Q & A with Pixar's Ronnie del Carmen and Pete Sohn - Part 3

By E. Corrado

Here is Part 3 of my three part interview with Pixar's Ronnie del Carmen and Pete Sohn. You can read Part 1 here, and Part 2 here. For my thoughts on Ronnie del Carmen's Up presentation at the OIAF, see here.

What was your specific work on Up? Ronnie del Carmen: I was working in the story department, doing storyboards, but also overseeing other aspects of the art, and doing concept drawings...

Pete Sohn: Well, you know I did the scratch voice for Russell, but mainly I’m an animator and story guy, so I did most of my work in both of those departments on Up.

What is it like seeing these films go through their development stages? Ronnie del Carmen: It’s just amazing. I think every one of these films goes through a point where they just look really bad. And we look at them like, how are we ever going to get this together? So then, we have to step back for a second, do more screenings for each other and get input, and think, ‘Ok, what isn’t working here, how could we improve this.’ Eventually though - and it’s often really close to the end - everything starts to look better, and it actually looks like an actual film. Sometimes we end up changing things - and it can be the beginning, middle, or end - sometimes even elements of all three. Really, it’s just a process, and if I didn’t know that it worked as well as it does, I wouldn’t believe it myself.

Pete Sohn: There are so many talented artists at Pixar, and how the movie started out, often develops into something so much more. As he said, these films go through so many changes along the way. We are all a part of that - of making them the best that they can be. To see that happen, and be a part of it, it’s just a really great experience.

Question for Pete Sohn: What was the design process for Partly Cloudy like? A lot of it was really challenging from a technical standpoint - not that other things aren’t - but we were trying to design a character that is floating, has no a physical shape, and is transparent. He ended up needing to wear a 200’000 particle suit.

At first, we had tried different things, but basically, some of them made his movements too choppy - and not cloudlike. Designing his face was also interesting, since we had to find a way to give him eyes that worked and a mouth that you could see. We just wanted him to be a really appealing, cute character. I loved that we were using new techniques for lighting and shadows with the particles. It was challenging, but a lot of fun.

Now two questions for Ronnie del Carmen: When did you find out that you would be doing the short for the DVD? Well, I had an idea for it back when the movie was still in the production stages. By the time I had it ready for pitching, in storyboard form, it was Spring ‘08. It was then that I pitched it to Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera.

How long were you given to get the short together? The approval for Dug’s Special Mission, to be the short film for the DVD, came in January ‘09 from Disney, and we finished it in June. I would have started it earlier, but I was also illustrating My Name is Dug, as well as there was the fact that our third act for the film was taking longer than expected. So, we were working on a deadline, but we always are - it keeps us on track...

Another question for both of you: Would either of you ever be looking to direct a feature film of your own? Ronnie del Carmen: No. ...I’m joking. Of course I would! The thing is that even with the shorts, once you start to get into it, it’s like you never realized just how hard it is to do, and then you’re like, why would anyone ever do this? But in the end, it’s so rewarding to see the whole thing come together. At Pixar, there is often a point in production, where these movies look really bad, and we are like, how are we ever going to get this together? But then, eventually, things start to turn around and we fix problems and the stories become stronger because of it. So if I had a story to tell, the answer would be yes.

Pete Sohn: Yeah, I mean, doing a short film was such a great experience. Again it would have to do with a story, but maybe someday, down the road...

Are there any other upcoming projects that you can tell me about today? Ronnie del Carmen: No, sorry. I mean a lot of them are still in early development stages, so there’s not much we can say right now.

That’s ok, I kind of figured that would be the answer...

I want to thank you both for taking the time to speak with me today. I love hearing about how all of these films come together. Ronnie del Carmen: Thank you! It’s been great.

Pete Sohn: Yeah, thanks. Glad you were able to make it from Toronto!

One Movie, Five Views thanks everyone at Disney and Pixar for setting this up. We also thank Ronnie del Carmen and Pete Sohn for taking the time to speak with us, and for such an interesting interview.

Pete Sohn & Ronnie del Carmen after the Up panel at OIAF 2009.

Photo credit: E. Corrado.

Q & A with Pixar's Ronnie del Carmen and Pete Sohn - Part 2

By E. Corrado

Here is Part 2 of my three part interview with Pixar's Pete Sohn and Ronnie del Carmen. You can read Part 1 here.

