However, Disney's biggest advancement was a new virtual camera for hand-held work on Hero's Duty, headed by Evan Goldberg, manager of animation technology. Introducing capture technology into the studio's feature animation pipeline proved challenging, but was well worth it, considering the dynamic advantages you get with the new system: a digital scouting device, closer involvement for Moore, and hundreds of takes in an hour, the ability to scale a virtual world up and down, and translate and rotate it with unparalleled camera polish. 

When I started at the studio, it was like finding some amazing toy train that wasn't being fully utilized," Moore concludes. "Tangled started to get the pieces all back together but collectively I think we've now got this beautiful machine working again. And Chris Buck with Frozen after this looks gorgeous and we have some other movies coming down the line that people are really proud of. Knock on wood, if this does well, I would love to revisit this universe because I love the characters and the team that we built."

Bill Desowitz is former senior editor of AWN and VFXWorld, the owner of Immersed in Movies (www.billdesowitz.com), a columnist for Thompson on Hollywood at Indiewire and author of James Bond Unmasked (www.jamesbondunmasked.com), which chronicles the 50-year evolution of 007 on screen, featuring interviews with all six actors.