhabit them. Tall, vertical, narrow spaces and doorways reveal artifacts, masks and objects. Strong contrast and unsettling light-and-shadow patterns add disquiet to altars containing candles, bottles, statues, scrolls and religious icons. In all, elements of fantasy and terror are more pronounced and stylized, the environment evokes the attractive malevolence of the villainous Dr. Facilier.

THE BAYOU
In the deep Southeast of the United States, in particular the Delta region of Louisiana and Mississippi, sluggish offshoots of the "Big River" meander through marshes of the lowlands, creating great swampy regions known as bayous. Larger ones, such as Bayou Lafourche, are remnants of routes the Mississippi once followed on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. Here, where alligators slip silently through the brackish waters beneath a fan of palmetto leaves, and fireflies create a lantern glow veiled by the latticed skeletal branches of gnarled live oaks and scrub pine, all draped in shrouds of Spanish moss, is the perfect setting for the mysterious, magical and romantic.
"I grew up in Florida," says visual development artist James Aaron Finch, "so I had a sense of this Southern environment, the great oaks, the swampy areas. The indigenous plants that people don't see much in California, palmettos and things, and how to put them in there. I bring a little bit of that language of the South, and what's authentic to the Bayou."

"This movie is challenging in that it has such different environments. You have the French Quarter, and the wild, colorful Mardi Gras, and the polished sophistication of the Garden District--and then you have the Bayou."

Maria Gonzales, Color Supervisor

Bringing together such disparate environments was a genuine concern of the production team, but perhaps not in the manner one might assume. Kyle Odermatt explains, "The organics of the Bayou are easy to do, straight to final. The architectural things were actually harder to do. And the real challenge from an artistic standpoint is going from one to another and having it feel okay."
Visual development artist Susan Nichols adds, "New Orleans really is emblematic of 'Americana,' in that it's a melting pot of so many varied cultures, and always has been, which gives a flavor to the community and the ethnicity that is integral to the entire environment there. It added a layer of flavor to the visuals that we haven't tapped into before, and I loved it."

MOVING FORWARD WHILE LOOKING BACK Classic Disney Design Informs "The Princess and the Frog"
Creating a world that has credibility while maintaining an aura of fantasy is a difficult balance in the best circumstances. Although the settings of "The Princess and the Frog" are regionally adjacent, they presented a challenge in making a single complete and credible setting within the needs of various types of locales and visual styles. The filmmakers looked to the past in order not to imitate, but to examine how the Disney masters of the past had designed their films.
"The directors were talking about 'Lady and the Tramp' for the architectural stuff, but 'Bambi' for the natural stuff, the organic stuff," Ian Gooding says, "That's a good jumping off point, but I didn't think we could really do that, because if you were to edit together 'Bambi' and 'Lady and the Tramp,' you'd have a mess. You know, as beautiful as they are individually, they just wouldn't go together."

LESSONS OF "BAMBI" AND "LADY"
The dominant 'Bambi' influence of the film derives not from simply a look, but rather the philosophical, theoretical and technical underpinnings of the classic feature.
Gooding explains, "In 'Bambi' they took something incredibly complex, a forest environment--leaves and twigs, rocks and bark clumps, everything else that you find in a forest--and they painted only what was important. You still have the feeling of a forest, but not a literal forest. What they did in 'Bambi' was painted how it feels to be in a forest, instead of painting a forest. You don't miss the billions of twigs and leaves and stuff. It completely works the way that they conceived and executed it. And it's that spirit that we're trying to go with for our movie."
"The influence of 'Lady and the Tramp' really goes back to the sort of thinking and shapes of Edward Hopper, George Bellows and other American realism painters," layout supervisor Rasoul Azadani says.
"We knew we were working on a period piece," says production designer James Aaron Finch, "and we knew that some of the architecture was of that Garden District feel, so we looked at 'Lady and the Tramp,' not so much for the application of paint, but definitely the caricature of shapes and the compositional elements. Large foreground elements utilizing the screen shape, and then space of depth and pattern and a nice balance and rhythm of light shapes."

