James McKay’s concept sketch
Our first reveal of Christmas Present is a shot I’ve kept closely guarded, but now it’s in the trailer, I can finally talk about it. The idea of revealing Christmas Past and Present with the bed curtains was established on my first script review with Art Director James McKay. Also, established then was our basic colour language, starting the film heavily desaturated (no colour in Scrooge’s world), and progressively upping the colour with Christmas Future, bringing the first vivid burst of colour into Scrooges monochrome world. I called this our ‘Wizard of Oz shot’, a respectful homage to Dorothy stepping out into magical technicolour.
We also set out the basics of our animation language. With a small budget, we couldn’t afford much animation, and I hit on the idea of using animation to herald supernatural events. James showed me the classic French shot ‘La Jetée’, which uses this concept to incredible effect and helped further inform our style. Here’s our animation progression reel for the shot.