It began with a floating house: Pete Docter

Pete Docter, director of UP, talks about an adventure of a lifetime, creating a home airlifted by balloons

Pete Docter, director of UP, talks about an adventure of a lifetime, creating a home airlifted by balloons

You've been with Pixar since the beginning. What has the process been like?
The key to our success is that we grew up together as artists, working on the various commercials we did, and then Toy Story. John Lasseter (chief creative officer of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios and principal creative advisor at Walt Disney Imagineering), Andrew Stanton (writer/director of WALL-E), and Joe Ranft (writer/co-director of Cars), who has since passed away we all got to work with each other early on, and now that we're split up, we still check in with each other. We speak a common language.



What is the genesis of UP?
Bob Peterson (co-writer, co-director) and I came up with this concept of a floating house. I'm really not much of an extrovert. As a director, by the end of the day, I'm exhausted from just talking to people. So there's this great temptation just to escape and get away from everything and everyone... and it seemed really appealing to be able to float your house off into the sky. So we started thinking, "Who would be in there? Why are they doing it? Where are they going?" And it was answering questions like that that led us to this film.

What do you think UP is about?
UP is the story of Carl Fredricksen, who ties thousands of balloons to the roof of his house and flies to South America to have an adventure. On a more foundational level, it's about discovering what adventure really is. Carl and his wife, Ellie, had always dreamed of exotic travel, seeing wild beasts and plants that no one's ever seen beforeu00e2u0080u00a6 but what Carl comes to discover is that even though he and Ellie never got the adventure they wanted, they had life's greatest adventure: a wonderful rich relationship.

Can you talk about your main character?
Carl is largely inspired by our own grandparents. There have been some people that I have met over my life who have been older, and at first blush it would seem kind of like a non sequitur that my wife and I'd be friends with them. We met this man named Mike Oznowicz who lived in Oakland, California. He was a widower in his 70s who was incredibly full of life. He surrounded himself with young people. He'd always seen every new movie before I did, every show, every museum exhibit, was always looking for new ideas and cultures.

At the beginning of the film, Carl is stuck in a box of his own making. His wife Ellie showed him how amazing life is and how much it has to offer, and after she died he just withdrew and went into that box. We tried to use squares in the designs of Carl and in the house, to symbolise Carl and his approach to life. You see a lot of him in framed, small, flat, confined spaces in the beginning of the film. And as he begins to open up, you get more rounded shapes, more open air kind of like Ellie is speaking through this other character, Russell.

UP is the first release from Disney-Pixar authored in 3D, and you'd just come off of directing the huge 2D hit, Monsters, Inc.u00a0 How different was the process?
Well, 3D was not figured in from the beginning. We came up with the story first, and 3D got introduced along the way. A lot of times you go to a 3D movie and there are things flying at you and the whole audience is going, "Whoooooaaa!u00a0 Look, it's 3D!"u00a0 And when that happens, you get taken out of the story you're more aware of the medium than the story. Our goal was to draw you into this world and let you lose yourself for an hour and a half. We tried to use it (3D) more subtly, treating the screen like a window you look into. So you still get the sense of depth and perspective, but it's not in your face.

If you could fly a house anywhere, other than your family, who would you take and where would you head?
Wow, I don't know. I would want to bring all the folks who worked on this movie. It'd have to be an awfully big house, I guess! And as far as destination, there are some days when I come in to work in the morning and see this long list of meetings, sometimes I fantasise about being marooned on a small island in the South Pacific. I like coconuts; I think I'd be fine.

UP-beat about adventure
UP is Pixar's 10th film and made history this year, becoming the first animated movie to ever premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. A 3D adventure about an old man who fulfills his dead wife's wish, by tying hundreds of helium balloons to his house and flying away, UP has received rave reviews from critics and audiences.