When John Musker and Ron Clements, the directing team behind such hand-drawn Disney classics as "Aladdin" and "Home on the Range" , were re-hired by Disney - or rather, Disney Animation's John Lasseter - to captain a new 2-D animated feature - not unlike the one's the duo are famous for - set in the vibrant world of New Orleans, the first thing their boss said was, ‘'Before you do anything else about this movie, before you start writing a script or anything more than that, you have to go to New Orleans,' " Clements remembered. " 'You have to experience the city first-hand. It's the most unique city in the world.'"

"It was actually Walt Disney's favourite city", adds Musker, who says neither he nor Clements had "ever been there".

‘'When we got down there we did a number of things'', says Clements, "We met with this Voodoo priestess who showed us around the cemeteries, we also took a tour of the Bayou - with this guide named Reggie who would dangle a marshmallow over the side of the boat and the alligators would all come, we went to the garden district and had a tour of all the stately mansions there, and we went to the Jazz Fest - every year they have this Jazz music fest; it's in April and May - and it was great. They played all kinds of music - gospel, dixie land, African drums... and you'd just get a wash of all these things. And that's really what we were trying to get in the film, all these different musical styles that New Orleans represents.''

When Musker and Clements returned from the city, they'd decided on the film's tone, beats, and what kind of lead character they'd write.

"The Princess and the Frog" would center on a young girl named Princess Tiana, living in New Orleans' French Quarter during the Jazz Age, who is unexpectedly turned into a frog.

"When we presented it to John, the idea was that it would be an African-American lead character," Musker said. "Although it didn't work backward -- some people said, 'Did you start with, "We want to tell sort of an African-American princess, and what story could we tell?" ' It actually went the other way around. We started with this particular story and we thought it was a compelling story to tell, and was set in New Orleans. Then we said, 'Well, it really seems like the heroine ought to be African-American.'"

One of the other characters the duo wrote into the film was a decrepit Voodoo priestess. The duo will admit to having to do quite a bit of research into voodoo in their study of the character.

‘'Well, I know a little about it now - there is a book called ‘The Idiots Guide to Voodoo", laughs Musker.

"We had a little in-house meeting, he was reading the book and said the wrong thing and the next thing you knew we were frogs", jokingly adds Celements.

The main thing Musker says he learnt about Voodoo is that though "the movie emphasizes the dark side of Voodoo, and not the spiritual side of it, it's not unlike many religions where most of it is more positive than not".

- ASHLEY HILLARD

"The Princess and the Frog" opens Jan 1, 2010