DreamWorks Animation’s “Abominable” is a fantasy about a city girl and two cousins helping a Yeti travel across China to its Mount Everest home, but creating the film’s look with virtual lighting and production design required as much attention to detail as any live-action feature.Proprietary software allowed head of lighting Michael Necci and his team to arrange their lights on a virtual soundstage around the final on-screen image.
The team was free to make minute adjustments as if they were in the rafters of a real stage, seeing the results in real time.
“Looking at what our lights are doing in scenes mimics what happens on a live-action stage,” Necci says, “but we don’t have the limitations of having to position C-stands.”Written and directed by Jill Culton, with co-director Todd Wilderman, “Abominable” is a co-production with China-based Pearl Studios, formerly Oriental DreamWorks, and opens in theaters Sept.
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