The Archive Series: Layout and Backgroung

SETTING THE STAGE BY JOHN LASSETER 

"ONE OF THE THINGS Walt Disney did so well was take an audience into the world of a story. Watch any Disney movie, and you'll immediately be carried away to another time and place, whether it's a forest clearing, the cluttered attic of a London townhouse, or King Louie's jungle throne lands of room. (You can also see the same expertise at work in the Disneyland.) From the start, the artists working on the Disney animated films did an incredible job creating beautiful, detailed, and appealing many worlds; worlds you want to be in. In an animated film, the backgrounds and layouts are what create these worlds. Character design and animation understandably get most of the attention when discussing the art that goes into a film. But it's the carefully designed -and often amazingly beautiful-backgrounds that show us where all the action takes place and help us understand the unspoken rules affecting the characters' behavior by establishing the look and feel and scale of the worlds they navigate. Layouts are the planning images that help the filmmakers work out the precise details of how an environment will look as a character and the cam- era moves through it, while backgrounds are the environments that appear in the film itself. In classic, hand-drawn animation, backgrounds are indi vidual pieces ofart that incorporate all the constant elements of a scene everything except the characters and the props those characters in with. Computer-animated films use paintings as well-matte paintins are used to fill in faraway vistas-but since the regular "background" in these films are really sets composed of many individual elements, we've chosen characteristic stills to represent the backgrounds from these projecu No matter how they've been created, though, the attention to detail and thoughtful planning that go into each environment are the same. 

In the best movies, every element works together to support the story. Color, along with music, is on of the most effective ways to communicaIe the underlying emotion of a scene, and color and lighting can tell you a tremendous amount about the mood of a particular moment. When the color and lighting harmonize with the action and dialogue, they power reinforce what's taking place with the characters. When they're different from the explicit action, they signal change and tension. In every case, tan background can tell you the emotion of a scene at a glance. Backgrounds can also tell you more about a place-and more conviningly-than dialogue ever could. Neverland's caricatured, fantastical set tings contrast beautifully with the film's elegant but more serious London, and perfectly create the feeling of a giant playground where Peter Pan and the Lost Boys would want to stay forever and never grow up. The clever and intri- cate toys that fill Geppetto's workshop show the incredible care and skill he's into his craft over the years, while the humble surroundings show us that put he's done it not for riches or glory, but for the sake of the work itself. 

The genius of these backgrounds is that they do all this work without ever calling attention to themselves or interrupting the flow of the work seamlessly with all the other parts of the film to let you focus on just being with the characters, being in the story. It's not often that you get the chance to look at a background or layout by itself, and that's a big part of what makes this book such a treat. Being able to your time with these pieces lets you fully appreciate the level of artistry that story. They take into them, and understand what an important role they play in the goes films we love. Looking through this book I see page after page of places that were as real to me as a kid -and now as a filmmaker-as any I'd ever read or heard about or seen in real life. It's wonderful to finally be able to give them the spotlight they deserve." 

- John Lasseter