The Polar Express (2004)

THE POLAR EXPRESS

Directed by: Robert Zemeckis (Who Framed Roger Rabbit)
Written by: Robert Zemeckis & William Broyles (Cast Away)
Music by: Alan Silvestri

Production Start Date: March 21, 2003 in L.A. (twelve-week shoot)
Released on: November 19, 2004

Budget: Around $150 million

CAST

The Conductor/Hero Boy (adult)... Tom Hanks
Holly/Hero Girl... Nona Gaye
Lonely Boy... Peter Scolari
Know-It-All (adult)... Eddie Deezen
Steamer/Smokey... Michael Jeter
Toothless (adult)... Chris Coppola
Boy on Train... Dylan Cash
Elf #1... Phil Fondacaro
Elf #2... Debbie Lee Carrington
Lonely Boy... Hayden McFarland
Hero Boy (child)... Josh Hutcherson
Toothless (child)... Connor Matheus
Know-It-All (child)... Jimmy 'Jax' Pinchak
and Julene Renee, Woody Schultz, Ross McCall

STORY

Based on the acclaimed children's book by Jumanji author Chris Van Allsburg, The Polar Express is about a boy who refuses to give up his belief in Santa Claus despite incessant teasing from his friends. On Christmas Eve, a steam train shows up and whisks the boy and his disbelieving pals off to the North Pole.

INTERESTING FACTS

Tom Hanks and his partner at Playtone Prods., Gary Goetzman, laid the tracks several years ago for a computer-animated adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg's celebrated picture book.

Rob Reiner was originally up to direct the movie when Castle Rock acquired the rights to the Chris Van Allsburg-written children's book in 1999.

Robert Zemeckis has been attached to the holiday-themed project since February 2002. He reportedly shot a test scene in June on that same year to see if The Polar Express project could be done in high-definition.

Variety confirmed in late September 2002 that production would indeed moving forward. Director Robert Zemeckis had been working on the script with Cast Away scribe William Broyles.
Illustration from Chris Van Allsburg's fantasy book
All of the scenes will be shot with digital cameras in front of a blank screen, with sets to be filled in later by computers. The actors will be covered in motion-capture sensors so that each move of an arm, each flicker of an eyelid and each wrinkle of a lip will be stored on a computer and used as guide for the digital animators who will create the actual movie footage.

The team behind the film is striving to create images that actually look like the well-known actors who will "star" in the film. Some of those roles will be filled by actual actors. But others will be completely virtual, including one who represents Hanks' conductor character as a boy.

The crew spent nearly a year experimenting on ways to map Hanks' current facial and muscle structure. They plan to mix that data with photographs of the actor in his youth and backward engineer a virtual child that will resemble the adult Hanks. "This is an ambitious, exciting project for us," said Martin Shafer, chairman and chief executive of Castle Rock Entertainment, the studio behind the movie. "We've seen the early tests, and it's like nothing I've ever seen."

In many ways, The Polar Express represents the future of Hollywood, where emerging digital technology is redefining everything from the equipment used on a set to the contracts workers sign to the definition of the jobs they take. Though the project still is in pre-production, it already has attracted the attention of labor union officials, who worry that their members will be tapped to handle duties outside their contract's strict job definitions--or be excluded from the movie altogether. The Directors Guild of America, for example, fears that the all-digital shoot won't hire the number of crew members that are typically contractually required for a big-budget, live-action feature film. "If I'm Bob Zemeckis, I don't really need assistant directors on this because there's not much for them to do," said Bryan Unger, Western executive director of the DGA, who added that he has approached the producers of The Polar Express to air his concerns. "If this movie is all really being done in a computer, how much of a crew do I need to hire?"

Studio executives say the budget is set around $150 million. But some project insiders and technology experts insist that this is a low-ball figure, and that the sums involved could easily grow to rival the likes of Titanic, Pearl Harbor and Waterworld, turning The Polar Express into one of the most expensive movies ever made. One of the reasons for that is that some of the high-tech tools needed to make the film were still being developed three months before shooting was scheduled to begin.

Sony Pictures Imageworks, the visual effects giant in Culver City that has been tapped to handle the movie, also has a lot riding on the success of The Polar Express. More than a quarter of the revenue the company will report in 2003 is expected to come from the movie.

If his previous efforts are any indication, Zemeckis loves a gamble--and The Polar Express certainly is a big one. "The whole film rests on whether this illusion works or not," Zemeckis told The Times in 1994, referring to Forrest Gump. "All you can hope for is for technology to save us."

