To create the additional sequence, the filmmakers reassembled the original voice cast and most of the original animators and artists. Nik Ranieri, the supervising animator for Lumiere, recalls, "I was really excited to be working on this character again and 'Human Again' had a good role in it for Lumiere. My first thought was, 'Can I handle this character? It's been ten years and I don't know if I can still draw him.' I got out the old model sheet and started drawing and it just started to come back. It was like visiting an old friend. I really enjoyed getting to work with him again."

Some fans have complained that the new sequence features pop culture references, like one to the "American Gothic" painting, of which the original film was free. However, Hahn differs in opinion: "It never bothers me. The film has a teapot hopping around and singing in it. It's a fairy tale and fairy tales have references to all sorts of cultural things." He feels the most important thing is that the sequence is entertaining.

New Format = Lots of Tweaks
The second important question about the re-release is: what did it take to transform the film into the Imax format? Hahn admitted that due to the fact that Beauty and the Beast was completely digital the transfer to the 10-times larger format was not that difficult. From the digital source material, Disney's camera department used special camera heads and film recorders to create new large format prints. Unlike the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" sequence in Fantasia/2000, Beauty was not just blown up to a larger size, but was reformatted frame-by-frame.

Artistic director Dave Bossert and Joe Jiuliano, director of the camera department, actually printed the film in three different large formats -- IMAX (15 perfs wide), dome projection and 8 perf. Two special 65mm camera heads were placed on top of film recorders to create the final output. It took 2-1/2 minutes to shoot each frame, which required a 24-hour filming schedule to meet the demands of production. To increase image clarity, the resolution was doubled from 2000 to 4000 pixels per frame.

However, the larger image did present detailing issues for the filmmakers. For instance, in the wide shots during the snow ball fight, Belle's face had no detail, which on the now seven-story-high image clearly showed. Almost 200 scenes required some additional animation, effects, background painting or other details. Art director Ed Ghertner and background supervisor Lisa Keene spearheaded all the adjustments.

Keene comments, "Technology has changed and improved so we were able to do things that we couldn't do before. Dust on the original images looked like tennis balls on the screen. At the time, we weren't able to do a digital touch-up and remove all the imperfections. For this release, we looked at the entire film and decided what was charming and what really needed to be fixed. Today it's a very simple matter to correct these things digitally. Those small little adjustments really helped."