ABSTRACT
In the early 1990s Pixar (the image-computing company, pre-Toy Story) was contracted by Disney to help render a dollying camera simulation through a digital environment in the ballroom scene of Beauty and the Beast. Those techniques have since evolved so much that when a so-called “live-action” version of the same musical came out in 2017, filmgoers and -makers alike took that label at face value—even though the only “live-action” consists of heavily composited appearances by humans. Movies of global cultural gravity—from Marvel Studios’ universe to The Lord of the Rings to Star Wars (and on and on)—may not be promoted as computer animation, but perceptive viewers and filmmakers alike had best understand: they are precisely that, they are animated. The real passport—the empathy, emotional connection, trust, and goodwill—appeared not in the government travel documents but in the incantation of that title, evoking the transformative power of its art felt by those who had seen it.
