You’re currently working on Finding Nemo as director of photography. What are your day-to-day responsibilities?
I’m responsible for the final look of the film, and I work with the production designer and director to help determine what that final look is going to be. I see to it that their vision is executed all the way through. You make sure that not only does every shot look beautiful and is well lit—with all the effects and everything integrated as perfectly as possible—but that the shots cut together so that the movie flows in sequence, as a whole film. I’m also responsible for the look of all of the final presentation material. I take things all the way through to the final film output and into the theater.

Sounds like you don’t get that little breather at the end of production.
The closest thing I get to downtime is in the pre-production phase when things are a little slower. I can work more normal hours without too much pressure, but there’s always stuff to do. When everybody else has finished and we’ve delivered the final piece of film, I still have the wrap party to think about. Everybody else has had two or three months in between and I’m literally at the theater the morning of the wrap party, checking projection and making sure it looks right. And then I have to hurry and change to make it to the wrap party on time. That’s when I’m done.

What’s the most difficult part about your job?
I think the biggest challenge is the size of the lighting department. We have a fairly large crew: 30 to 40 people. Any time you’re trying to do something that’s artistically driven, getting the entire team going in the same direction is challenging. You need to allow everybody to contribute personal touches, but ultimately the film needs to be cut together well; it needs to look like it has been lit by one person rather than a team of 40.

How do you all work together to achieve that look?
We tend to break the work up into scenes where there’s a location established for a particular time of day. We do a master lighting, or pre-lighting, pass that includes technical as well as aesthetic foundation for what the set and, to some extent, the characters are going to look like. But it’s just the basic look and feel. One person ends up being the lead for the sequence, and then we break it into smaller chunks that are more camera-angle dependent and assign those to individual lighting artists. So a lighting artist may get four to six shots that look like they’re in the same area, but they intercut with somebody else’s [assignment] where the camera may be looking a different direction. Sometimes it makes more sense to assign a continuous block of shots.

I can see how that makes for a lot of cooks in the kitchen.
Yes. And so everyone needs to communicate to some extent about what they’re doing so that the shots look like they’ll cut together. But mostly that’s my job. I make sure that contrast balance and color stay consistent enough that the shots feel like they seamlessly go together. Overall, it’s a huge team effort.

How many times have you seen the completed movie before the rest of Pixar (and the world) get to see it?
By the end, I’ve seen the movie in its final form probably a hundred times.

Does that ever get old?
You would think so. I’ve seen it so many times, often sitting by myself sitting in a dark room, and many times without sound. But to see it for the first time at the wrap party with a real audience is really thrilling. Even though I know every single line of dialogue by heart at that point, it’s new all over again because I get to hear how everyone else is reacting to it.

Have there been any times when you have had to push the existing technology in order to get a certain lighting effect?
Many times. One example would be the fog sequence in A Bug’s Life. There was a particular look to the fog that we wanted to get where the local colors of the objects were desaturated and tinted toward the fog color. We didn’t have anything at the time to do that, so we quickly threw together a volumetric light. It had a dial on it for how much we could desaturate the local color and how much it would tint towards the color we picked for tinting, which was this pale violet color. It gave us exactly the look we wanted, and it was just kind of something we did on the fly, having it go into shot lighting the next day.

When you were young would you have ever dreamed you’d be a director of photography in film animation?
When I was three years old I told my parents I wanted to be an artist for Disney. I knew it from watching the Wide World of Disney [television series]. I just got hooked on the visuals and that’s what I wanted to do. Not that I ever thought that I’d actually end up doing anything remotely close to that. My parents still like to recall how I talked about it constantly.

Did they give you the materials you needed to pursue your passion?
Well, no. I grew up in a little town in the middle of nowhere and didn’t really have much exposure to anything. But I was always interested in art, so when I graduated from high school I decided to go to a small art school and see where that took me. I ended up taking graphic design and illustration and thought I would make my living in advertising. I ended up in broadcast television kind of as a fluke. During that time I was exposed to computer animation, although I never thought I’d end up in this business. One thing led to another and I kept following the open doors and eventually came to Pixar. I love working here.

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