When they enter the Receiving Station, the team was looking for a grand reveal of this critical and massive location, which holds all of the power for Monstropolis from Monsters Inc. While this is the access port, it continues back behind the wall. As with the Holding Pen, which is just down the hallway, we needed the light to fall off into shadow to help sell the size of the location, like the photos of giant caverns deep underground. Dropping the ambient levels down, allowed for more shaping of the tank, and a little more mystery as things fade off into darkness, helping keep focus on the main characters.
This location is revisited in the final episodes with the power crisis, so we wanted to make sure we established the location well. These shots were tricky as a single formula for the corrections did not work, requiring individual adjustments for each camera direction.
In addition, as we left and came back to this area several times throughout the episode, while each time was consistent, the look varied drastically from sequence to sequence, Roger Rogers coloring was something we ended up chasing throughout the entire season.
The light fog and light bulbs were also tricky, as they were not modeled nor rendered separately, so the inner reflective surface could not be isolated from the outside shell and wire cage easily.
Below is a video comparison pop-up of the entire sequence, best viewed on a desktop.
