The Polar Express The Movie in La Vergne, TN

• Info
• Cast & Crew

• Genre: Animated,Holiday,Fantasy
  
  Synopsis:
  The conductor (Tom Hanks) of a train to the North Pole guides a boy who questions the existence of Santa Claus.
  
  Release Date: 11/06/2004
  Running Time: 100
  
  Rating: G - General Audiences
  
  http://polarexpressmovie.warnerbros.com/
  
• Cast:
  Voice of Hero Boy / Father / Conductor / Hobo / Scrooge / Santa Claus: Tom Hanks,Voice of Smokey / Steamer: Michael Jeter,Voice of Hero Girl: Nona Gaye,Voice of Lonely Boy: Peter Scolari,Voice of Know It All: Eddie Deezen,Voice of Elf General: Charles Fleischer,Voice of Elf Lieutenant / Elf Singer: Steven Tyler,Voice of Sister Sarah / Mother: Leslie Zemeckis,Voice of Hero Boy: Daryl Sabara,Smokey/Steamer: André Sogliuzzo,Voice of Lonely Boy: Jimmy Bennett,Voice of Sister Sarah: Isabella Peregrina,Voice of Toothless: Chris Coppola,Voice of Hero Boy: Josh Hutcherson,Voice of Elf #2: Debbie Lee Carrington,Know-It-All: Jimmy ``Jax'' Pinchak,Voice of Holly/Hero Girl: Chantel Valdivieso,Voice of Lonely Boy/Billy: Hayden McFarland,Voice of Elf 1: Phil Fondacaro
  
  Crew:
  Director: Robert Zemeckis,Producer: Gary Goetzman,Producer: Tom Hanks,Producer: Jack Rapke,Original Music: Alan Silvestri,Film Editor: Jeremiah O'Driscoll,Film Editor: R. Duenas Orlando,Production Designer: Rick Carter,Cinematographer: Don Burgess,Casting: Victoria Burrows,Casting: Jeremiah O'Driscoll
  
  Production Companies:
  Playtone,Golden Mean,Imagemovers,Universal CGI,Warner Brothers,Castle Rock Entertainment
  
  Distributors:
  Castle Rock,Warner Bros. Pictures
  
  Notes:
  Production Notes - Notes provided by Warner Bros. - A young boy lies awake in his room one snowy Christmas Eve, excited and alert. Breathing silently. Hardly moving. Waiting. He's listening for a sound he's afraid that he might never hear - the ringing bells of Santa's sleigh. The time is five minutes to midnight. Suddenly, the boy is startled by a thunderous roar. Clearing the mist from his window he sees the most amazing sight - a gleaming black train rumbles to a stop right in front of his house, the steam from its powerful engine hissing through the night sky and the softly falling snowflakes. The boy rushes outside, clad only in his pajamas and slippers, and is met by the train's conductor who seems to be waiting just for him. "Well, are you coming?" the conductor asks. "Where?" "Why, to the North Pole, of course. This is the Polar Express!" T T T T T This holiday season the Academy Award-winning team of Tom Hanks and director Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Cast Away) reunite for The Polar Express, an inspiring adventure based on the beloved Caldecott Medal children's book by Chris Van Allsburg. When a doubting young boy takes an extraordinary train ride to the North Pole, he embarks on a journey of self-discovery that shows him that the wonder of life never fades for those who believe. Combining classic storytelling with cutting-edge filmmaking, The Polar Express debuts a highly advanced version of motion capture technology developed and tailored to meet Zemeckis' uncompromising vision and is the first feature ever to be shot entirely in this format. Sony Pictures Imageworks, with senior visual effects supervisors Ken Ralston, a five-time Oscar winner, and Jerome Chen, a 2000 nominee, help bring this enchanting holiday story vividly to life in full CG animation through a brand new system called Performance Capture, Imageworks' next-generation motion capture process. This innovative technique allows the actors' live-action performances to drive the emotions and movements of the digital characters in a way never seen before, throwing open the door to a whole new era of freedom and creative options for actors and filmmakers. Castle Rock Entertainment presents, in association with Shangri-La Entertainment, a Playtone / ImageMovers / Golden Mean Production of a Robert Zemeckis Film: Tom Hanks in The Polar Express. Directed by Robert Zemeckis from a screenplay by Zemeckis & William Broyles, Jr., the film is produced by Steve Starkey, Robert Zemeckis, Gary Goetzman and William Teitler and is based on the book by Chris Van Allsburg. Tom Hanks, Jack Rapke and Chris Van Allsburg are the executive producers. The production team includes directors of photography Don Burgess, A.S.C. and Robert Presley; production designers Rick Carter and Doug Chiang; and editors Jeremiah O'Driscoll & R. Orlando Duenas. Senior visual effects supervisors are Ken Ralston and Jerome Chen. Co-producer is Steven Boyd. Music score is by Alan Silvestri, and original songs by Glen Ballard and Alan Silvestri. The Polar Express will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company. Soundtrack