Moving on up

THE building looked just like another warehouse from the outside, but for the large arch at the front gate that simply stated “Pixar Animation Studios”. However, once you enter the studio’s compound in Emeryville, California, there is no doubt that you are now in Pixarland.

Greeting incoming vehicles at the main road is a huge Cars logo painted on the tarmac, and as you walk towards the main entrance, a gigantic lamp towers over you like a silent guardian. Yes, you read that right. A LAMP. It is a replica of Pixar’s hopping lamp mascot – Luxo Jr, the titular character in a pioneering 1986 Pixar short film that the then fledgling studio made to prove it could make a realistic and engaging animated film using computers.

Celebrations of Pixar’s past, such as the lamp, are all over the place. Entering the main hall of the studio building, one is greeted by life-sized replicas of Monster’s Inc’s Mike and Sully on your left, and Cars’ Luigi and Guido on your right. Bruce the Shark (Finding Nemo) leers at visitors from atop a flight of stairs, while on the opposite end, The Incredibles’ family stand ready to fight off any super-villains who dare enter. Look closer at the bottom of the walls around the building, and you’ll see tiny cartoon rats from Ratatouille drawn on the walls.

Even the toilet signs have been Pixar-fied – in place of the usual male and female stick figures are silhouettes of Woody and Little Bo Peep from Toy Story, while the reception counter is cluttered with memorabilia from all the films – from Toy Story and A Bug’s Life, all the way to WALL-E.

Still, for all their pride in their significant past achievements, Pixar has always been a company that lives in the present and looks to the future. And at the time of this visit to Pixar, all eyes were on a small little remote-controlled model house suspended by hundreds of balloons, flying around the hall … the focal point of Pixar’s landmark 10th feature
Measuring up

Critics had predicted that Up would be the movie to break the amazing streak of nine successive box-office hits, four of which won Best Animated Feature Oscars.

After all, surely the studio couldn’t possibly follow up a movie as huge as last year’s WALL-E with yet another hit. Surely this movie about some old guy and a floating house couldn’t measure up to their past movies and continue the studio’s “lucky” streak.

Oh, how wrong all those naysayers are!

At the time of writing this article, Up has grossed almost US$290mil (RM1bil), making it Pixar’s second biggest hit ever, after Finding Nemo. It has also beaten the likes of Star Trek and Watchmen, coming in second only to Transformers: The Revenge of The Fallen at the top of the US’s domestic box office of 2009.

And to prove money is not all that matters, Up was even chosen as the opening film at the prestigious Cannes Festival in France earlier this year, the first ever animated feature to be given that honour.

So how is it that a movie about a cranky old man in a house that floats away on thousands of balloons has managed to do so well?

During a roundtable interview with director Pete Docter (who already has one major Pixar hit under his belt – Monsters Inc), three months before Up became the studio’s 10th straight hit, he admitted that there certainly was pressure to keep the winning streak going.

“We’re always under pressure around here. Even on Monsters Inc, I remember going to the Toy Story 2 wrap party and having a good time, when it struck me ... oh, no, our movie comes next!” he recalled whimsically. “You try not to compare one movie with another, and hope that it will be different enough from the rest. To me, movies should always be able to stand on their own.”

Up to par

One of the reasons Up works so well is because of the emphasis on telling a good story, a quality that all Pixar movies possess. The movie revolves around 78-year-old Carl Fredrickson (voiced by Ed Asner), whose house is in danger of being demolished to make way for high-rise buildings. To save it, and also to fulfil a promise to his late wife, Carl ties his house to thousands of balloons and floats away to Paradise Falls in South America. Unfortunately, things don’t quite go as planned, as a young kid named Russell (Jordan Nagai) unwittingly comes aboard as well.

The story of Carl and his floating house of balloons essentially came from two separate ideas that Docter and his co-director/head writer Bob Peterson came up with.

“After Monsters Inc, Bob and I just sat in a room and came up with a long list of ideas of what we wanted to do next. One of the things we thought would be fun was to do something with a really sour old guy,” he said.

“At the same time, being an animator who is always stuck at a desk drawing and animating, I’ve always like the idea of escaping – of floating away somewhere.”

“That idea of escaping led to Pete doing a lot of drawing and writing, and eventually to this drawing of a house on balloons which looks fun, cool, beautiful and lyrical,” recalled Up producer Jonas Rivera. “From there onwards, it literally became like a math problem – who’s in that house? Where is he going? Who’s with him? And as we started answering those questions, we reverse-engineered the story out of that idea.”

According to Rivera, the moment they felt the story was good enough, they pitched it to the big guns at Pixar – namely founders John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, and the other directors such as Brad Bird and Andrew Stanton.

“Bob (Peterson) was pitching the story of Carl – his life, as a kid, meeting Ellie, falling in love, and their whole life together up till her death ... and at the end of it, John was in tears!” Rivera recalled. “He said at the time, ‘I don’t care where it goes; at that point, you got me!’ From then on, it felt like we had a license to really take this where we wanted it to go.”

Uphill challenges

Given that Up is arguably Pixar’s first film with ordinary people as the main characters (as opposed to talking cars, toys, fishes, superheroes and bugs) and the studio’s first film in 3D, Docter’s team was faced with an uphill task.

And that’s without mentioning the ludicrous idea of a house floating away on balloons.

“The idea of a floating house on balloons is a bit bizarre ... it doesn’t make logical sense but it makes emotional sense, and it feels right,” said Docter.

“I was always secretly worried about the house lifting up, because the movie takes a crazy turn at that point. If we didn’t do it right, it’s going to seem like two different movies altogether,” said Rivera. “Then one day we screened it for an audience in Portland of families and kids who knew nothing about the film, and after that we had 80 people asking us questions, but not one person asked us about the house going up! They all accepted it. We felt like we were on the right track.”

Docter and his team also found time to take a trip to South America in the name of research – spending four days at Triple Point, a mountain range right where Venezuela meets Brazil and Guyana that consisted of tepuys (tabletop mountains) and weird rock formations.

“We hiked up there and stayed for four days just sketching and taking photographs, and basically experiencing what Carl and Russell do on the film. We also took a boat up to Angel Falls which we based Paradise Falls on,” Docter recounted.

After four to five years working on the film, Up is truly a labour of love for Docter, Rivera and the rest of the team. Rivera sums up their effort best: “John (Lasseter) always tells us, ‘Just make a film you’ll be proud to show your family and friends.’

“We don’t know if people will like it as much as WALL-E or Finding Nemo, or whether it’ll make as much money, but we do know that this is the best that we can do. We can sleep at night thinking it’s as good as we can make it ... so here you go, world, I hope you like it!”