Many people have asked what parts of the film "Brave" I worked on so I figured it might be best just to post a journal entry about it. Warning... if you have not seen the film there might be some spoilers in this.

My role on the film was "Master Lighting Artist" but my general role is "LIghting Technical Director". Don't let the word "director" confuse you. I am not the head of lighting, it's just a term for every Lighting Artist that means our job tends to be technical and most of the "directing" I'm doing is kicking computers to get them to do what I want. For those who do not know what "lighting" means on a 3D animated film let me give a quick description. Pixar movies are not hand drawn like traditional animation. They more closely resemble stop motion film where a physical 3 dimensional puppet is made, a set is built, real lights are put in place and then an animator moves the puppet slightly then takes a picture, moves it again and takes another picture, until you have a whole "shot" that when played back looks alive. We just build our 3 dimensional world inside of the computer, but in essence it's the exact same process. So my job as a Lighting Artist is to make the scene feel believable with light, shadows, reflections, refraction, atmosphere, bloom, glow, etc. It varies from real world lighting in that we have far more control over exactly how the final image is composed. Much of the importance of lighting is to let the audience know where to look in the second or two the shot is on screen and to aid the story telling. Composition is vital. We also spend a lot of time thinking about mood and tone. There are a few different roles in the Lighting department here at Pixar.... the DP (Director of Photography) is the head of the department and makes the creative choices about how the film will look. This person works very closely with the Director and Art Director of the film to talk about the general mood of the entire film and what can be done in lighting to achieve the story. There are leads on each film who help guide the technical process. Then there are Master Lighting Artists and Shot Lighting Artists. Master Lighting Artists get to put in the lighting for entire sequences of the film (sequences meaning scenes in particular places in the film composed of many shots). We black in as much detail as we can on a general level for the whole sequence, like the direction, intensity, color and shadow quality of each of the light sources (examples are sun, sky fill, practical light sources like lamps and fire, bounced light, subsurface lighting, reflection, refraction, fog). Once the entire sequence is in pretty good shape we hand off individual shots to Shot Lighting Artists who then make each shot pixel perfect and slightly tweak the master lighting to make the perfect composition from that particular camera angle. The whole time the DP leads this process on each shot and gives direction. When everyone in Lighting is happy we show it to the Director who either gives notes or approves the shot. Voila! Movie magic at it's best. Everyone working in Lighting does Shot Lighting, and some do Master Lighting.

Okay, off of the general talk... what parts of the film did I work on? This is where the spoilers might come in. I master lit several different sequences, some small, some large. There are a handful of shots after Merida returns from the firefalls where she rides up to the castle on her horse at sunset. I master lit and shot lit all of those shots. The sequence in the Tapestry room where Elinor and Fergus have a conversation about talking to Merida (with the funny scene with Fergus impersonating Merida) I did the master lighting and about half of the shot lighting. I think the sequence I am most happy with was the scene right after the river where the bear goes "wild" on the inside for the first time. It's in the forest with loads of atmosphere and during the sequence we slowly transitioned from happy sunshine to dark mysterious gloomy. The sequence starts right after the river part and ends with them following the wisps into the dark forest right before finding the lost castle. I worked on the sequence when Merida and the bear return to the castle and are trying to figure out how to get up to the tapestry room past the whole room full of everyone (my part was out in the hallway). And finally I worked on the last sequence in the film around the docks and as the camera pans through various environments with Merida and her mom riding on horses. I also had quite a few Shot Lighting assignments in various parts of the film but the vast majority of my time on Brave was in Master Lighting. And one other little bit I'm happy to have worked on was the initial film poster (the more green brown one, not the newer blue one). So that's that. It was a fantastic experience that i will always remember.

I'm now working in the shorts department for a few months on a film that will come out before "Monsters University". Right now I'm schedules to work on Monsters after the short is complete. Woohoo! That's all the news from me. It keeps me very busy, but I like it.