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The Ballroom in Beauty and the Beast


The CG ballroom in Beauty and the Beast was a good use of CG, as there were sweeping camera movements that added impact to that moment in the story. 

What were my early impressions of Disney beginning to adopt computer graphics and modeling into its animation pipeline? Honestly, I was worried that we were going to ruin the movie. CG has a tendency to look to clean, too perfect. We did the best we could to make it less perfect, more hand made.  We positioned the columns around the perimeter of the ballroom by hand, we added a little bit of ‘dirt’’ to the curves in the camera motions. 

Between first getting the task to work on the ballroom scene for B+B, but long before the Oscar nominations I didn't  have any idea that the project was going to have such an impact. 

And I certainly didn't  know that the ballroom scene in particular was going to be such an iconic moment in the film.

None of us had any idea the film was going to be so successfu that I know of, except for Howard Ashman. Don Hahn tells a story in his documentary "Howard".

The film reveals that because Ashman was too weak to travel to California, Disney brought the animation team to his home in New York to work with him.

watch it again and explain it - Don Hahn saying "Who knew" and Howard whispering in his ear, "I did." 

The Ballroom sequence works because you enter this magical room in a very pivotal moment in the story. 

The camera needed to follow Belle and the Beast into the Ballroom, follow and swirl around them as they danced, then follow them out of the ballroom.

The entire film was hand drawn, so we had to create 3D stand in guides for Belle and the Beast. We printed every frame out on paper, supplied them to the hand drawn artists, who would draw over our guides. 

In the opening shot, I moved the camera too quickly into the room, luckily the characters feet are out of frame at the bottom, otherwise their feet would be sliding along the floor. At the end of the scene, the Beast was meant to open the door for Belle. I did not give enough time for them to walk over there, so instead the door ‘magically’ opens as they walk over to it. A happy accident, that stayed in the film.
 

Once the song ends, and they exit the ballroom, there is no more use of CG.  The shot at the end of the film of the Ballroom is a 2D hand painted background. 

I remember Don Hahn being adamant about that decision, I think his exact words were "don't argue with me on this one." Looking at the film again after all these years, I know that was the right call. He just knew. 

________

When Don Hahn and others were working on Beauty and the Beast expressed doubts, they mentioned, "I think it's actually going to be a success," to which Howard Ashman simply replied, "Well, I could have told you that". While Ashman passed away in March 1991, before the film's release, his conviction was realized when Beauty and the Beast became a massive commercial success and the first animated film to be nominated for a Best Picture Academy 


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