HOUSE OF FLYING HOUSES:
Carl Fredricksen, right, goes on a helium adventure.
Courtesy of Disney/Pixar
By Thomas Sullivan
Moviegoers are already familiar with “Up,” Pixar’s latest film, on a basic level. They’re been exposed to the previews and posters that depict a house floating among thousands of balloons. They know that it’s a Pixar film. And they know that, at the very least, the film is quite adverse to life on the ground.
But what most people don’t know is that “Up” has been in development for over five years under director Pete Docter.
“Up” tells a simple story of a small boy and an elderly man who decide to fly the latter’s house to South America to fulfill the boy’s dream of exotic escapism. Like so many Pixar ideas, the concept seems to have popped into Docter’s head one day like a vision; unlike, say, “Ratatouille.” (That vision was born out of personal anxiety.)
“You constantly want to think about how to get away from it all, and one day I had the mental image of a house flying through the air, and from there I developed the idea for the film,” Docter said.
Pixar is often romanticized for having the ultimate work environment. But Docter said directing a Pixar film is nothing close to inhabiting the “happy, fun la la land” of the film itself.
“You feel like a failure if the film isn’t progressing along or isn’t completed the way you want it to,” Docter said.
Perhaps this feeling is partly due to the pressure that comes along with directing a Pixar film. Those movies can’t just have new ideas or looks: They must be groundbreaking, built with new materials of animation entirely.
Docter said a new program was create in “Up” to animate a certain scene in the film.
“The house in the film is lifted up by about 10,000 balloons,” the director said. “We wanted them to react to wind and shift around like real balloons.”
Typically, Pixar uses miniaturization and painstaking design to produce the objects you see. But for “Up,” Docter and the rest of his team worked with a program called The Virtual Tailor to animate the majority of the film. The program allows Pixar animators and directors to construct, or “sew,” objects with relative ease, making the visuals both more organic and more stylized.
“Up” is also going to be the first Pixar film to use new 3-D technology, which is slowly becoming more and more popular with animated film. Still, Docter downplayed the technology’s importance in “Up.”
“We view 3-D technology as just another crayon in the crayon box,” the director said. “The 3-D in ‘Up’ isn’t going to be jokes; it’s going to meld together with the storytelling.”
As was the case with “WALL-E” and its formal inventiveness, or “Ratatouille” and its surprising ideas about genius and gourmet food, “Up” is both a challenge and a risk. It’s the first Pixar film produced without the aid of Brad Bird (the much-lauded director of “Ratatouille” and “The Incredibles”) or any of the usual Pixar crew.
Perhaps the number-crunching prognosticators at Disney know the film’s outcome already, but when the film hits theaters in late May, you can expect something that looks, feels and acts different from its precursors. And that’s the beauty of Pixar: No matter where you’re going — to Brazil in a balloon or anywhere else — the flight always feels new.
Thomas Sullivan is a staff writer.
E-mail: film@nyunews.com
© 2009 Washington Square News
April 28, 2009
USA: Flying on 10,000 balloons
.
NEW YORK, NY / New York University / Washington Square News / April 28, 2009
“Up” tells a simple story of a small boy and an elderly man
who decide to fly the latter's house to South America
to fulfill the boy's dream of exotic ...
HOUSE OF FLYING HOUSES:
Carl Fredricksen, right, goes on a helium adventure.
Courtesy of Disney/Pixar
By Thomas Sullivan
Moviegoers are already familiar with “Up,” Pixar’s latest film, on a basic level. They’re been exposed to the previews and posters that depict a house floating among thousands of balloons. They know that it’s a Pixar film. And they know that, at the very least, the film is quite adverse to life on the ground.
But what most people don’t know is that “Up” has been in development for over five years under director Pete Docter.
“Up” tells a simple story of a small boy and an elderly man who decide to fly the latter’s house to South America to fulfill the boy’s dream of exotic escapism. Like so many Pixar ideas, the concept seems to have popped into Docter’s head one day like a vision; unlike, say, “Ratatouille.” (That vision was born out of personal anxiety.)
“You constantly want to think about how to get away from it all, and one day I had the mental image of a house flying through the air, and from there I developed the idea for the film,” Docter said.
Pixar is often romanticized for having the ultimate work environment. But Docter said directing a Pixar film is nothing close to inhabiting the “happy, fun la la land” of the film itself.
“You feel like a failure if the film isn’t progressing along or isn’t completed the way you want it to,” Docter said.
Perhaps this feeling is partly due to the pressure that comes along with directing a Pixar film. Those movies can’t just have new ideas or looks: They must be groundbreaking, built with new materials of animation entirely.
