The Making of The Prince Of Egypt

[Music] it is a Timeless story and it's quite magnificent as a child hearing the story you could never possibly understand it the way you understand it now it's got uh real spiritual themes and ideas in it and moral struggles it's an extraordinary achievement behold DreamWorks Pictures presents the making of The Prince of Egypt an epic adventure an incredible challenge that has taken hundreds of artists technicians animators and musicians 4 years to bring to the [Music] screen a film that DreamWorks Founders David geffin Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey kenberg were determined to create I didn't want us to tell fairy tales I wanted us to try and pick a interesting dramatic epic embracing all the technique of Animation stepen sort of thought about it for a couple of seconds and he sort of leaned forward and he said why don't we do the Ten Commandments just like that and after my jaw hit my lap I said well what a fabulous idea because it's so different from anything that's being done in animation nobody else would dare touch it it's just an amazing amazing story that deserves to be told The Prince of Egypt is the dramatic story of two brothers whose Futures are destined to collide hey rames how' you like your face carved on a wall someday yes how about now momy a lie made them brothers come ramesis we will show Pharaoh your new baby brother mes the truth will separate them forever you were born of my mother y stop it you are our brother Fate has pushed rameses and his role to become Pharaoh on One path and Moses to become the shepherd and leader of his people on another he has to abandon all that he has grown to know and think he is as a human being an Egyptian only to find that he had a greater calling and was set on this mission to free the slaves of Egypt it's a brother story really of two brothers that fall apart you know the relate to become estranged to the point where they're completely opposite both of these men care about each other in a way that doesn't make their calling or responsibilities incidental they are enemies but when brothers are enemies they don't stop being Brothers let go the film features the voices of Val Kilmer as Moses and Ray fines as Ramy Moses your brother the cast is perhaps the finest ever assembled in an animated film what these actors did was they brought incredible depth and meaning and layers of emotional content to the most simple statements and they were able to make very subtle beliefs come alive stop it stop stop it leave that man alone Val Kilmer has put more time in it than any other actor has in an animated film he has never turned us down when we've asked him to come back even if it was for one single line to just make that dialogue read a little bit better in the movie be a little bit stronger performance you saw what happened I just killed a man to me it's very reminiscent of Theater which I spent a lot of time studying and rhythms of speech and the importance of of each phrase and the kind of work that I've rarely had a chance to do as an actor in film and I can no longer hide in the desert while they suffer yes by my words it shall be Ray fines is so good he put so much into it up front and he's so professional it's amazing I was working very much from my imagination of what a scene would be you have got very few AIDS visually or physically around you I mean they put up story boards for me um on television screen or on boards although it helps to be physical in front of the microphone in a sense everything is focused into your [Applause] voice your voice has got to be its own physical body Moses our mother set you a drift in a basket to save your life cast as Miriam is Sandra Bullock her role is sort of the believer the one who who holds on to the faith I have been a slave all my life and God has never answered my prayers until now she helps her brother cross over and and see where he came from my children let us thank God for this Bountiful food Danny Glover is featured as Jethro and Michelle feifer portrays his daughter Zapora who marries Moses the ancient Traditions Patrick Stewart is the distinguished voice of feros seti while Helen mirin is his Queen I was seduced into playing the role when I saw the drawing of this absolutely gorgeous woman I've always liked the idea of playing Queens anyway Miriam what do you think you're doing Jeff gold Blum plays Aaron the brother of Moses and Steve Martin and Martin Short team up as the Egyptian High priests hotep and Hoy oh that's pretty every spell and gesture tells you who's the best you're playing with the big boys now now my baby Still Love Don't Cry sleep as rocked by the stre The Prince of Egypt debuts six new songs written by Academy Award winner Steven Schwarz and a score by Oscar winning composer on simmer I instantly embraced this incredible challenge because you're dealing with such history with you're dealing with so many people's emotions and believes and truly the cornerstones of who they are Deliver Us was the very first thing that I wrote for the film it was very important to me that as a Lyricist that people be engaged right away in the sufferings and struggles of of the Hebrews that they be sympathetic to their plight immediately and also that they connect with the story on a more personal level that was a gift to be given that as our first thing that we worked on and then to add the visuals that we did it started the momentum for the rest of the picture but it also served as the template that I get it this is what the movie is a single thread in the tapestry though its color brightly shines can never see its purpose in the pattern of the Great and design songs and animated features have become very very important in terms of both telling the story and giving a style and tone to the movie the song through Heaven's eyes ultimately came out of the idea of how do you measure the worth of a man you must look at your life look at your life through Heaven's eyes one of the things that we set out to do was make sure that the songs were always about some event that happens within the film The Midian song through Heaven's eyes portrays a passage of a huge space of time in which Moses becomes part of the culture and finally marries the [Music] for throughout the process Stephen has been there his lyrics are advancing our story they're not songs that are just sitting there they take the story of The Prince of Egypt to a new place I am a sovereign Prince of Egypt a son of the proud history that shown head on everyone in this time of fear when pray often proved in we came up with the idea of of a song that would be especially uh