This is a list of production the 1998 film, The Prince of Egypt.
Production[]
Development[]
Jeffrey Katzenberg had always wanted to do an animated adaptation of The Ten Commandments. While working for The Walt Disney Company, Katzenberg suggested this idea to Michael Eisner, but he refused. The idea for the film was brought back at the formation of DreamWorks SKG in 1994, when Katzenberg's partners, Amblin Entertainment founder Steven Spielberg, and music producer David Geffen, were meeting in Spielberg's living room. Katzenberg recalls that Spielberg looked at him during the meeting and said, "You ought to do The Ten Commandments."
The Prince of Egypt was "written" throughout the story process. Beginning with a starting outline, Story Supervisors Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook led a team of fourteen storyboard artists and writers as they sketched out the entire film - sequence by sequence. Once the storyboards were approved, they were put into the Avid Media Composer digital editing system by editor Nick Fletcher to create a "story reel" or animatic. The story reel allowed the filmmakers to view and edit the entire film in continuity before production began and also helped the layout and animation departments understand what was happening in each sequence of the film. After the casting of the voice talent concluded, dialogue recording sessions began. For the film, the actors recorded individually in a studio under the guidance of one of the three directors. The voice tracks were to become the primary aspect on which the animators built their performances. Because DreamWorks was concerned about theological accuracy, Katzenberg decided to call in Biblical scholars, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim theologies, and Arab American leaders to help his film be more accurate and faithful to the original story. After previewing the developing film, all these leaders noted that the studio executives listened and responded to their ideas, and praised the studio for reaching out for comment from outside sources.
Design and Animation[]
Art directors Kathy Altieri and Richard Chavez and Production Designer Derek Gogol led a team of nine visual development artists in setting a visual style for the film that was representative of the time, the scale, and the architectural style of Ancient Egypt. Part of the process also included the research and collection of artwork from various artists, as well in taking part in trips such as a two-week journey across Egypt by the filmmakers before the film's production began.
Character Designers Carter Goodrich, Carlos Grangel, and Nicolas Marlet worked on setting the design and overall look of the characters. Drawing on various inspirations for the widely known characters, the team of character designers worked on designs that had a more realistic feel than the usual animated characters up to that time. Both character design and art direction worked to set a definite distinction between the symmetrical, more angular look of the Egyptians versus the more organic, natural look of the Hebrews and their related environments. The Backgrounds department, headed by supervisors Paul Lasaine and Ron Lukas, oversaw a team of artists who were responsible for painting the sets/backdrops from the layouts. Within the film, approximately 934 hand-painted backgrounds were created.
The animation team for The Prince of Egypt, including 350 artists from 34 different nations, was primarily recruited both from Walt Disney Feature Animation, which had fallen into Katzenberg's auspices while at The Walt Disney Company, and from Amblimation, a defunct division of Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment. At Disney's, character animators were grouped into teams by character: for example, Kristoff Serrand, as the supervising animator of Older Moses, set the acting style of the characters and the assigned scenes to his team. Consideration was given to properly depicting the ethnicities of the ancient Egyptians, Hebrews, and Nubians seen in the film.
There are 1,192 scenes in the film, and 1,180 of them have special effects in them. These special effects were elements such as wind blowing or environmental features such as dust or rainwater. These were also effects designed in terms of lightning, as it casts its shadows and images into a given scene. In the end, these effects helped the animators graphically illustrate scenes such as the ten plagues of Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea. The animated characters were digitally inked and painted using Cambridge Systems' Animo software system, and the compositing of the 2D and 3D elements was done using the "Exposure Tool", a digital solution developed for DreamWorks by Silicon Graphics.
Creating the Voice of God[]
The task of creating God's voice was given to Lon Bender and the team working with the film's music composer, Hans Zimmer. "The challenge with that voice was to try to evolve it into something that had not been heard before," says Bender. "We did a lot of research into the voices that had been used for past Hollywood movies as well as for radio shows, and we were trying to create something that had never been previously heard not only from a casting standpoint but from a voice manipulation standpoint as well. The solution was to use the voice of Val Kilmer to suggest the kind of voice we hear inside our heads in our everyday lives, as opposed to the larger-than-life tones with God has been endowed in prior cinematic incarnations." As a result, in the final film, Kilmer gave the voice to Moses and God, as well, yet the suggestion is that someone else would have heard God speak to him again in his voice.
Music[]
- Main article: The Prince of Egypt/Soundtrack
Composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz began working on writing songs for the film from the beginning of the film's production. As the story evolved, he continued to write songs that would entertain and help move the story along. Composer Hans Zimmer arranged and produced the songs and eventually wrote the film's score. The film's score was recorded entirely in London, England.
Three soundtrack albums were released simultaneously for The Prince of Egypt, each of them aimed towards a different target audience. While the other two accompanying records, the country-themed "Nashville" soundtrack and the gospel-based "Inspirational" soundtrack, functioned as film tributes, the official The Prince of Egypt soundtrack contained the actual songs from the film. The album combines elements from the score composed by Hans Zimmer and film songs by Stephen Schwartz. The songs were either voiced over by professional singers (such as Salisbury Cathedral Choir) or sung by the film's voice actors, such as Michelle Pfeiffer and Ofra Haza. Various tracks by contemporary artists such as K-Ci & JoJo and Boyz II Men were added, including the Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston duet "When You Believe", a Babyface rewrite of the original Stephen Schwartz composition, sung by Michelle Pfeiffer and Sally Dworsky in the film. Amy Grant also sings a version of "River Lullaby".
Musical Numbers[]
- "Deliver Us" - Yocheved, Young Miriam and Chorus
- "All I Ever Wanted" - Moses
- "River Lullaby" - Miriam
- "All I Ever Wanted (Queen's Reprise)" - Queen Tuya
- "Through Heavens Eyes" - Jethro
- "Playing with the Big Boys" - Hotep and Huy
- "The Plagues" - Moses, Rameses, and Chorus
- "When You Believe" - Miriam, Tzipporah, and Chorus