Docter said a new program was create in “Up” to animate a certain scene in the film.
“The house in the film is lifted up by about 10,000 balloons,” the director said. “We wanted them to react to wind and shift around like real balloons.”
Typically, Pixar uses miniaturization and painstaking design to produce the objects you see. But for “Up,” Docter and the rest of his team worked with a program called The Virtual Tailor to animate the majority of the film. The program allows Pixar animators and directors to construct, or “sew,” objects with relative ease, making the visuals both more organic and more stylized.
“Up” is also going to be the first Pixar film to use new 3-D technology, which is slowly becoming more and more popular with animated film. Still, Docter downplayed the technology’s importance in “Up.”
“We view 3-D technology as just another crayon in the crayon box,” the director said. “The 3-D in ‘Up’ isn’t going to be jokes; it’s going to meld together with the storytelling.”
As was the case with “WALL-E” and its formal inventiveness, or “Ratatouille” and its surprising ideas about genius and gourmet food, “Up” is both a challenge and a risk. It’s the first Pixar film produced without the aid of Brad Bird (the much-lauded director of “Ratatouille” and “The Incredibles”) or any of the usual Pixar crew.
Perhaps the number-crunching prognosticators at Disney know the film’s outcome already, but when the film hits theaters in late May, you can expect something that looks, feels and acts different from its precursors. And that’s the beauty of Pixar: No matter where you’re going — to Brazil in a balloon or anywhere else — the flight always feels new.
Thomas Sullivan is a staff writer.
E-mail: film@nyunews.com
© 2009 Washington Square News
HOUSE OF FLYING HOUSES:
Carl Fredricksen, right, goes on a helium adventure.
Courtesy of Disney/Pixar
By Thomas Sullivan
Moviegoers are already familiar with “Up,” Pixar’s latest film, on a basic level. They’re been exposed to the previews and posters that depict a house floating among thousands of balloons. They know that it’s a Pixar film. And they know that, at the very least, the film is quite adverse to life on the ground.
But what most people don’t know is that “Up” has been in development for over five years under director Pete Docter.
“Up” tells a simple story of a small boy and an elderly man who decide to fly the latter’s house to South America to fulfill the boy’s dream of exotic escapism. Like so many Pixar ideas, the concept seems to have popped into Docter’s head one day like a vision; unlike, say, “Ratatouille.” (That vision was born out of personal anxiety.)
“You constantly want to think about how to get away from it all, and one day I had the mental image of a house flying through the air, and from there I developed the idea for the film,” Docter said.
Pixar is often romanticized for having the ultimate work environment. But Docter said directing a Pixar film is nothing close to inhabiting the “happy, fun la la land” of the film itself.
“You feel like a failure if the film isn’t progressing along or isn’t completed the way you want it to,” Docter said.
Perhaps this feeling is partly due to the pressure that comes along with directing a Pixar film. Those movies can’t just have new ideas or looks: They must be groundbreaking, built with new materials of animation entirely.
Docter said a new program was create in “Up” to animate a certain scene in the film.
“The house in the film is lifted up by about 10,000 balloons,” the director said. “We wanted them to react to wind and shift around like real balloons.”
Typically, Pixar uses miniaturization and painstaking design to produce the objects you see. But for “Up,” Docter and the rest of his team worked with a program called The Virtual Tailor to animate the majority of the film. The program allows Pixar animators and directors to construct, or “sew,” objects with relative ease, making the visuals both more organic and more stylized.
“Up” is also going to be the first Pixar film to use new 3-D technology, which is slowly becoming more and more popular with animated film. Still, Docter downplayed the technology’s importance in “Up.”
“We view 3-D technology as just another crayon in the crayon box,” the director said. “The 3-D in ‘Up’ isn’t going to be jokes; it’s going to meld together with the storytelling.”
As was the case with “WALL-E” and its formal inventiveness, or “Ratatouille” and its surprising ideas about genius and gourmet food, “Up” is both a challenge and a risk. It’s the first Pixar film produced without the aid of Brad Bird (the much-lauded director of “Ratatouille” and “The Incredibles”) or any of the usual Pixar crew.
Perhaps the number-crunching prognosticators at Disney know the film’s outcome already, but when the film hits theaters in late May, you can expect something that looks, feels and acts different from its precursors. And that’s the beauty of Pixar: No matter where you’re going — to Brazil in a balloon or anywhere else — the flight always feels new.
Thomas Sullivan is a staff writer.
E-mail: film@nyunews.com
© 2009 Washington Square News
