(Image credit: Warner Bros.) The Polar Express Was Shot Entirely In A 10x10-Foot Area as a proof of concept.Įven though they were learning on the job on how to make all the body movements right, performance capture won out. David Schaub, The Polar Express animation supervisor, journaled his work on the film for Animation World Network, where he detailed that it took his team three months to experiment and produce the eight shots of performance capture that would be presented to Warner Bros.
Ken Ralston, who had worked with Zemeckis on Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Forrest Gump, was actually the one that pushed for performance capture.īut it still had to be tested out. In fact, Zemeckis was toying with a few ideas to shoot the film, including using green-screens to place live-action actors in digital environments like George Lucas did with the Star Wars prequel trilogy. However, the decision to go with performance capture technology, which was still in its infancy at this point, was no certainty. However, he also didn’t believe it was possible to film The Polar Express the way it needed to be done as a live-action movie. Robert Zemeckis, after he came onboard as director, agreed, thinking that the book’s classic look would not work with traditional animation techniques.
(Image credit: Warner Bros.) Performance Capture Wasn’t Always The PlanĪs mentioned above, Van Allsburg did not want The Polar Express to be an animated film.