represent the movie and all the Ambitions for it and the beauty and the positiveness of the human Spirit when you believe is the central song to the film it is about both having faith and about perseverance when you when you music industry recording Stars Whitney Houston and Mariah Cary also perform when you believe for the film you will [Music] you sweet perfumes of incense graceful rooms of alabaster stone all I ever wanted this is my home to research the origin of this ancient story directors producers animators and art department heads traveled to Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula it is unbelievable I think the biggest advantage of our going to Egypt was getting the chance to walk through the same places that Moses would have been and put us in that environment where he was that I could see what it's like to build one of these enormous you know pyramids and temples it's the specifics that are so useful the names of birds the sound of sparrows in the uh in the Valley of the Kings these are the sort of details that may show up in a lyric quality of light alone could be enough to inspire a [Music] sequence one sequence I'm working on deals with hieroglyphs and um imagery and things that I had never noticed in photographs it definitely adds to the textural quality of the film you can get a little actual texture you know [Music] yourself The Prince of Egypt features the talents of more than 425 DreamWorks animators artists and technicians this is the family coming together tell us straight got be and SP what has really impressed me is the perfectionism of everyone involved the painting style starts off fairly realistic and gets pushed into different dimensions the Relentless drive to perfect and to question and question what they do and have we got it right are we being too glib here is it too dark is it too serious that wall is the distance between life and death for her child the level of artistry of graphic Artistry and the intelligence of the scenes that impressed me hugely when he says my son I'd actually have him put his hands on Moses touch him on both shoulders and Moses takes himself not only out of the light but removes himself from his father's touch then you go to your shot where he disappears out of the [Music] light from the very beginning filmmakers wanted The Prince of Egypt to expand the aesthetic boundaries of animation for in inspiration they look to 19th century French illustrator Gustav Dory for his dramatic use of light to impressionist painter Cloud Monae for his handling of color and place and to film director David lean for his epic sense of Cinema and scale animation is pure creative expression it is pure Artistry and that every single thing that you see and hear in a frame is out of someone's imagination when I saw the quality of the artwork that the producers were dealing with it gave it such an extraordinary kind of scope I thought it was absolutely magnificent and I realized that of course in animation you can do the most astounding things this form is capable of giving a story like this all the Grandeur and the size of the tapestry that's needed we had a phenomenal group of artists join us and all I believe came here because they had something to prove for themselves the effort that's been put into this film is extremely significant to help design the look of the film DreamWorks background supervisors traveled to Death Valley California producers said you're going to be painting the film you're going to be designing the colors and the Landscapes and the textures so you're going to need to know somewhat of what it's like so they said well pretty much pick a place well Death Valley is perfect cuz it's it's I think it's the closest thing to Sinai that this country has to offer it's spectacular it's beautiful spooky huge spaces and Big Sky and light is really the most powerful element out there it's like life itself you got to live it you can't just kind of see it from the outside if you're going to paint a scene it's got to feel hot on screen there's a scene when Moses is walking through the desert and he's going to die die but to get that kind of emotion to translate on the screen you have to be there feel the glare hitting you in the face you feel the sweat it's an emotional thing and film has to be an emotional thing also the original design and art direction of The Prince of Egypt required DreamWorks artists to create an equally Innovative look for the characters it's a new style and it's a very realistic style so we we're not drawing cartoony rabbits or M just with drawing real human beings I think every animator puts a lot of himself in a character we actually close our doors and act the scenes out before we start drawing them then we start to try to put it on paper I use the mirror a lot have a mirror in front of myself and just draw the funny faces and you know hands and you know difficult ankles and stuff like that I just use a lot of influences for my own life if I if I can get it I try and do things that are natural hopefully the Moses mother relationship ship comes off like that too I made it so she's always touching him she's trying to console him and my mother would do that whenever I got too upset those things I definitely pull for my own family it's all come from from your heart I mean it's there's nothing really can fake all what you do it's all on the screen I mean that was certainly a long time ago I went to the recording sessions and was very helpful because Jeff wlum he has this very uh personal way of movie and gestures and things that he does oh my good Prince um she's she's exhausted from the day's work he got my mannerisms somewhat and um what I was trying to do here and uh it's just very uh fun for me to see he did a great job I think animation can be so real you find yourself being moved by this beautifully animated person and it's it's just amazing and didn't realize how animated I was do so myself on film I was like oh God I do do that you will show the proper respect for a prince of Egypt but I am showing you all the respect you deserve none we should fight I was really uh stunned by the way she was just going onto the mic getting the room dark and just bang the scene was there so I'm trying to get the same kind of feel for the character my wife is a big inspiration as well for the uh childish kind of side of Zapora have I taught you nothing you mustn't be so hard on your your majesty you did all you could to raise worthy Sons at the beginning I was not sure that the fat guy was supposed to be Steve but when I heard the voice of Steve Martin I thought they fit very well together yes your greatness it's