The FX team of Planes: Fire & Rescue

MANILA, Philippines - From the beginning, Disneytoon’s Planes: Fire & Rescue was destined to break new ground. “Not only is it the biggest visual effects movie we’ve ever done here at Disneytoon Studios,” says producer Ferrell Barron, “nobody had ever really attempted to do an animated movie featuring fire of this magnitude before — the size, scope, scale and frequency of smoke and fire in this is really extraordinary. So the first thing we had to do is dig into the effects side of the film because it was so important that we get fire right. It had to be real.”

John Patton was tapped as the effects animation lead for the film. “Out of 1,224 total shots in the film, more than half feature some kind of effect: Fire, smoke, water. And ‘fire’ is in the title of the film — it’s a key element in the story — we had to make sure we nailed it.”

So the team studied the science of fire through online research, books and talking to a host of firefighters. Says Patton, “We referenced a lot of live-action fire footage to understand how it looks from different distances and with varying intensity. A lot of variables — the fuel source, weather, size — affect how a fire looks.”

Filmmakers decided to build a library of smoke and fire, creating more than 80 effects with more than 800 frames each that could be selected by effects artists and adjusted to fit the needs of the scene. They were able to select and dial up or down accompanying smoke, too. “The idea was to create and shoot fire from various distances with differing details,” says Patton. “Each one can be very time-consuming, so rather than reinvent the wheel every time, we created a library of options that could be used to populate a scene with a number of unique fire effects.”

Now showing nationwide in 3D and 2D cinemas, Planes: Fire & Rescue is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures through Columbia Pictures.