The Santa Clause 2 (2002)

"The Santa Clause 2" even boasts a unique action sequence. "I’m doing my version of John Ford’s ‘Stagecoach’ in the sky," Lembeck jests. "Scott Calvinis on this little puppy reindeer, chasing down the sleigh with the bad guy in it, being pulled by the entire team of reindeer. He’s jumping from reindeer to reindeer, just like in the westerns…all in mid-flight."

Flying reindeer are also the domain of special makeup and animatronic character effects designers Tom Woodruff, Jr. and Alec Gillis. "We’ve taken advantage of the technological advances of the past eight years - things like computer controlled technology, motion control playback, lip synching capabilities, all of which give the animatronic characters we’ve created much more life," says Woodruff. "The reindeer in this movie are a lot more expressive and consequently a lot more fun than last time ‘round. They’re extremely goofy characters," he adds fondly.

Making a reindeer fly is a complex process that is a marriage of animatronic puppetry and visual effects. "Having a reindeer appear to be flying with an actor on its back requires that the reindeer be very strong to begin with," Gillis explains. "To create the movement, we’ve used hydraulic pistons controlled by a computer that our puppeteers feed information to. We can pre-program movements, which we do with the legs, to avoid them crashing into each other. The hydraulic is so strong that we could end up tearing the puppet apart if we’re not absolutely precise," says Gillis.

"We work very closely with Tom and Alec to understand the range of motion of the animatronics so that we can replicate that in the computer," says Brennan Doyle, VFX Supervisor for Tippet Studios, one of the two visual effects houses working on the film. "Animatronics are used in tight shots and shots that involve the human characters. Any of the wider shots that show the sleigh and reindeer flying through the sky, are done using CGI (computer generated imagery)."

Tippet’s focus was largely on creature shots and the creation of CG stunt doubles for the talent, including a CG Santa. GVFX, the other VFX house, are responsible for numerous 2D and 3D elements of the film.

"Most of the effects we’re doing are 2D and involve taking live-action film that’s been shot and compositing it with other film, both live action and CG," says John Gadjecki, VFX Supervisor for GVFX. Before shooting began, GVFX built a CG model for the ‘Stagecoach’ scene that depicted the entire studio complete with sleigh, reindeer team and Scott riding Chet (the reindeer puppy). "We can actually lay out where the camera is going to be on the day relative to the green screen, determine exactly what kind of crane we’ll need and what the camera move will be. What we did in this instance, was take the CG animation that Tippet Studios created and reverse engineered it to come up with the camera moves."

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