With trips to Paris and an immersion in fine dining, the Ratatouille team’s research tasks were fairly enviable. Still, the filmmakers had to look at Paris from a different angle than most tourists, getting down in the street to study manhole covers, sewer grates, and stray bits of garbage. Some animators stayed home to study cooking at the feet of Napa’s legendary chef Thomas Keller. Other research was more informal. “We spent a lot of time looking at our lunch, and picking at it before we ate it,” noted lighting director Sharon Calahan.