What I love about “Wall-E”

I’m not sure this is the best venue for a pseudo movie review, but I wanted some avenue to write what it is I loved about this movie. Don’t worry there are not plot spoilers ahead, but a tiny bit of things to be aware of as you watch. Of course, if you haven’t seen the movie and want to make it as fresh as possible, come back here after you see it and then compare notes.

In my opinion Pixar, as a studio, has done more for the movie making than any other studio I can think of. The stories will be as timeless as Walt Disney’s first films, the technology and art involved is unreal, and gosh darn’t, it just makes the family movie going experience fun!

What is personally impressing me with Pixar is how I’m actually learning things about movies from watching these films. Each time since “Finding Nemo,” I would have this nagging feeling something was not right with the movie. What I came to find is that, in each instance, they were adding something to the animation that I would just take for granted in a “real” movie. For example, in “Finding Nemo,” they added the waves water would create in a normal underwater world. Normally I wouldn’t notice it, but in an animated feature you don’t expect it, so in some subconscious way my brain said, “hey something is going on here that isn’t typical.”

In “The Incredibles” it was how the Supers powers fit the role they would have in a typical nuclear family; dad is strong, mom is flexible, daughter is shy, son is hyperactive, etc. In “Cars” the thing that really caught my eye was in the scene where they turned on all the neon lights in town. The way the lights were reflecting off the cars was stunning. “Rattitouille” was an amazing leap in “set design” for an animated film. You could really tell they took the time to create France.

Now having this fixed in the back of my brain as I went to see “Wall-E,” I had to fight the urge to try and pick out what they were working on this time. It did not take long for me to get that little tickle in the back of my brain that something was not normal about this film. My attention was immediately drawn to the use of focus in the movie. I’m going to have to go back and check on some other movies, but I can’t recall an animated film where the use of focus so closely mimicked a “real” movie. I’ve never studied film, but I’m near certain that was a new attention to detail used here.

In the scenes where Eve is being retrieved and Wall-E is trying to catch her ship, it really clicked what I think I was noticing. The camera angle following Wall-E almost looked hand-held. Obviously in an animated movie there is no true camera, so this would need to be a deliberate technique. For the rest of the movie I kept noticing what I think was the introduction of a new use of camera angles for animated films. Along with the use of focus it seems that Pixar is working on giving the animated films a more “hand-made” look.

Again, I’m no movie buff and am uncertain if this technique has been used before, but once again I have to believe the Pixar has really pushed the boundaries of what is possible in this genre, and I am overjoyed that they keep me believing in movie magic!

Note: After writing this I did a quick search to see if I could find anything out about my suspicions of the camera usage and came across this short from Pixar http://pixarblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/wall-e-camera-direction-featurette.html. It seems they actually hired a Director of Photography to consulte on the animated camera angles. I truly love that Pixar is making these leaps in production value that even a casual movie goer can apprecitate!