KEY POINTS:
An hour's drive south of San Francisco in California's Silicon Valley, an ordinary white building houses the secrets to one of Hollywood's most valuable franchises.
The building sits in an industrial park filled with other white, equally unexceptional office buildings.
A few kilometres away are the global headquarters of Google, Yahoo! and Apple.
The first sign the building is exceptional and linked to Hollywood is a glass box proudly sitting in the foyer containing a shiny gold Academy Award statuette.
It is the 2001 best animated film Oscar awarded to Shrek, the record-breaking movie about a large green ogre.
The building is the headquarters for PDI/DreamWorks, the animation studio behind some of Hollywood's most successful animated films, including Antz and the Shrek films.
In the three floors above the foyer several hundred animators, special effects wizards and artists are rushing to meet the fast-approaching deadline for the latest instalment of the ogre franchise, Shrek the Third.
"We won't be getting much sleep," Shrek the Third's director Chris Miller, looking weary and scratching his head, says as he greets the international media contingent touring the studio.
The pressure is on Miller and his team because the first two Shrek films cashed in at the worldwide box office, with the original earning $US484 million ($NZ656.8 million).
2004's Shrek 2 topped the original, collecting a mammoth $US920.7 million and making it the seventh most successful film in history and the highest grossing animated film.
With an Oscar for the first and a mountain of cash for the sequel, the bar was set high for Miller, who inherited the director's chair after Shrek 1 and 2's Kiwi director Andrew Adamson opted to helm the new Chronicles of Narnia film in New Zealand.
On this day, despite the tight deadline, Miller and DreamWorks opened up its studio to reveal many of the secrets behind the Shrek franchise.
The Shrek team is a streamlined operation, with most beginning their careers at the studio aged in their early 20s. They stayed on to become veterans of the two previous Shrek adventures.
The original Shrek took seven years to make.
With the experience, streamlining and advancements in technology, Shrek the Third took just 3.5 years.
They're a happy bunch, and why not?
On the bottom floor of the building is a large cafeteria offering free hot and cold meals and drinks. Near their work stations are comfortable lounges to relax on.
The big perk is the staff share in their film's profits.
"We do get some perks," Tim Cheung, the 34-year-old head of character animation, said.
"We have a bonus plan that happens depending on how well the movie goes.
"Hopefully we'll get a little something for Shrek the Third."
PDI/DreamWorks has used the same in-house computer software since its first feature length film, Antz, in 1998, but the company has continually upgraded it.
"We also have faster computers which allow us to see the results faster, which allows us to do our work quicker and refine quicker," Cheung said.
"In Shrek the Third, you will see subtle improvements.
"Shrek's facial animation is better.
"He has nose wrinkles that weren't there in the first two movies."
In Shrek the Third, all of the major stars who voiced the characters in the first two Shrek films are back.
Mike Myers voices Shrek, Cameron Diaz returns as Princess Fiona, Eddie Murphy is Donkey and Antonio Banderas is Puss in Boots.
The biggest new name is music star, Justin Timberlake, who voices a young King Arthur.
"When we found out Artie would be Justin Timberlake we tweaked his character's eyebrows a little bit, so it had a bit of a nuance of Justin," Lucia Modesto, character technical director supervisor, said.
The PDI/DreamWorks tour revealed many of the secrets behind the making of Shrek the Third.
Here they are:
The rocking boat:
An important storyline in Shrek the Third is a sea voyage Shrek takes with Donkey and Puss in Boots in search of King Arthur.
The Shrek technical wizards wanted to replicate the rocking motion of a boat -- no easy feat for an animation film.
"One of our super geniuses came up with a new camera rig where the camera and the boat are grouped together," Nick Walker, head of layout, said.
"The ship has oscillation going on and the camera has a similar oscillation, but a little bit delayed.
"It's a subtle little effect, but it gives organic life to the film."
The hardest character to design:
Size does matter.
Puss in Boots, the feisty, sword-wielding cat was the hardest because he was so much smaller than Shrek, Fiona and Donkey. It led to plenty of headaches for the animators attempting to make the cat look realistic in scenes where he was dwarfed by the larger characters.
Biggest headache
It may seem simple, but creating the folds and creases in clothes when arm or leg moves is one of the most difficult jobs for animators.
"You have all of these forces in the material working against each other," Guillame Aretos, Shrek production designer, explained.
Light tricks
One of the biggest technical differences in the Shrek the Third and the first two is the use of light.
A technique called global illumination opened up whole new lighting possibilities for the Shrek team.
"Global illumination is basically when light bounces off an object," Aretos said.
"It's a way to emulate the reality of light.
"It gives us dimensions we did not have before."
Hair
One of the greatest advancements in Shrek the Third occurred with hair thanks to a new Hair Solver computer program.
There was little hair movement in the first Shrek and in the second there was slight hair movement.
The Hair Solver computer program strategically implants individual strands of digital hair, allowing individual movement of the hair for characters such as the princesses, instead of the whole clump of hair moving.
Of course, Shrek has no hair ... a relief for the animators.
Sets
Just like a live action Hollywood film, animated films need sets and locations.
The Shrek crew had to design 82 different digital sets and 67 locations for the story of Shrek the Third to be played out.
School
The school where Shrek finds Artie may look familiar. Its buildings were based on Britain's famous university, Oxford.
Sleeves ain't easy
There are four princesses in the film, but notice just one has sleeves that are not skin tight on her arms.
That is because depicting flowing fabric is a lot more time consuming than tight clothing.
"It was expensive to do the one princess," art director Peter Zaslav said.
"Maybe in the next films the characters will have more volume in their clothes."
Background characters
The characters running in the background of scenes may look different, but they are largely based on the one generic character -- dubbed by the Shrek team as "Man A".
They make him look different by adding different clothes, particularly hats to partly cover his face.
Animators
The Shrek the Third animation department consisted of 32 people divided into four teams of eight.
The animators were recruited from New Zealand, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, England, Scotland, Wales, Spain, France, Canada, Russia, Lebanon, Paraguay. The remainder were American.
Tedious work
It takes an animator one week to complete 3.3 seconds of a scene.
How to become a PDI/Dreamworks animator
"DreamWorks goes to all of the best schools looking for talent," Cheung said.
The company also has a career section on its website, www.dreamworksanimation.com
- AAP