album on Warner Sunset/Reprise Records. This film is rated G by the MPAA. www.polarexpressmovie.com / AOL Keyword: Polar Express/The Polar Express "It doesn't matter where the train is going. What matters is deciding to get on." Filmmakers Captivated by Classic Holiday Tale For nearly 20 years, families around the world have made Chris Van Allsburg's enchanting story The Polar Express part of their holiday celebrations, as much a treasured part of the season as hanging stockings by the fire, exchanging warm wishes and coming together with friends and family. "It became an annual tradition to read the story to my son while he was growing up and it never failed to fascinate him," says filmmaker Robert Zemeckis, a fan of the book since its 1985 publication. "The imagery has an otherworldly quality, existing somewhere between dreams and reality, which captures the mystery of a restless Christmas eve." "There was a visceral element to the story, I hoped would find its voice for the screen," adds Tom Hanks, himself a father of four who has logged countless bedtime story hours of his own. "For years, between November and December, depending on the children's ages," he recalls, "I think I read it four times a week, twice a night, over and over again. So I've been aware of the story since my 14-year-old was three." He and Playtone partner, producer Gary Goetzman, proposed the idea of a big screen version to author Van Allsburg and producer William Teitler, partners in Golden Mean Productions, and Hanks ultimately brought the project to longtime friend and colleague Zemeckis. Together, the Oscar-winning pair had previously explored issues of the human spirit in Forrest Gump and Cast Away. Both were intrigued by the important spiritual journey taken by the nameless young hero in The Polar Express. Beloved by children, the The Polar Express holds a special appeal for adults as well, who see themselves in the character of the young boy and remember their own childhood excitement and anticipation on that one most important night of the year. Perhaps they also remember the moment when the first shadowy doubts crept into their own young hearts and they realized that growing up might mean losing something precious and intangible forever, something they couldn't quite define but they could certainly feel. The Polar Express is about that moment, that crucial juncture of innocence and maturity where a child can choose one path that will close his heart forever or another, where he learns that faith has no age, no rules and no limits. "The book took me distinctly into what I call the 'waking space,' that state of mind between sleeping and waking where you have a touchstone in reality but are still seeing through a dreamlike filter and you're vulnerable to a lot of emotions that wash over you," says producer Steve Starkey, Zemeckis' longtime producing partner and an Oscar winner for his work on Forrest Gump. "I said to Bob, 'this is a place worth transporting people to.'" Zemeckis, who wrote the screenplay with William Broyles, Jr. (Cast Away, Apollo 13) and went on to direct The Polar Express, acknowledges that, "It's a story everyone can relate to. So many of us, as children or adults, have questioned our belief in something or gone through the process of having our faith tested and restored. Kids can take the story literally as a journey to find Santa Claus, while older readers understand it as a metaphor for much bigger ideas. It deals with the symbols of Christmas but at its core is a universal story about belief in things you don't completely see or understand. "Hopefully," the director continues, "as you grow older you don't become so cynical that you stop believing. The idea of Christmas is warmth and unselfishness. Santa Claus is a symbol of that but you don't have to believe in him to have that feeling." Once on the train, the boy meets a number of other children, each with his or her own circumstances and lessons to learn. "Much like The Wizard of Oz," notes executive producer Jack Rapke, "each child aboard this magic train is on his or her own personal journey, and each must find what they're missing to make themselves complete. There's a girl who has all the talent, spirit and intelligence to be a good leader but she lacks confidence, a know-it-all character who lacks humility and another boy we call Lonely Boy, who grew up in a loveless environment and needs to have faith in other people. These rich themes play out on an inner, character level while simultaneously there's the tremendous spectacle of the outer journey as the train speeds towards the North Pole." Author and artist Chris Van Allsburg, one of the most respected names in children's literature, earned a 1986 Caldecott Medal for the