Prince Of Egypt Production Diary


	"The Prince Of Egypt" was Dreamworks first traditionally animated feature film and it is soon coming to DVD which gives us the chance to take you behind the scenes to see how this production comes together. We will keep this section updated as soon as new information and material comes in, so make sure to check back often.


	by Guido Henkel August 1, 1999

“The Prince Of Egypt" is the animated retelling of an age-old story that has been presented in numerous monumetal films before. Although animated in nature this version is no less epic, and artistically it can easily match, if not excel, the previous versions of the story, adding spectacular visuals to the traditional animation mix. As one of the top ten animated films of all time, the result is an Academy Award®-winner that goes beyond traditional animation.

A Hebrew mother places her infant son in a basket and floats it down the river, where it is picked up by the Queen of Egypt. She adopts the boy and calls him Moses. Moses is raised in the palace alongside Rameses, the


	Pharaoh’s legitimate son and future heir to the throne. One night Moses learns about his true heritage and openly commits to being the son of a Hebrew slave. He leaves the palace and walks through the desert seeking solitude where he is miraculously rescued by a camel, and soon Moses hears God Himself talking to him. Determined to free the Hebrew slaves of Egypt he returns to the palace and tries to lead all the slaves to freedom.

Animated films give artists oftentimes a chance to create more striking images than would be possible in a real-action movie. In "The Prince Of Egypt" however it almost feels as if it had been a production paradigm. The film employs panoramic shots and a stunning cinematography that is unique for an animated feature. It also draws heavy influences from impressionist painters such as Claude Monet or Gustave Doré, creating an almost surreally beautiful look that nicely complements the epic story that is told.


	Being the major success that it is, creating a DVD version for "The Prince Of Egypt" has always been on the agenda of Dreamworks Home Video’s executives. To do justice to the epic scope of the film and its overall success the decision was made early on to integrate the film into Dreamworks’ “Signature Selection” line of special editions, as a collectible masterpiece. Actual work on the DVD has begun quite a while ago, giving you an idea for how long it can take, and how elaborate a process it is to assemble and produce the materials needed for these releases.

There are a number of angles that are interesting about "The Prince Of Egypt", the visual effects being one of the most overlooked one, which was in part the reason why Dreamworks decided to highlight those in the upcoming DVD release. “I think what a lot of people don’t realize with the Prince of Egypt is that, this is a very effects-laden film - very heavy in effects,” DVD producer Steve Gustafson explains.

“Because it is a traditional, animated movie however, the integration of animation and effects is seamless. You look at it as a whole and appreciate it as an animated feature. It is hard to realize that there are an awful lot of effects from a rendering standpoint.” Indeed, "The Prince Of

Egypt" had its fair share of special effects that went widely unrecognized because they seamlessly blended with the highly stylized art of the overall film. However, the movie contains more rendering hours than there were on the movie “Titanic”. Shots like one of the scenes from the film’s prologue that resembles a lengthy live-action crane shot uses a multi-plane shot with 14 different layers of 2D and combined 3D animation to create a true parallax field.

“From an effects standpoint it’s a much bigger film than even “Titanic” was,” Gustafson tells me. “We had the beauty of having the Academy Award®-winning effects director Henry La Bounta from “Twister” who was involved in the “Parting-of-the-Red-Sea” sequence, so there was an awful lot of effort put in.”

It took four years to bring "The Prince Of Egypt" to life from the beginning to the actual end and it ranks as one of the biggest undertakings of any animated film so far. When thinking about the DVD version of the film Dreamworks knew they had to find a way to show the scope of the film.


	“We started working on this project about 3 months ago,” producer Steve Gustafson confides. Being responsible for all of Dreamworks’ DVD releases along with co-producer Mark Atkinson, the two have learned how to approach projects of this scope, and on previous releases like “Small Soldiers” and “Antz” prove how well they know their trade. Upon their release, both DVDs have immediately become reference discs in the market.

	We will keep these pages updated with new information, as soon as we get it in, so check back frequently to see what happened on the production of the “Prince Of Egypt Signature Selection”

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	© 1999 by “DVD Review”. All rights reserved. Reprinting only with written permission by the publisher. All “Prince Of Egypt” images are copyrighted and used by permission from Dreamworks SKG.