One of the best movies of this summer was Pixar's Up. It was a moving, fun, emotional, adventurous tale about living life, and if you missed it in theaters, you should run out and grab the DVD as soon as it's available (on November 10). Recently, Pixar hosted an online question-and-answer session with director Pete Docter and writer co-director Bob Peterson. Although none of my questions were picked to be answered (I tried to slip in at least one about the possibility of Pixar working with Marvel characters now that Disney owns them), a lot was revealed about the making of Pixar's most recent hit and why they're able to continuously put out such high quality movies.

Q: Up became the first animated film to open the Cannes Film Festival. Do you believe animated features are becoming accepted as a more serious artistic platform? Pete Docter: Hello Folks! Bob and I are here and a plate of cookies just arrived, so we're hyped up and ready to go! We were very honored to be the first animated film to open the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Walking around there, I kept picturing Hitchcock, Coppola, Truffaut: these big time directors... and US?!?! It seemed like some sort of mistake! But we do look at our work as filmmaking, just like any other film. And it's nice to see the world looking at it that way as well.

Q: Were you concerned at all with delivering such an emotional gut-punch so early in the first act? Bob Peterson: We weren't concerned as much as we were vigilant. We knew that we were traversing deep emotional terrain early in the film and we wanted to keep that thread of emotion alive as the film progressed. The reason we went so deep was because we wanted the audience to buy that Carl would lift his house and go on such an audacious adventure. We wanted to keep Ellie alive in the 2nd and 3rd act—as if she were along for the journey, and so we created a few "talismans" to do so—objects with symbolic meanings—such as the adventure book, the house itself, the colorful sash on Russell (and his Ellie like sense of adventure) and the colorful bird. At the end of the 2nd act, when Carl reads the adventure book, Ellie is there to give him the wisdom to keep going. It was our hope that in keeping Ellie's spirit alive through the body of the film, that her passing earlier would be more poignant.

Q: How did Michael Giacchino come to the project? How was working with him? Pete Docter: Michael had worked with Brad on "Incredibles" and "Rat" and of course did a great job on those. He's a true collaborator. We started out talking through the film conceptually, discussing the things we were looking for—like paying homage to the films of the 40s and 50s, the Disney films and Frank Capra and films like that. We wanted to evoke that kind of a feel. And then we went through sequences shot by shot sometimes and talked about the construction of the scenes and what I was hoping to achieve musically. Not necessarily like arrangements or anything like that, but more like, "Okay, it should start really low here, sneak in, and then build to this point.... and then jump out at us!" We'd talk more emotionally like that and then I'd leave it to Michael to write the music. He would play us these demos and we'd listen via teleconference, and anytime we'd have thoughts or suggestions, he would do changes, sometimes right on the spot. He was very open to whatever the film needed. He's a filmmaker. Really thinks about the storytelling and how music communicates to people. He's got range that a lot of film composers either don't have or don't utilize. His "Ratatouille" score doesn't sound like the "Up" score, which doesn't sound like "The Incredibles" or "Star Trek." Amazing.

Continue: 1 2 3 4 5 6