oil pastel drawings that illustrate The Polar Express. Noted for his imaginative and original tales, Van Allsburg began his publishing career with The Garden of Abdul Gasazi in 1979, which drew unprecedented praise and a Caldecott Honor Award, a rare achievement for a debut publication. He followed that with the fanciful Jumanji, in 1981 (the source for the 1995 feature film starring Robin Williams) and The Polar Express in 1985 - both of them Caldecott Medal winners, placing Van Allsburg among a small group of authors who have earned that coveted award twice. "Lucky are the children who know there's a jolly fat man in a red suit who pilots a flying sleigh," says Van Allsburg, who likewise credit grown-ups who manage to cross into adulthood without jettisoning their sense of wonder. "We should envy them. The inclination to believe in the fantastic may strike some as a failure in logic, or even gullibility, but it's really a gift. A world that might have Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster is clearly superior to one that definitely does not." For the story's young hero, the very fact that he climbs aboard the train when it stops for him indicates that his mind and heart are still open. As the conductor wisely advises, "It doesn't matter where the train is going. What matters is deciding to get on." Creating a Visual Landscape as Magical as the Story Itself Zemeckis was equally captivated by the book's rich and sensitively rendered illustrations. Genuine warmth emanates from the faces of the children in the cozy Polar Express train compartment while, outside, the ever-changing landscape appears simultaneously mysterious and inviting with its deep, dark forests and snowy mountains. "Chris's illustrations are honest and familiar and at the same time wonderfully transcendent," notes Zemeckis, who sought to recreate that quality on the screen, offering audiences a chance to experience what a midnight trip to The North Pole might look like through the eyes of a young boy. "It's easy to see yourself, your children, or the kids you grew up with in the faces and personalities of these characters, and the landscape that the train passes through is like the dreams we all had about distant places where magical and exciting things could happen." "There's something absolutely haunting about his artwork," Hanks describes. "It has a tactile feeling that's really the emotion he communicates through the artwork itself. When he's talking about the little boy lying quietly in bed, the picture really gives you the sense of it. When the train pulls up on his front lawn you can hear the chugging and the steam." As he recalls, he and Zemeckis agreed it would be a good idea "to recreate each painting in the book at some point throughout the movie. We might create an elegant film that would present the Christmas spirit in a brand new way." Adds Zemeckis, "We wanted to offer the beauty and richness of Chris' illustrations from the book as if it were a moving oil painting, with all the warmth, immediacy and subtleties of a human performance." But how? Not only would a live action film of such far-reaching landscapes be staggeringly impractical if not impossible, it would lack the luminous texture the filmmakers were committed to recreating. Another possible option - animation - had its own limitations. "The problem with traditional animation for a project like this," says Zemeckis, who isn't averse to employing the technique in its rightful place, "is that it falls short in depicting authentic human characters. With exaggerated images, fantasies like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, or cartoons, it's great. But I was looking for something more realistically alive." Zemeckis presented his unique challenge to visual effects wizard Ken Ralston, a multiple Academy Award-winner for his work and currently a senior visual effects supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks, an industry leader in digital production. Ralston dates his creative collaboration with Zemeckis back to the 1985 sci fi comedy adventure Back to the Future, a film remembered as much for its heart and deft storytelling as for its dazzling special effects. Raltson proposed motion capture, a process by which an actor's live performance is digitally captured by computerized cameras and becomes a human blueprint for creating virtual characters. Zemeckis was familiar with the technique but would not have expected it to serve his purposes for The Polar Express, based on applications he had seen. But this was no ordinary mo-cap his friend had in mind. It would have to be a giant step beyond current standards in order to achieve the depth and visual complexity Zemeckis required. Coincidentally, Ralston and his