Up

Written by Nikki Baughan Friday, 24 April 2009 15:54

Interview

As Pixar gears up to release their 10th animation, Up, director Pete Docter and producer Jonas Rivera tell us why the sky's the limit.

Carl Fredricksen, a 78-year-old curmudgeon (voiced by Christopher Plummer), is feeling as if life may have passed him by. To make good on a promise he made to his late wife, he sets out on a great adventure by tying thousands of balloons to his house and flying away to South America - only to discover that he has inadvertently brought along a frustratingly cheerful 8-year-old boy named Russell (Jordan Nagai)

Docter and Rivera realize that an old man might seem the most unlikely of characters to entertain audiences. “We knew it was a risk, but there is a rich history of grouchy, old characters,” explains Docter. “A crusty, old guy just felt appealing! There are a lot of entertainment possibilities. Also, it hadn’t been done yet. One of the big things for us at Pixar is not treading the same ground, and this being the tenth film, that’s getting harder and harder to do.”

Joining Pixar in 1990, Docter was part of the original team responsible for developing the story and characters for Toy Story, for which he was also supervising animator. He served as a storyboard artist on A Bug’s Life, and wrote the initial story treatment for Toy Story 2. Docter made his debut as a director on Monsters, Inc, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film. As one of Pixar’s key creative contributors, Docter garnered an original story credit for early story development on Disney/Pixar’s Golden Globe and Academy Award-winning film, WALL•E. For his contributions on WALL•E, Docter was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Original Screenplay.

Rivera joined Pixar in 1994 as a production assistant on the studio’s first feature film, Toy Story. Having worked on almost every Pixar feature film to date, Rivera’s ability and expertise has enabled him to advance his role on each of the studio’s subsequent productions. Most recently, Rivera served as production manager on the Golden Globe winning feature Cars.

When the duo teamed up in 2004 to begin work on Up, they knew the look of the characters was going to be an artistic breakthrough for animation. Docter recalls, “We have these amazing technical directors who know how to do almost everything, and on this film we said, ‘We want you to do everything wrong!’ Ignore the way things work in real life. The look was very hard to achieve both artistically and technically. Hopefully it’s something that is not obvious but invisible.” Rivera adds, “We didn’t want real, we wanted caricature. It is a little more throwback to old Disney.”

The look of the film was so important to Docter and Rivera that the Up creative team traveled to South American to ensure that the landscape was perfect. Paradise Falls, the fictional location of the film, was sketched from the actual Table Top mountain and they chose the locale because they needed someplace isolated that Carl could get stuck so that he could grow and evolve as a character. “The mountains are over a mile high, there is no way to get up or down,” said Rivera. “This location felt like a cool place because it is a lost world and very detached, and also sets the tone for making an adventure film.”

When asked what they hope to achieve with Up for both themselves and the studio, Rivera said, “Hopefully it has the flavor of an action-adventure film, but a little softer then some of the movies that are out today. We are hoping this film is an extension of where the Pixar movies have gone, and at the same time reaches back into the past and grabs on to the things that we love from the classics.”

Up is scheduled for release on October 16, 2009, and the film will also be presented in Disney Digital 3-D™ in select theaters.