HE’S A TRAMP

How the classic tune made its appearance in the live-action remake

The remake of Lady And The Tramp has plenty of memorable moments, but one standout sequence is when saucy Pekinese Peg (played by Janelle Monae) sings the classic song from the 1955 original, ‘He’s A Tramp’ to Lady in the dog pound.

When Lady gets captured by Eliot the dogcatcher, she gets locked up with a colourful gang of stray dogs. There she meets the inseparable duo of wisecracking Peg and slobbering English Bulldog Bull (Benedict Wong).

The film, up to this point, has a realistic feel to it (for a film about talking dogs) in terms of look and lighting. By the time Lady enters the Dog Pound, the audience has bought into the internal logic of this world enough that the filmmakers felt they could briefly break out of reality for a more theatrical song and dance number. The task for VFX Supervisors Dan Macarin, Guy Williams, and Weta Digital was to balance the performance of the real dogs with those of the voice actors and to enhance the onset lighting with a more cabaret lounge mood and atmosphere.

Animation supervisor Michael Cozens, animation leads Morgan Looms, John Sore and their team meticulously studied the ADR (additional dialogue recording) takes of principal voice actors, Tessa Thompson (Lady), Janelle Monae (Peg), and Benedict Wong (Bull). They also pored over the sequence from the 1955 film to find beats and moments they could incorporate to honor the original. Reference footage and mood boards of cabarets were assembled and referenced and the crew tried to get themselves into a nightclub state of mind.

One of the inspirations for the mood of this sequence was Charles Vidor’s 1946 black and white film noir, Gilda. Director Charlie Bean pointed the team to Rita Hayworth’s femme fatale, torch singer performance from the film as motivation for Peg’s attitude and style. The way Hayworth shakes her hair and owns the room as she sings ‘Put The Blame On Mame’ in a casino nightclub became the reference point for Peg’s confident, caberet-lounge singing and dancing style.

Fortunately, actor/singer Janelle Monae performed her own fantastic rendition of ‘He’s A Tramp’ for the film. This gave Weta Digital the creative opportunity to reimagine the look and feel of the sequence as well. The focus on the sequence is Lady and Peg of course but the presence of Bull and a dozen other pound dogs gave Weta the chance to turn the sequence into a true canine song and dance act, complete with background singers.

Filmed in an abandoned cotton factory repurposed as a dog prison, CG supervisor Jason Galeon and the lighting team, led by Frederic Soumagnas with Ari Ross, made use of the existing overhead spotlights, dimming and brightening them to act as stage spotlights to frame the action. In addition, bright lights from a casino riverboat slowly moving past the window was used to motivate volumetric lighting through the sequence and provide a sense of continuity and backlighting. Galeon also incorporated Houdini Engine into Weta’s workflow to add a subtle layer of “air fizz”, using particle simulations integrated directly into the lighting team’s Katana-based pipeline.

Although real dogs were filmed on a practical set compositing supervisor Steve Mcgillen and his compositors ended up replacing almost all dogs and much of the set due to the nature of the camera moves, dancing dogs, volumetrics and CG lighting. The also dressed in more 2D atmosphere and subtly graded the sequence to give it even more of a nightclub mood.

With Peg’s singing as the focal point of much of the sequence, her long, white fur became as much an element of her personality as Janelle Monae’s voice. To make it work, Dave Short and the creatures team spent days grooming her fur to move right along the ground and giving the right stiffness and flexibility to the fur covering her eyes so it would follow her head movements in a similar way as Rita Hayworth in Gilda. Her tail was rigged so animators could rock it to Janelle Monae’s beat. The result was a fine balance mixing the best parts of Stoli the show dog acting on set, Monae’s singing, Hayworth’s attitude and Peg’s spirit from the original 1955 version.

The final result is a truly memorable sequence that manages to pay loving homage to the classic animated film while offering up an updated vision of these beloved characters.