What would you suggest for people who want to go into art for animation? Ronnie del Carmen: Well for one thing, you want to study animation, you got to know how to do what you want to do. But there are lots of jobs in animation. Not just being an animator, or being a story artist, or any of the other more known jobs. Mostly, people ask me what I do, and I used to say ‘oh, I’m a story artist’. And then they’re like, ‘what’s that?’ So, I explain, and by the end they’re like, ‘oh’. So now, I usually just say ‘I’m an animator’.

Definitely though, just do what you love. Draw, write - always find new ways to express the world around you.

Pete Sohn: It's like that saying, 'If you do what you love, you won’t have to work a day in your life'.

Ronnie del Carmen: Now, that doesn’t mean everything is easy, there are challenges with everything, but part of what you learn to do is problem solve, which is really important in a studio. You have to be flexible with ideas in order to make them better.

How long have you each been at Pixar? Ronnie del Carmen: We both came around the same time actually, it was around 2000... I started work as a story supervisor on Finding Nemo.

Pete Sohn: Yeah, it was around then, I think I started a couple of months later... I was working in the art and story departments for Nemo as well.

Now another question for Pete Sohn: Back for Ratatouille, you provided the voice for the character of Emile. How did this decision come to be? Pete Sohn: Well, before the voice actors are cast, we do these scratch voices, so they were looking for people to do the different voices for the tests, and I guess they thought I would be perfect for the character...

Would you ever want to do more voices for movies? Pete Sohn: Oh yeah, definitely! It’s a lot of fun, but you know it has to do with if the right character comes along... The voice for Emile just really worked I guess, because I ended up getting the part in the actual movie.

Ronnie del Carmen: Pete actually provided the scratch voice for Russell in Up as well, and the stuff he would come up with - a lot of it was really funny. We were actually sad when we had to recast the voice, at first we were like, hmmm... do you think we could raise up his voice on the computer? But really, the answer was no. But then they found Jordan [Nagai] and he was just perfect for the character. The thing is with the initial scratch voices is that we kind of get used to hearing them, and sometimes attached to them in a way, but most often they have to be changed. We would love Pete to do another character that will be in the finished product though.

How was Jordan Nagai cast? Ronnie del Carmen: Jordan was the kind of voice that Pete was looking for. Now he didn’t know about Jordan - in fact they had a casting call of hundreds of kids around the country and people scouring schools, with explicit instructions to find a kid that doesn’t sound like an actor kid. Because most actor kids have this kind of peppy, ‘I can deliver that line however you want’, and Pete always said, ‘I don’t want that kid that whenever you call him to the microphone, he’s automatically in actor mode - I want a real kid.’

So there was this kid that they had brought in for an audition, and he started reading for the part and when he was reading for the part, people were looking like, ‘Who’s that other kid?’ and they said, ‘Oh, that’s his little brother.’ So they said, ‘Can you ask him to read?’ So they asked him... and that was Jordan. They asked the little brother to talk about what he did, stuff that he liked... So he started talking about Judo, what he did in school, what his friends were like, and Bob and Pete were looking at each other like, ‘listen to this kid’. Because beside from his voice, you see, that’s the kid. He was just like any regular, natural kid. And that’s what really worked for the character.

What was it like seeing both Partly Cloudy and Up for the first time with an audience? Ronnie del Carmen: It’s one of the most rewarding things. These films go through test screenings, and there the people just know that they are going to be seeing a movie in development. They don’t tell them what it is until just before the movie starts, and then it’s like you hear everyone get all excited when they hear that it’s a Pixar movie that they are going to be seeing. Now when these kind of screenings happen, the animation is not finished. It is a real vote of confidence when we see people reacting to it, even just like that on the screen, laughing, crying - it’s really great.

Then, after they watch the movie, we get to ask them questions. ‘Who’s your favourite character?’, ‘Did you understand this?’, ‘Did you not understand that?’ ‘What would you like to change?’ Certain questions that make you try and diagnose, because we all have different ways of understanding the movie. We’ve already let a lot of things fly, but they’re where the proof is. But they loved the movie. They loved the characters, and a lot of it was, this was one of those screenings where most of it was still in storyboards, so we were kind of really nervous. But, they loved it. It’s a great journey - there’s an awesome journey of just testing your ideas, all the while, preparing to be wrong, because along the way, that’s how you get things right.