Imageworks colleague, visual effects supervisor Jerome Chen, had been doing preliminary work on just such an advanced process, to be the next generation of mo-cap, far more sophisticated than anything ever seen before. Beyond mere motion, this highly developed system was designed to capture every discernable movement and the subtlety of human expression from an actor's performance, down to the slightest nuance or flutter of an eyelid. Additionally, unlike existing mo-cap systems that are limited in range, it could simultaneously record 3-dimensional, high-fidelity facial and body movements from multiple actors, through a system of digital cameras providing a full 360 degrees of coverage. Working together, the Polar and Imageworks teams ran a practical test of the process, using Tom Hanks as their first subject. "I didn't know anything about this," Zemeckis says of the groundbreaking process, which they ultimately - and appropriately - christened Performance Capture. "When we did the test and the results came back, it turned out to be the perfect way to do The Polar Express. "In fact," he admits, "if this hadn't been possible, or hadn't evolved to this degree, I likely would not have moved forward with the project." Here was a way - the only way - to achieve the oil painting imagery from Van Allsburg's drawings onscreen while maintaining the immediacy of real human performances. As Ralston describes it, "Performance Capture offers a vivid rendering of the Van Allsburg world while infusing a sense of heightened realism into the performances. It's like putting the soul of a live person into a virtual character." The process not only exponentially increases the amount of live material that can be captured and interpreted digitally, it also provides unparalleled versatility in the director's storytelling choices. While traditional film editing is dependent upon the range of coverage or angles from which scenes are photographed during production, Performance Capture technology offered full, limitless coverage that allowed Zemeckis to literally create custom shots during the editing process. He could select from a range of depths and perspectives and move characters in relationship to their cyber surroundings to emphasize nuances of expression or other details, all with natural camera movements. The oil painting effect, so essential to Zemeckis, would be enhanced in layers during the post-performance phase, through state-of-the-art CG rendering. The Polar Express is the first feature film to be shot entirely in Performance Capture. Those who have seen the final footage attest that it defies easy categorization. Familiar comparisons fall short of the mark. Often it's described in terms of what it is not - as in not traditional animation, not merely motion capture and not strictly live action. An art form in its own right, Performance Capture effectively breaks new ground to offer images like nothing seen before. Never one to introduce a new technique on screen for its own sake, Zemeckis can look back upon a filmmaking career marked by many striking innovations, secure in the knowledge that each and every time he broke creative ground it was in service to a story. In Forrest Gump, for example, Tom Hanks as the fictional Gump casually and seamlessly turns up in authentic archival footage where he is seen interacting with historic figures such as President Kennedy. Recalling that startling effect, Zemeckis now says, matter-of-factly, "Well, we had a story about a guy who had met presidents. It was in the script. It was assumed that he would be on film at these meetings so we took news footage of real presidential appearances and then figured out a way, with the computer, to do it. "It's easy to do that kind of thing now," he admits. "But then, it was tough." Prior to Forrest Gump, Zemeckis charmed audiences with a lively blend of live action and manic animation in the 1988 classic action comedy Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, another fresh use of technology that the director simply acknowledges as a case of "using the modern tools we had to integrate a 2-dimensional cartoon character into a 3-dimensional world." "Bob will make a movie to test the art form, or to wrestle with some aspect of emotion or human nature," says Hanks. "He doesn't take his job lightly. He's interested in making films that somehow break a mold or challenge not only himself as a filmmaker but the entire motion picture oeuvre in some way." What matters most is telling a story in the best way possible. Essentially, Zemeckis believes, either with or without cutting-edge effects, "the entire spectacle of cinema is illusion. Even the most basic techniques are illusion - a cut, a close-up, it's all fake. It's magic. It