Development
The initial script of Enchanted, written by Bill Kelly, was bought by Disney's Touchstone Pictures and Sonnenfeld/Josephson Productions for a reported sum of $450,000 in September 1997.[14] However, it was thought to be unsuitable for Disney because it was "a racier R-rated movie".[15] To the frustration of Kelly, the screenplay was rewritten several times, first by Rita Hsiao and then by Todd Alcott.[14] The film was initially scheduled to be released in 2002 with Rob Marshall as director but he withdrew due to "creative differences" between the producers and him.[16] In 2001, director Jon Turteltaub was set to direct the film but he left soon after. Adam Shankman became the film's director in 2003, while Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle were hired by Disney to rewrite the script once again.[17] At the time, Disney considered offering the role of Giselle to Kate Hudson or Reese Witherspoon.[14] However, the project did not take off.
On May 25, 2005, Variety reported that Kevin Lima had been hired as director and Bill Kelly had returned to the project to write a new version of the script.[18] Lima worked with Kelly on the script to combine the main plot of Enchanted with the idea of a "loving homage" to Disney's heritage. He created visual storyboard printouts that covered the story of Enchanted from beginning to end, which filled an entire floor of a production building.[19] After Lima showed them to the chairman of Walt Disney Studios, Dick Cook, he received the green light for the project and a budget of $85 million.[1][13] Lima began designing the world of Andalasia and storyboarding the movie before a cast was chosen to play the characters. After the actors were hired, he was involved in making the final design of the movie, which made sure the animated characters look like their real-life counterpart.[7]
Filming the film Enchanted
Enchanted is the first feature-length Disney live-action/traditional animation hybrid since Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1988, though the traditionally-animated characters do not interact in the live-action environment in the same method as they did in Roger Rabbit; however, there are some scenes where live-action characters share the screen with two-dimensional animated characters, for example, a live-action Nathaniel communicating with a cel-drawn Narissa, who is in a cooking pot. The film uses two aspect ratios; it begins in 2.35:1 when the Walt Disney Pictures logo and Enchanted storybook are shown, and then switches to a smaller 1.85:1 aspect ratio for the first animated sequence. The film switches back to 2.35:1 when it becomes live-action and never switches back, even for the remainder of the cartoon sequences. Lima oversaw the direction of both the live-action and animation sequences, which were being produced at the same time.[7] Enchanted took almost two years to complete. The animation took a little over a year to finish while the live-action scenes, which commenced and was completed during the animation process, were shot in 72 days.[7]
The Animation
Out of the film's 107 minutes of running time, ten of the approximately 13 minutes of animation are at the beginning of the film. Lima tried to "cram every single piece of Disney iconic imagery" that he could into the first ten minutes, which were done in traditional cel animation (in contrast to computer-assisted 3-D animation) as a tribute to past Disney fairy tale films such as Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.[7] It was the first Disney film theatrically released in America to feature traditional cel animation since Pooh's Heffalump Movie (2005). As most of Disney's cel animation artists were laid off after the computer graphics boom of the late 1990s,[20] the 13 minutes of animation were not done in-house but by the independent Pasadena-based company James Baxter Animation, which was started by noted lead animator James Baxter. Baxter had previously worked for Walt Disney Feature Animation, bringing to life many memorable animated characters like Jessica Rabbit (Who Framed Roger Rabbit), Belle (Beauty and the Beast), Rafiki (The Lion King), and Quasimodo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame).[6][21]
Although Lima wanted the animation to be nostalgic, he wanted Enchanted to have a style of its own. Baxter's team decided to use Art Nouveau as a starting point. For Giselle, the 2D-animated character had to be "a cross between Amy [Adams] and a classic Disney princess. And not a caricature." Seeing Giselle as "a forest girl, an innocent nymph with flowers in her hair" and "a bit of a hippie", the animators wanted her to be "flowing, with her hair and clothes. Delicate."[22] For Prince Edward, Baxter's team "worked the hardest on him to make him look like the actor" because princes "in these kinds of movies are usually so bland."[22] Many prototypes were made for Narissa as Baxter's team wanted her face to "look like Susan [Sarandon]'s. And the costumes had to align closely to the live-action design."[22]