not your fault your sons learned nothing and O with with Martin sh I thought it was really it work very well I love those two my new thing oh the prince of Egypt has brought the world of ancient Egypt to Life by expanding the limits of computer generated imagery and pushing the envelope of [Music] technology using a revolutionary new piece of software called the exposure tool animators for the first time are able to place handdrawn two-dimensional characters into a computer generated three-dimensional World characters can move through that world and the camera can follow bringing the story to the screen in a whole new visual presentation with the exposure tool the camera is completely free to move around inside this environment exactly like Steven Spielberg's live action camera is able to move around a real set normally if a 2d background is here and you move the camera well suddenly you can see the background on edge and it doesn't quite look as good anymore Al what the exposure tool does it'll literally warp the background so that they stay at an approximately correct perspective throughout the process one of the neatest scenes we've done using the tool is the Chariot race there's a big pull back Ramsey is in the Chariot and we pull back and then we follow him up this hill and over the top of the hill it allows us to treat the camera in an action sequence in a very fast choppy editorial way so that we're constantly repositioning moving the camera chasing the action I think the important thing to say instead of getting very technical is a scene that used to take 9 months to try to put together now you can do them in about 3 days DreamWorks Enlisted the talents of liveaction special effects artists to depict a series of plagues that devastate Egypt plague sequence had huge massive size and detail the Turning of the Nile to blood the pestilence the Swarms of locust and Hailfire from the sky what was unique each one of those is the complexity and that's really why we decide to use computer animation on this sequence the locus scene for example had 7 million Locus in it and I don't know one animator that could have or wanted to draw 7 million Locust plue of pestilence was challenging to the computers I had to have bugs that crawled on a Surface interacted with items that were on the surface these bugs were crawling out of bread they couldn't run into the cups they had to destroy the bread as they came out and that was really pushing the envelope as far as technology goes [Music] the final plague is the death of the firstborn or what they call the angel of death plague which uh claims the life of the first born in Egypt it was conceived as a very organic vaporous form with the ability to think the Big Challenge was to to get it to not look like it was created in the computer there's a particular scene that that I really like where there is a painted background and a painted overlay a middle ground and in between the two there's sandwiched the imagery of the the angel of death which is computer generated and the Styles match so well that it's just seamless The Burning Bush was described to me as the pivotal moment of the movie it's the first representation through effects of the presence of God we are trying to not only be visually spectacular but try to on a personal level touch the viewer The Exodus sequence where Moses leads the Hebrews out of Egypt adds to the film's Epic scope as we started to unravel the story we realized we had to Do complete family groupings and walking through the Red Sea you know with all of their belongings we had no software we had no Talent OR expertise that had ever done it before we had so many characters and each one got animated separately when you put them in a shot with the traditional characters right now people are actually asking us which ones are traditional and which ones are computer generated and that's exactly what we wanted to hear one of the most challenging tasks for the effects animators was The Parting of the Red Sea animating a miracle is incredible I mean how often do you get to animate an act of God the party of the Red Seas is is a huge challenge because it's such a pivotal point in the story and if we didn't deliver the effects properly it would have let down the story The Party of the Red Sea had to be huge it had to have an incredible scale it had to be scary it had to be magical it had to be awe inspiring so what we've done is we've created an animated painting effectively in the uh Prince of Egypt and we brought the viewer into this environment and immersed them in this experience that you could never film and has never been seen the before visual effects in feature animated films are just as computer intensive creatively intensive as they are in live action films the Red Sea as a sequence is using over 300,000 hours of rendering time which is over 32 years of technical rendering time which is almost double the total rendering time on Titanic Prince of Egypt uses the technology that is throughout this studio in a way that empowers the artists to tell their Creative Vision and tell the story without taking the audience out of that [Music] [Applause] story this film is groundbreaking I think for what people perceive animation to be I think it's definitely going to change people's minds a lot it's an eiel it's spectacular it's different than any animated movie you've ever seen what is the most special about the picture is the depth uh it it has so many layers of of meaning and performance and [Music] Artistry look at you the real Miracle of Prince of Egypt has been how much great talent there is out there and how much they wanted to join in the dream how much people were prepared to take a [Music] RIS Jeffrey Steven and David's decision to make this a film that they had to make rather than a film that they were marketing was the best decision they could have possibly made because the focus isn't on turning out toys it isn't on doing things that other people want you to do it's to do a film that they actually think is a good film this is one of the few times I've walked out of something thinking I'm glad I'm a small part of this huge experience it's a really nice message and a very powerful film one Mir [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you will you [Music]

Channel: PrinsenAvEgypten

Views: 207,699

Keywords: Dreamworks, HD, The Prince Of Egypt, English, The making of, The Making of The Prince Of Egypt, Behind the scenes, Different Animation Techniques, Animation Techniques, Basics Of Animation, Chariot Race

Id: B_aWmJJZj6Q

Length: 25min 40sec (1540 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 25 2013