doesn't exist in real life. So, if you look at it that way, all movies are illusions anyway, and some of the things I do are just extensions of that. That's what's so much fun about being a movie director." The Process Some elements of production on The Polar Express resembled the traditional approach to a live-action film: Zemeckis and Broyles worked on the script, storyboards were created and sets, props and costumes designed. Fabrics and wallpaper were selected. As Starkey explains, "even though we were breaking new ground in the way that images are captured and presented, there were still some fundamental physical details that had to be created upfront in the usual way. We still needed to see the fabric for the costumes and the hairstyles for each character." Production began months ahead of the first performance capture session, as the filmmakers assembled their creative team, many of them veterans of past Zemeckis projects like costume designer Joanna Johnston, who unveiled screen siren Jessica Rabbit's trademark evening gown in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and production designer Rick Carter, an Oscar nominee for his work on Forrest Gump. The difference was that the practical elements, once digitally scanned into the computer, were retired. The filmmakers then had virtual sets, virtual costumes and an exhaustively detailed catalogue of virtual and mobile props. Everything was scrupulously recorded from every conceivable angle and depth, resulting in fully prepared, 3-dimensional stages ready for the actors' entrance. Other sets and locations, like the fantastic mountains and forests the Polar Express races through on its midnight journey and the bustling downtown streets of Santa's village at the top of the globe, never existed in the real world at all. They went straight from imagination into the computer. In creating the big-screen visuals of The Polar Express, the filmmakers began at the same spot Van Allsburg had begun: in the boy's moonlit bedroom on Christmas eve, when he first hears the train pull up outside. "But we were going deeper into the environments than the book did," notes Starkey. "Taking a look at the book's first image, there's a bed, a window and part of a wall. But what does the rest of the room look like? Is there a stairwell? What does the rest of the house look like, or the neighborhood? What do things look like when the train leaves town?" Using the book as a touchstone, the filmmakers then expanded its borders. Production designer Rick Carter studied Van Allsburg's illustrations before, as Zemeckis says, "going in search of Chris Van Allsburg himself." He and production designer Doug Chiang, the conceptual designer on Star Wars, Episode One and Two, journeyed to the very house in which the author grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan and used it to inspire the design of the interior and exterior of the boy's home and the street where the train squeals to a stop. Traveling next to Zemeckis' former neighborhood in the South Side of Chicago, they tapped into similar environs and memories. "After the train leaves the first boy's house, which is modeled after the house Chris grew up in, it stops at another house to pick up another boy," Carter explains. "It's a house that very much resembles one I found two doors down from Bob's childhood home." In a way, Carter muses, this might be "the point at which Bob gets on the train." Chiang, who lead a team of digital matte painters and conceptual CG artists from offices in Northern California, worked in tandem with Carter to create the virtual environments. As Zemeckis explains, "Rick has never worked in this fashion before. Traditionally, he would design something, draw it on paper or make models, and then have it constructed on site. With Polar, we still started with the drawings and models, but then instead of physical construction we could often built it right in the computer based on those designs." One advantage of this process over standard set design was its efficiency. "Typically, in preproduction," says Chiang, "you create flat 2-dimensional designs and then develop them in physical miniature models. But this way, at a very early stage we were able to give Bob precisely what the finished product would look like." Adjustments could be made quickly to incorporate the director's needs in an ongoing process. Another advantage was its limitless scope, as described by Chiang, who found himself working on a computer reconstruction of the train's passage through a majestic mountain range. Quoting from Van Allsburg's text, Chiang says, "the book read 'mountains so high it seemed as if we would scrape the moon.' It's clearly a child's perspective. Visually, the whole journey could