Alice in Wonderland in Nuke part 1 of 2

Alice in Wonderland - New Official Full Trailer (HQ)

Character Design: White Queen

The Red Queen is not the only queen in Wonderland, she has an older sister who is known as the White Queen, portrayed by actress Anne Hathaway. The original character in Lewis Carroll's book, Through the Looking Glass, doesn't have a strong prescene and is described as being a bit odd since she seems to live her life backwards.

Tim Burton's inspiration for the character was from Nigella Lawson, a UK cooking show host. Tim Burton talks about his excitement, "she really beautiful and she does all this cooking, but then there's this glint in her eye and when you see it you go, Oh, whoa. she's like really...nuts. I mean in a good way. Well, maybe. I don't know."

The White Queen also is similar to another iconic character, Glinda the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz. Hathaway plays the character with a sense of bubbly fondness however there is some evidence that the White Queen might also suffer from the same evil that plagues her older sister the Red Queen. But instead of giving into the darker side of her human nature, the White Queen surrounds herself in a world where kindness and light prevails.

Character Design: The Red Queen

The character of the Red Queen is a combination of Lewis Carroll's colorful characters the Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen. The Queen is portrayed by actress Helena Bonham Carter, who underwent a three hour process to tranform her into the emotionally unbalanced individual that sticks out from the crowd due to her over sized head.

According to the screenwriter Linda Woolverton, "there's a tumor in her head and its pressing on the bit that controls the emotions" (Pg 51). Since she has this deformity, the Queen's reasoning behind chopping peoples' heads off is some what more clear. By doing this she is able to rule with fear as well as cope with her insecurities of having a large head while others around her have normal ones.

The look of the queen was inspired by the actress Bette Davis in her role as Queen Elizabeth I in the 1939 film The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, directed by Micheal Curtiz. The make up artists took the high forehead, shaved eyebrows and red wig from the film and morphed it into something new for Alice.

Colleen Atwood was the lead costume designer for Alice in Wonderland, she has worked with Burotn before as well as Carter and Depp. In the book Alice in Wonderland: A Visual Companion, she explains her idea behind the design of the Red Queen's wardrobe. "I based her dress on a version of the heart theme, a graphic lifted from palying cards but at the same time, i tired to not make it look too much like a playing card made into a dress... I wanted to keep it playful and keep it a little cheesy because the Red Queen is, in fact, a bit tacky. So its not the best of materials" (pg 59).

Character Design: Mad Hatter

With the reintroduction of Alice in Wonderland tothe big screen it was decided that the memiorable characters were to be given a make over. The make over transformed them into a Burtonesque variation that many people know and love.

The Mad Hatter design was drawn up by both Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, strangely enough both illustrations were quite similar to each other. But it seemed that Depp was destined for the role since screenwriter Linda Woolverton created her version of the Hatter with the quirky Johnny Depp in mind and before Tim Burton was brought on to the project.

Depp comments on his feelings toward the character from the book Alice in Wonderland: A Visual Companion, "the idea that he would be so pure in the sense that you see, instantly, what he's feeling. So much so that his clothes, his skin colour, his hair, everything comes to life" (pg 41). Being the serious actor that he is Depp also did research into hatters of the period and discovered how the term 'mad as a hatter' came to be. "And the term 'mad as a hatter' actually came from real hatters when they were making these sort of beautiful beaver pelt top hats. The glue had a very high mercury content . It would stain there hands, and they would go sideways. They'd go goofy from the mercury, and go nuts" (p41). Because of the intensity of the mercury posioning, Depp believed that not only his mind should be altered by it but also his body. So the character's entire face was turned white, while his hair was bright orange as well as his fingertips and his eyes were bright green.

Green Screen Work and Miniatures

There were over 5o green screens built at the Sony Studios.

However, Tim Burton didn't like green screen and wanted to use blue screen because he thought it would be "less problematic, pshchologically, but Alice was wearing blue so we had to let that go ." Working with the green screen environment was an exhausting time for the cast and crew. Tim Burton resorted to wearing special glasses that had violet lenses to help ease the intensitity of the green screen. The actors also suffered from headaches due to the chroma green coloring.

To help merge the world of green screen to the virtual environment, realtime playback of the 3D models were generated. "We created MotionBuilder environments and composited those on set using live playback from the camera. If Tim wanted it, he could see rough versions of the digital environments while we shot the live actors moving through them." said Ralston

To help navigate through the 3D environments, several tracking systems were used by filmmakers and director of photography Dariusz Wolski to connect with his Panavision Genesis digital camera system. The system was programed with the functions of panning, tilting and focal length allowing, Burton to have complete control of the camera with the CG environment be tracked similtaneously as if it were a real set.

The use of miniature models helped also with shooting shots such as Alice shrinking and growing in the room to help give a more convincing preformance. They also aided Burton in planning camera angles.

Since there was such a tight schedule, turn around time for shots of Mia Wasikowska, who plays Alice, interacting with different scaled performers were difficult. An on set compositing tool was used to help scale the performers to proper size need for the scene. Wanting to keep a cretain energy to the performance, actors were placed with each other on the green set instead of traditionally replacing them with tennis balls. For example when "Alice is eight and half feet tall holding the normal-size Hatter's face, talking to him one on one...Burton filmed Wasikowska on a paltform to elevate her eye-line and approximate the correct height."