"This movie was just filled to the rim. I think no other film that we've done has got so much going on in terms of location."

James Aaron Finch, Production Designer

LIGHTING AND STAGING
"In lighting and color, I think our film is actually a little bit more complex than our early films," says head of backgrounds Sunny Apinchapong. "Although we often look to the simplicity of previous titles, we are adding the sophistication of new lighting and color techniques."
Ian Gooding says "The Princess and the Frog" benefits from past successes. "The lighting is absolutely terrific. The one thing I think where 'Lady and the Tramp' and 'Bambi' actually do overlap is lighting. They both are really great at using lighting to simplify very complex things and direct the eye to the correct spot."
The task for the background artists was seemingly backwards according to Sunny Apinchapong. "It's a challenge is to figure out what to put in, but here what to leave out was more important, so it would be less distracting to the focal point where we stage the characters. We keep everything pretty soft and focused on basic silhouette shape and design, more on designing, rather than just rendering the scenes."

COLOR
In color styling, visual development artist Lorelay Bove saw a need to balance between the location reality and the dictates of the story. "For the color on the bayou, I would look at photographs and research on the Internet, and really look at what's appealing from those pictures, or what colors were working together. I looked at that, and then at bayou plants, and then I just worked everything together, always thinking if the moment is a sad moment, maybe it's monochromatic and more on the gray side--it depends on what scene, and on what mood."
Ian Gooding began searching for a happy medium in visual detail. "We started with a background, and I painted it, contextually, too far--too organic, too brush-stroked, too painterly, too soft. We put characters on top of it and showed it to the directors and John Lasseter. They said, 'Parts of this are working, but let's tighten up these areas,' and we started pulling back from the one that was too far, until we found something that worked. I think what we ended up with works really well."
Apinchapong adds, "One thing we try to do is that even though we're using software to paint these days, we don't want the paint to look too digital. We try to make sure it feels more traditional, even though we don't use brush or paint."
Gooding says, "It's an exploration to see how far you can push things, and when we did that with the bayou stuff, we pushed it really, really far--and people didn't object. So you can actually leave it there. The buildings, you have to pull back a little bit. But they do feel 'of the same world.'"
"This movie was just filled to the rim," James Aaron Finch says. "I think no other film that we've done has got so much going on in terms of location. It's like taking two or three films like 'Hunchback' and 'Tarzan,' and then just put it all into one film and do it in a rapid schedule."

A FROG'S EYE-VIEW
The differing species of characters led to another unique design challenge for the filmmakers, that of creating a relative size scale that would enable the appropriate staging of scenes between characters of differing sizes, and their scale relationships to their settings.
"It's something we always have to be aware of and not just cheat like mad so it doesn't feel real," says supervising animator Eric Goldberg. "Yes, there's some liberties that you can take in order to stage things effectively and make it look like characters are having a conversation, but everything has to be in proper relationship to everything else."
Rasoul Azadani recalls how the notion of scale affected a research trip to a real bayou. "When I went to the bayou, some parts had no water, so we could see the buildup of bayou from the ground up, we could see what the ground would look like, and you could see the water marks, how the water would come in. So I was walking with my camera right on the ground, taking snapshots from the point of view of the frogs."