To maintain continuity between the two media, Lima brought in costume designer Mona May during the early stages of the film's production so that the costumes would be aligned in both the animated and live-action worlds. He also shot some live-action footage of Amy Adams as Giselle for the animators to use as reference, which also allowed the physical movement of the character to match in both worlds. Test scenes completed by the animators were shown to the actors, allowing them to see how their animated self would move.[7]
The Live-action sequence
Timothy Spall and James Marsden during filming in Columbus Circle.Principal photography began in April 2006.[23] Because of the live action sequence setting, all live action work was filmed in New York City. However, shooting in New York became problematic as it was in a "constant state of new stores, scaffolding and renovation".[24]
The first scene in New York, which features Giselle emerging from a manhole in the middle of Times Square, was filmed on location in the center of the square. Because of the difficulties in controlling the crowd while filming in Times Square, general pedestrians were featured in the scene with hired extras placed in the immediate foreground.[25] Similarly, a crowd gathered to watch as James Marsden and Timothy Spall filmed their scenes in Times Square.[26] However, the scene Lima found the most challenging to shoot was the musical number, "That's How You Know", in Central Park. The five-minute scene took 17 days to finish due to the changing weather, which allowed only seven sunny days for the scene to be filmed.[7] The filming was also hampered at times by Patrick Dempsey's fans.[13] The scene was choreographed by John O'Connell, who had worked on Moulin Rouge! beforehand, and included 300 extras and 150 dancers.
Many scenes were also filmed at Steiner Studios, which provided the three large stages that Enchanted needed at the same facility.[1] Other outdoor locations included the Brooklyn Bridge and The Paterno, an apartment building with a curved, heavily embellished, ivory-colored façade located on the corner of Riverside Drive and 116th Street, which is the residence of the film's characters Robert and Morgan Phillip.
The initial script of Enchanted, written by Bill Kelly, was bought by Disney's Touchstone Pictures and Sonnenfeld/Josephson Productions for a reported sum of $450,000 in September 1997.[14] However, it was thought to be unsuitable for Disney because it was "a racier R-rated movie".[15] To the frustration of Kelly, the screenplay was rewritten several times, first by Rita Hsiao and then by Todd Alcott.[14] The film was initially scheduled to be released in 2002 with Rob Marshall as director but he withdrew due to "creative differences" between the producers and him.[16] In 2001, director Jon Turteltaub was set to direct the film but he left soon after. Adam Shankman became the film's director in 2003, while Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle were hired by Disney to rewrite the script once again.[17] At the time, Disney considered offering the role of Giselle to Kate Hudson or Reese Witherspoon.[14] However, the project did not take off.
On May 25, 2005, Variety reported that Kevin Lima had been hired as director and Bill Kelly had returned to the project to write a new version of the script.[18] Lima worked with Kelly on the script to combine the main plot of Enchanted with the idea of a "loving homage" to Disney's heritage. He created visual storyboard printouts that covered the story of Enchanted from beginning to end, which filled an entire floor of a production building.[19] After Lima showed them to the chairman of Walt Disney Studios, Dick Cook, he received the green light for the project and a budget of $85 million.[1][13] Lima began designing the world of Andalasia and storyboarding the movie before a cast was chosen to play the characters. After the actors were hired, he was involved in making the final design of the movie, which made sure the animated characters look like their real-life counterpart.[7]
Filming the film Enchanted
Enchanted is the first feature-length Disney live-action/traditional animation hybrid since Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1988, though the traditionally-animated characters do not interact in the live-action environment in the same method as they did in Roger Rabbit; however, there are some scenes where live-action characters share the screen with two-dimensional animated characters, for example, a live-action Nathaniel communicating with a cel-drawn Narissa, who is in a cooking pot. The film uses two aspect ratios; it begins in 2.35:1 when the Walt Disney Pictures logo and Enchanted storybook are shown, and then switches to a smaller 1.85:1 aspect ratio for the first animated sequence. The film switches back to 2.35:1 when it becomes live-action and never switches back, even for the remainder of the cartoon sequences. Lima oversaw the direction of both the live-action and animation sequences, which were being produced at the same time.[7] Enchanted took almost two years to complete. The animation took a little over a year to finish while the live-action scenes, which commenced and was completed during the animation process, were shot in 72 days.[7]