But then, later on, once the film is done, it’s great to see everyone watching the finished product. Actually, sometimes you just go and watch the audience by turning around in your seat. Because, I mean, we’ve already seen these films so many times that we know what’s going on on screen by heart. Seeing the audience react how we wanted at all of the right moments is just indescribable. It’s just amazing.

Pete Sohn: Oh yeah, I definitely agree with what he just said. Seeing Up, and Partly Cloudy, and any of these films, it’s just great to see everyone having such a good time with something that you helped make. Watching them connect to something that you, and so many people, worked on for so long - it’s why we love to make these films! It's amazing.

_____________________________________________

UP NEXT: An interview with Ronnie del Carmen and Peter Sohn - Part 3...

Just a couple of the questions in the next installment include: 'What's it like seeing these films going through their development stages?', and 'Now that you've each done a short film, would either of you ever be looking to direct a feature film?'.

Look for Part 3 tomorrow.

UPDATE: Part 3 here.

Q & A with Pixar's Ronnie del Carmen and Pete Sohn - Part 1

By E. Corrado

At the OIAF, I had the pleasure of a 15 minute interview with Ronnie del Carmen and Pete Sohn from Pixar. The first part of it is here now. I am dividing it up for length constraints.

First off, this is a question for Ronnie del Carmen: What was it like getting to do a tie-in book for the film (My name is Dug)? Oh that book - that was amazing. When they were looking for an illustrator for the book, I actually thought someone was already drawing the book. Because I was part of making the movie and being at Pixar means that we get to oversee all of the books, kind of that get made, and I thought that someone was already illustrating the book.

But then they came around and asked, 'Do you know anyone who would be illustrating this book? Because the people we were thinking of, didn't make the book'. Then I said, ‘but what if I made the book?’, and they were like, ‘That would be awesome! -Wait a second... you already have a job, you're trying to finish the movie!’ So, I said to them, ‘What if... I'm really good... and I work nights, and this movie's almost done anyway, right? So I can probably find a window’, so I asked the people at Pixar to work up a schedule, that actually in the best way, I could possibly do it. So they said, ‘Your part of the movie could be done right around here, you can start making the book right about there, everything's going to be fine.’

Of course, it didn't happen that way, the movie ran right over that, I was working on the third act, and then I was working late nights on the book. But I was really happy to make it. I was really happy to be part of it. Kiki Thorpe, who wrote the book, was very collaborative. We went back and forth, and created the pages together - it was fun! I want to make another one.

Next is a question for Pete Sohn: When did Partly Cloudy get greenlit as the short film? Greenlit... What is it now, this is October, so it was must of been around two years ago. Greeenlighting, it's not like an ‘ok’, it's kind of in sections, ‘ok this is a good idea, move onto the next one, let's see how do you build a story... ok that's it, keep going’. So it was kind of always like a slow crawl to get going.

...and how long did you have for the short film to be made?

It was about a year of production, from beginning to end, of pitching it and everything. I was pitching other ideas though, that maybe added about a year and a half to the process.

Now a couple of questions for both of you: When did you know that you wanted to work in the art/film world? Pete Sohn: It felt like I was kid, like I always wanted to do these comics, but watching the Disney movies as a young, young lad, I was like, oh what is this, I don't understand this magic, and I found, you know, one of those 'Illusion of Life', like a flipbook. In that corner of that book, there was like this little corner that has all that animation, and I was really like, oh my God, this is something you can do? It was really then, I don't know what age I was, I was a young, young kid.

Ronnie del Carmen: I didn't really know anything about moviemaking. You watch cartoons - I watched cartoons when I was a kid - I mean everybody watches cartoons. So, I watched 'The Wonderful World of Colour', and I was the happiest kid. I never thought about animation as something you could do - I didn't even think of that people make those. I almost felt cartoons just happened, when I was a kid. Only when I got to the US, and I was already an old man by then - I was 29 - and I fell into animation, not really wanting to be in animation at all, and that's only when I really understood that you can make this character move and behave, show the emotions, and I thought, hmmm... I could do this. I could learn about this! And for me, it's just magical when I found out the components of how to make them.

Did you study animation? Ronnie del Carmen: I didn't really study it formally, I learned that on the job. I studied fine arts, and majored in advertising art, to be an art director. I wanted to be an art director, for print, tv, magazines, and for movies. I did like ads, posters, but I learned how to be part of an animation studio by being part of an animation studio to learn in...