be a dream inside the boy's head. So why not design it in terms of how a child would design the world? I really enjoyed coming up with the glacial terrain on a huge scale that couldn't possibly exist in this world." Back at Imageworks, Ralston and Chen furthered the CGI designs along the same lines. "In a film like this," says Ralston, "every frame is a painting and that's how we approached it. Jerome and I would take Doug's concepts and then move forward in the world of CG, where we built the 3-D sets." He was especially concerned with "the lighting of each scene, creating the atmosphere, the effects work that makes sparks come off the train's wheels or the snow fall in a certain way so it's always lyrical, magical." Adds Chen, "We gave a lot of thought to maintaining the stylization of the book. The pastel paintings are impressionistic, with contrast lighting and strong light sources and shadows. At the same time, we wanted a world you could believe in, as if down the street from the boy's house and around the corner there were more houses and a whole city." Not only did The Polar Express production have to broaden locations from Van Allsburg's illustrations for the screen, but they also had to open up the children's book into a feature length story with a wider range of adventures for the young hero and accompanying stories for his fellow travelers. All of this had to be a natural progression from, and completely compatible with, the author's original vision. "Throughout the script stage," says Hanks, referring to early discussions shared with Zemeckis and co-screenwriter Broyles about the feasibility of adapting a 29-page book into a feature film, "we kept asking each other, 'are we expanding this for the sake of air or are we adding something that is going to further develop the themes and concepts?' A key went into a lock somewhere around the moment that the three of us realized that the first line of the movie should be the first line of the book and the last line of the movie the last line of the book, and where we would extrapolate would be within those boundaries." "The book was the inspiration for everything," Zemeckis confirms. "I used it as an outline. The intention was simply to expand it rather than try to reinvent it." For example, using Van Allsburg's illustration of the other children aboard the train, he selected three individual faces and imagined a story for each of them, thus introducing the characters known as Girl, Lonely Boy and Know-It-All-Boy. Throughout the journey, these children interact with Van Allsburg's main character, the unnamed Boy, and help define his spiritual lessons as well as experience their own. "What's interesting about these characters," adds Hanks, "is that there is not a unified sensibility to what they are doing on the train, they're not just kids saying 'yay' at the same time. It's a journey of individuals. The only thing they mutually want at the same time is hot chocolate. If you're going to have a bunch of kids all experience Christmas the same way it's not going to be realistic." While much of the design work was being accomplished, Zemeckis also worked with the actors on the motion-capture stage. Measured to specific dimensions to accommodate the tight, 360-degree digital receptor coverage, the bare, minimalist sets reminded producer Starkey of Black Box Theater, a style popular in the 1960s and 70s, in which performance and story took an intimate focus over physical elements of a set, and props were either very spare or non-existent. Here on stages 2, 3 and 4 at Culver Studios, an empty picture frame might represent a window, while rudimentary blocks of unfinished wood stood in as doors or pieces of furniture. This provided basic reference points to the actors who had already seen images of the finished sets in the computer. At this point, "liberated from the tyranny of the technical aspects of filmmaking," says Zemeckis, he shared the traditional actor-director dynamic with his cast on each scene. The actors donned form-fitting motion capture suits resembling divers' wetsuits, onto which were sewn approximately 60 "jewels" or markers made of light reflective material, enabling the digital cameras to record the movement of the body as a configuration of 3-dimensional dots. This translated into fluid and natural action in the virtual world. Since the true hallmark of Performance Capture is its ability to render genuine human emotion and natural expressions with uncompromising clarity and detail, special attention was given to the the actors' faces. As many as 150 reflective jewels were clustered onto their faces and scalps, adhering to all lines of musculature; affixed to eyelids, brows, upper and lower lips, chin line and cheeks. The