The Animation
Out of the film's 107 minutes of running time, ten of the approximately 13 minutes of animation are at the beginning of the film. Lima tried to "cram every single piece of Disney iconic imagery" that he could into the first ten minutes, which were done in traditional cel animation (in contrast to computer-assisted 3-D animation) as a tribute to past Disney fairy tale films such as Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.[7] It was the first Disney film theatrically released in America to feature traditional cel animation since Pooh's Heffalump Movie (2005). As most of Disney's cel animation artists were laid off after the computer graphics boom of the late 1990s,[20] the 13 minutes of animation were not done in-house but by the independent Pasadena-based company James Baxter Animation, which was started by noted lead animator James Baxter. Baxter had previously worked for Walt Disney Feature Animation, bringing to life many memorable animated characters like Jessica Rabbit (Who Framed Roger Rabbit), Belle (Beauty and the Beast), Rafiki (The Lion King), and Quasimodo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame).[6][21]
Although Lima wanted the animation to be nostalgic, he wanted Enchanted to have a style of its own. Baxter's team decided to use Art Nouveau as a starting point. For Giselle, the 2D-animated character had to be "a cross between Amy [Adams] and a classic Disney princess. And not a caricature." Seeing Giselle as "a forest girl, an innocent nymph with flowers in her hair" and "a bit of a hippie", the animators wanted her to be "flowing, with her hair and clothes. Delicate."[22] For Prince Edward, Baxter's team "worked the hardest on him to make him look like the actor" because princes "in these kinds of movies are usually so bland."[22] Many prototypes were made for Narissa as Baxter's team wanted her face to "look like Susan [Sarandon]'s. And the costumes had to align closely to the live-action design."[22]
To maintain continuity between the two media, Lima brought in costume designer Mona May during the early stages of the film's production so that the costumes would be aligned in both the animated and live-action worlds. He also shot some live-action footage of Amy Adams as Giselle for the animators to use as reference, which also allowed the physical movement of the character to match in both worlds. Test scenes completed by the animators were shown to the actors, allowing them to see how their animated self would move.[7]
The Live-action sequence
Timothy Spall and James Marsden during filming in Columbus Circle.Principal photography began in April 2006.[23] Because of the live action sequence setting, all live action work was filmed in New York City. However, shooting in New York became problematic as it was in a "constant state of new stores, scaffolding and renovation".[24]
The first scene in New York, which features Giselle emerging from a manhole in the middle of Times Square, was filmed on location in the center of the square. Because of the difficulties in controlling the crowd while filming in Times Square, general pedestrians were featured in the scene with hired extras placed in the immediate foreground.[25] Similarly, a crowd gathered to watch as James Marsden and Timothy Spall filmed their scenes in Times Square.[26] However, the scene Lima found the most challenging to shoot was the musical number, "That's How You Know", in Central Park. The five-minute scene took 17 days to finish due to the changing weather, which allowed only seven sunny days for the scene to be filmed.[7] The filming was also hampered at times by Patrick Dempsey's fans.[13] The scene was choreographed by John O'Connell, who had worked on Moulin Rouge! beforehand, and included 300 extras and 150 dancers.
Many scenes were also filmed at Steiner Studios, which provided the three large stages that Enchanted needed at the same facility.[1] Other outdoor locations included the Brooklyn Bridge and The Paterno, an apartment building with a curved, heavily embellished, ivory-colored façade located on the corner of Riverside Drive and 116th Street, which is the residence of the film's characters Robert and Morgan Phillip.
Enjoy it as much as I do .
Reason: Evertime I watch Giselle's tranformation in Enchanted it always reminds me of the swan princess , even Giselle in live action form remined me of her .
Good luck