"Fantastic Mr. Fox" Movie Shot With DSLRs

Over the weekend I saw a really enjoyable movie, "Fantastic Mr. Fox," which opens in wide release this week. (Good word of mouth? Check.)

The movie uses stop-motion animation—a laborious way to make a film. But amid the low-tech tedium of posing puppets for 621,450 separate still frames, the filmmakers used a digital workflow system to make things go smoother. They even set up a network that let director Wes Anderson monitor the shots even when he wasn't actually in the studio.

Check out the video below (via Wired) to see how they did it. The crew used Nikon D3s a variety of DSLRs not only to shoot the movie itself, but also to stream video from the movie sets onto a network that Anderson and other crew members could monitor from anywhere.

Update: The credits on IMDB say the movie's main camera was the Nikon D3, but readers correctly point out that the video shows a variety of different DSLR cameras being used on set.

Comments

[brent...]

those look like D300s nikons to me...

[Daryl Lang]

Entirely possible, Brent. IMDB says they used the D3, but they may have used more than 1 kind of camera. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0432283/technical

[Ryan Brenizer]

I see a 40D or some such in the video.

[John]

Definitely Canons in there.

[Ryan Parent]

Pretty soon they will be shooting hollywood movies with Digital SLR's

[Ryan Parent]

I have to say the video that Nikon SLR's are producing is stunning. Some of my friends who are wedding photographers are using them to shoot photo and video at the weddings.

[Ramin Talaie]

I saw both Canon and Nikon. PDN mentions Nikon only. There were 5D Mark 2's and noticed the black and white body of a Canon zoom lens.

[Rémi Thériault]

Definitely saw a bunch of Canon's from the back wheel on the cameras. Still incredible footage no matter what cameras.

[sara]

A shame that PDN credits Nikon only and not the Canons that are clearly at work here as well. PDN - I pay $65 per year for my subscription which I always assumed was based on objective reporting. I'm seeming to think that you're now more of an advertorial publication - "reporting" on what your advertisers tell you to - and NOT reporting on truths and objective opinions and gear tested in the field independently. This kind of sucks.

[Alex]

Clearly Canons, you can see the Canon logo on the back of the camera under the LCD screen.

[Joe]

You Tool Boxes are clearly missing the point of how bad ass this is!
Who cares what kind of brand the camera is?
You can have a store full of cameras and it won't do you any good with out great ideas and follow thru.
Thank You for posting this, and the inspiration PDN.

Photo Geeks...Please stop set tripping, and stroking your name brands...just go shoot something.

[Mike]

I saw a Pentax, Sony, Olympus, Leica, and oh, a Minolta!