application took nearly two hours. Once outfitted, actors delivered their performances as though on stage, without the distractions of a regular bustling movie set. In some ways, it was acting in its purest form - just the character, the space and the words. "As actors," says Hanks, "we were able to imprint our performances onto the story as opposed to going into the recording studio and providing voices. It was fun but it was also incredibly challenging, albeit in a good way. Because of the sensors, everything you do registers so you cannot afford to make a mistake. On the other hand, having the momentum of shooting for 10 or 15 minutes at a time and getting it all like one continuous moment, one fell swoop, is as free as I've felt as an actor. It was like being in theater again. If we could imagine it, we had it." Fully captured in three dimensions, their performances were then integrated into existing virtual sets, and from this point forward they lived in the computer. "Now you got to see the characters in motion, walking through the scene as they did on the Performance Capture set," says Starkey. And now, from the director's perspective, the real fun began. Into the computer was placed what is best described as a virtual camera - a moveable, recordable point of view that can be manipulated like an actual lens. "So," says Zemeckis, with an ease that seems to deny the complexity of the concept, "you have this virtual set and you put the performances of your actors into it. Then you take a virtual camera and put that in as well. The camera will now record all the virtual images just like a conventional camera would record what it's pointing at. "Meaning," he clarifies, "suppose I have two monitors. I can see what the virtual camera is seeing and, at the same time, I have another monitor in a sort of surveillance position on top of the set. And I can see my little virtual camera moving in amongst my actors just like you would if you were watching a regular movie set from the rafters." Understanding how a hands-on director like Zemeckis is accustomed to working, Ralston designed a device at this stage he called "wheels," which simulates the feel and function of a traditional pan-and-tilt camera gearhead. Using wheels, Zemeckis and directors of photography Don Burgess and Robert Presley were able to manipulate the virtual camera with precision and familiarity, like piloting a dolly and crane rather than punching a keyboard to execute detailed commands. Zemeckis acknowledges the unparalleled versatility and limitless options the system provides. "I can shoot a two-shot and two close-ups, or let a close-up of one actor run the entire length of the scene just like I would do in live action. Then I could do the reverse on a second actor all the way through, or another two-shot. Then I give those shots as dailies to the editor and we edit them like we would for a conventional movie." The essential difference is, unlike a conventional movie, where at the end of the day the director would have only what had been shot in this fashion for his dailies, with Performance Capture he is free to change his mind at any time, return to the source material and revise his point of view completely. Every possible shot, from every possible depth and angle, continues to exist on each virtual set. Also, unlike conventional animation, Zemeckis points out, "the editing is done cinematically rather than by a layout artist." In this fashion he was able to fully create each and every shot for The Polar Express. "You could say," he offers, "that I directed this film in two stages: once, live, on the set, and then again, cinematically, in the computer." At this point, material viewed in the computer is not always fully finished. Preliminary staging is represented by images not of the actors as they will ultimately look but in a rudimentary place-holding form that the crew dubbed "Michelin men" in reference to the well-known advertising icon. Considering the manpower involved to assemble and render each finished scene, it made sense to wait until Zemeckis had selected his shots before proceeding with the final CG polish. As an adjunct to this specialized view, the director and his team could also consult a video playback of each performance. Teams of talented computer artists would later apply texture, light and definition to backgrounds, as Zemeckis explains, "once they knew where the camera would be looking. Then they'd know which backgrounds needed to be lit and rendered. The Michelin Men footage is how we budgeted every scene." In addition to crafting light and shadow, computer effects animators were responsible for creating such delicate details as the look of moonlight filtered through mist or the gently curling trail of sm