Pete Sohn: I went to school for it, I went to CalArts, after highschool. I got into the school called California Institute for the Arts for four years, and learned as much as I could, just scraped traditional 2-D animation then got my start there, and then was slowly learning on the job, the story side of it. But animation, that was all the training I had.

_____________________________________________

UP NEXT: An interview with Ronnie del Carmen and Peter Sohn - Part 2...

Just a couple of the questions in the next installment include: 'What would you suggest for people who want to go into art for animation?', and 'What was it like seeing both Partly Cloudy and Up for the first time with an audience?'.

Look for Part 2 tomorrow.

UPDATE: Part 2 here.

UPDATE x 2: Part 3 here.

The Story of Pixar’s Up Presentation at OIAF

By E. Corrado

I was waiting until I got a moment to write what I thought about the Up event that I attended on October 17th, 2009 in Ottawa. One week ago, I wrote about the Making of 9 event, and posted a short interview with Kevin Adams, art director at Starz Animation. Now I have the pleasure of sharing with you a report from The Story of Pixar’s Up, (including a bit about Dug’s Special Mission), as well as a two part interview with Ronnie del Carmen and Peter Sohn. The first part of the interview will be coming soon.

About the presentation: The Story of Pixar’s Up was held at the Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec, just across the Ontario border from Ottawa as part of the OIAF. The presentation took place in their theatre there from 6:45 pm to 8:45 pm. The theatre used was very big and nice, and I would look forward to attending more events at this venue.

The event itself started with the Up trailer played on the theatre screen, and then Ronnie del Carmen, story artist at Pixar and presenter for the event, came out on stage to begin the actual presentation.

He started with two questions that are frequently asked of him: 1. Where do you get your ideas, and 2. How do you know if there’re good or not. The answers are endless and varying as you may well imagine, so much so, that to try to re-cap everything here, would be ridiculously long. Mostly though, he talked about ideas in general. They often come when you least expect them, or from a drawing, such as the picture that Pete Docter drew of a grumpy old man carrying a bunch of happy, colourful balloons. To those Pete Docter showed the picture, they wanted to know more... Was the thing that was intriguing about the picture the contrast? What was the story behind this character? What made him interesting? Because ideas have to be developed before you know if they are going to go anywhere.

The thing about being a story artist, is that you have to be a great storyteller. Not only do you have to be able to write a good story, you have to be able to communicate it to others, be it through speech, actions, or, as storyboarding artists do, drawing. If you want to be a storyteller, not only do you want to be able to communicate what you want, (or others want), through the drawings, you have to learn the art of pitching, or ‘telling’ the story that goes with the pictures. These skills are only really learned through practice - in front of an audience. Essentially, you improve on the job.

Think you want to be a story artist though? Well, as spoken about in the panel, you have to learn how to take constructive criticism well. You may work for hours, days, even weeks getting your storyboards pitch perfect, (perfect for pitching), only once you present them, everyone has ideas how to improve your, as you see it, ‘perfect’ idea. This is an inspiring lesson for all artists of any medium. Often, it is when others really like your work, that is when they want to help you make it even better. When many people believe in your project, they will want to help you. When you are getting constructive criticism, take it as a compliment to your work, everyone wants to help, and often, your idea will become better than you ever imagined because of it. You can’t really make a film that will touch a wide audience of people without letting a wide breadth of people help you develop the project to it’s full potential.

I found the whole presentation so inspiring. To finish his presentation, Ronnie del Carmen showed the way that even storyboards can touchingly convey a story, by showing a little short based on his childhood in the Philippines, in storyboards. Then to top the whole thing off, those of us who were there were treated to a sneak preview of Dug’s Special Mission! That’s the five minute short film that will be available on the Up DVD next month. I won’t spoil anything for you, although I will say that it is very funny, and you are in for a real treat when you get the DVD/BluRay. The short itself is done in the same style as Jack-Jack-Attack, and BURN•E, in the sense that it shows what takes place to a certain [group of] character[s] during the film, while we were watching something else.

To end, I will say this. Next year, those of you going to the OIAF, Pixar presentations are definitely worth it. I had a great time at this presentation. It was funny, smart, well put together, and didn’t feel even close to 2 hours long. I guess great story artists make great presenters. They have a way of keeping your attention.

UP NEXT: An interview with Ronnie del Carmen and Peter Sohn - Part 1...

...and while you're waiting, you can read a couple of reviews of The Art of Up here.