Tom Hanks revealed in a December 2002 interview that the children's fantasy "will be some strange, bizarre thing. Whatever the current state of digital live-action filmmaking is in 2003, that's what Polar Express will be. The aesthetic quality of Chris Van Allsburg's book is so overpowering when you read it. There's something that not only sucks you [in about] the artwork that he created--there is this intangible quality to the story and the characters. It's like 35 pages [long], half of which is text. [We're] using his art as the storyboards for the movie. It's got all sorts of elements to it. There's doubt, there's a journey, there's a quest. There are monumental moments that everybody can relate to. If we do it right, it'll be quite an artistic enterprise. It'll be like nothing the audience has ever seen. And if we fail miserably, we will be here around the year 2004 [doing an interview], and you'll all be saying, 'OK, so you want to explain exactly what happened here, Mr. Smarty-Pants?' And I'll be trying to come up with something."

Actor Tom Hanks further added in a separate interview a few weeks later that "it will be odder than odd and more miraculous than miracles. It's a 35-page picture book about a quest and what Christmas really means. It's much larger than most of your holiday movies for kids." Hanks will play the conductor "and maybe 19 other roles. I don't know how Bob [Zemeckis] is doing it exactly. But Bob gets his teeth into something and spins around like a dervish and we'll all just try to hang on."

Of the award-winning children's book by Chris Van Allsburg, Tom Hanks said in a January 2003 interview, "It's a very beautiful book. It's the evocative paintings that are really the reason that we're all doing it. Because those paintings will be among the storyboards that will make up the movie. Bob Zemeckis is a, I don't know, he's got some weird way of thinking and it's going to drag us all a into this adventure that's even bigger than we can possibly imagine. It's going to be a very odd kind of thing. It's going to be a big ensemble cast. And we, the actors, will be providing all of the visuals and all of the raw data that they will manipulate inside the computer. I don't know if that makes any sense." The word on the The Polar Express is it will be the next step forward for CGI. "Whatever the current state of computer-generated imaging and live-action photography is on the day week shoot this thing," said Hanks, "it will be the absolute apex, that day." We were led to wonder if this would be sort of like how Gollum in The Two Towers was brought to life. "Yes. I would say so," said Hanks. "But how would you do Gollum any other away? It's really probably impossible to do it, you know, in any other fashion. Now, we think that Polar Express is the type of movie that there's no other way in order to do this then this fashion in which we are going to do it." Yet there is always a risk when committing a new character to full CGI animation. "There's a danger in there," said Hanks. "Because if it doesn't have an organic, natural--not just the way it looks and moves--if it doesn't have a tactile place in the movie, you don't have that. Jar Jar Binks is a classic example," he added with a laugh. "They made this decision very early on that they couldn't escape as long as it went on. [The Polar Express] is going to be a natural, much more fluid thing because we never have to lock ourselves into anything until Bob has viewed everything from whatever digital perspective that he wants to, and then he gets to go ahead and do it. All I can say is that it's going to be this brand new thing."

Special effects animator Doug Chiang revealed in March 2003 that "I’m part of the creative team designing the look of the film based on Zemeckis’ vision. I can’t talk much about Polar Express, as you may understand since we are in the middle of production. But I can say that it is by far one of the most challenging, ambitious, and exciting films that I’ve ever had the privilege to work on. I think this film will be really unique in terms of execution and look. It is truly the cutting edge of filmmaking. Beyond that, you’ll have to wait two more years to see what I’m talking about."

Production on Polar Express pulled to a stop on Monday, March 31, 2003 to mourn the passing of one of its own: HIV-positive Michael Jeter, who died at age 50. The actor had completed work on the movie, with the exception of a few shots that will be filmed with a stand-in.

Director of photography Don Burgess explained in a May 2003 interview that the animated film's performances would be based on real actors, not created by animators. "The entire movie is being shot in motion-capture. So [while] the surfaces are ultimately going to be rendered to look like The Polar Express [book], ... the performances are all captured [from] the actors. It's pretty amazing, because you truly get the performance this way." Burgess said that The Polar Express has been a unique experience. "It's certainly not the traditional role of a director of photography. It's a very different role. [But] I've been working with this particular filmmaker for 10 years, and when he went to take on this process and kind of reinvent the wheel, he wanted his core brain trust around him to help him solve the problems. So I'm here."

Variety revealed on May 8, 2003 that Playtone "just wrapped production on the Robert Zemeckis-directed Hanks starrer The Polar Express. Playtone (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) produced Polar with Zemeckis' Image Movers."

Nona Gaye said in a July 2003 interview that she worked entirely in a small, empty motion-capture room to create her computer-animated character. Her character will be animated based on her actions and will appear in digital sets to be created in post-production. "It's just like a closet, so small it's ridiculous. We just run around this room and do all these crazy things and act like there were stairs and bridges and all kinds of things, when there's really nothing." Gaye appears alongside Tom Hanks, who stars as the conductor of a train to the North Pole who teaches a young boy that Santa Claus is real. "My character's name is Hero Girl," Gaye said. "Tom is Hero Boy. We have this really exciting adventure in the North Pole, and I cannot say too much more than that."