MUSIC: Oscar-winning Composer Randy Newman Adds Authenticity and Experience
It was unanimous among filmmakers--Randy Newman was their first choice, their ideal composer for "The Princess and the Frog," right from the beginning.
Newman, a longtime collaborator for DisneyPixar films, received an Academy Award for his work on "Monsters, Inc." He won Grammy Awards^® for "Monsters, Inc.," "Toy Story" and "A Bugs Life" (among others).
Randy Newman's 1974 song, "Louisiana 1927," had gotten a lot of play after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the directors began thinking of the innate sense of musical theatre in a lot of Newman's work, including his scores for Milos Forman's "Ragtime" or Barry Levinson's "The Natural."
"We just kept thinking, 'You know, Randy would be really good, there is an Americana aspect of it and that just seems like it would be intriguing,'" John Musker recalls.
So, with a certain feeling of selling icemakers to penguins, Musker and Clements pitched Randy Newman to John Lasseter.
"John understood exactly what Randy could bring to our project," Clements says, "but he also warned us, 'You know,everyone is going to say that I made you use Randy Newman.'"  With family ties to New Orleans and a few summers there as a child--Newman says he has a life-long love of the music.  "The music is, I find, congenial," says Newman. "I don't know what it is.  It's hard to believe I heard something as a baby, you know, that will always feel good to me.  But, who knows?  It's very comfortable to me, that kind of music."
Newman created an all-new score for the feature in a range of styles, including jazz, blues, gospel and zydeco; and featuring seven new songs. 
Among the songs is a ballad for Tiana, performed by Anika Noni Rose.  "'Almost There' is the song in which Tiana expresses her emotions about having a restaurant and achieving her goal," says Newman.  "Anika comes from Broadway and singing with a backbeat is not what she typically does, but she did it and did it beautifully."
Newman says he understands the power of music for filmmakers, particularly those creating an animated film like "The Princess and the Frog."  "When you score an animated picture, the characters actual behavior is reflected in the music," he says.  "If they fall down, you go 'ba-dum-dum.'  And if you try not to go 'ba-dum-dum,' it doesn't look right. But the music can also do stuff emotionally for you, too."
One of the more emotional characters in "The Princess and the Frog" is Ray.  Newman helped bring Ray's emotions to light, so to speak, in a song entitled "Evangeline." 
"'Evangeline' is a love song for Ray, the firefly, who is in love with a beautiful far-away firefly he has yet to meet, which is a nice idea," says Newman.  "It was easy to write because I knew instantly that it was going to be a Cajun waltz.  His emotion is clear. He's in love."

RANDY NEWMAN (Composer) is an Oscar, Grammy and Emmy-winning composer and songwriter whose numerous film credits include "James and the Giant Peach" (1996), "A Bug's Life", "Monsters, Inc." and "Cars."
Newman has been nominated for 17 Academy Awards including two each for "Ragtime" (1981), "Monsters, Inc." and "Toy Story." He won his first Oscar in 2002 for the song "If I Didn't Have You" from "Monsters Inc." The song also earned him his second of five Grammy Awards. Newman's song, "When She Loved Me," written for "Toy Story 2" won a Grammy for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or other Visual Media.   
Newman's other film scores include "The Natural," "Avalon," "Parenthood," "Seabiscuit," "Awakenings," "The Paper," "Pleasantville," "Meet the Parents" and "Meet the Fockers." He has also written songs for television, including the Emmy Award-winning "Monk" theme song, "It's a Jungle out There."
The multi-talented Newman co-wrote the screenplay for "Three Amigos!" (1986) with Steve Martin and Lorne Michaels and also wrote three songs for the film.
Born in 1943 into a famously musical family, Newman began his professional songwriting career at 17, knocking out tunes for a Los Angeles publishing house. His uncles Alfred, Lionel, and Emil were all well-respected film composers and conductors. Randy's father Irving Newman--a prominent physician--wrote a song for Bing Crosby.
In 1968, Newman made his recording debut with the lushly orchestrated album "Randy Newman." Before long, his extraordinary and evocative compositions were being covered by a wide range of top artists, from Pat Boone and Peggy Lee to Ray Charles and Wilson Pickett.
Critics raved about his 1970 sophomore effort "12 Songs," and increasingly the public started to take notice of his sly, satirical songwriting with albums such as 1970's "Live," the 1972 classic "Sail Away" and the acclaimed and provocative1974 release, "Good Old Boys." His 1977 album, "Little Criminals," included the left-field smash hit "Short People."
In the 1980s, Newman divided his time between film composing and recording his own albums, including 1988's "Land of Dreams," another breakthrough work marked by some of his most personal and powerful work.
The '90s saw the release of Newman's comedic take on "Faust," which included performances by Don Henley, Elton John, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor, the compilation "Guilty: 30 Years of Randy Newman" and a new 1999 album for DreamWorks, "Bad Love."
Newman's most recent studio album is "Harps and Angels," produced by Mitchell Froom and Lenny Waronker and released in August 2008.
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