Up 3D – NFT Preview with Director Q&A

 I have a theory. I’m not one for astrology, spirits, ghosts and the supernatural but I’d wager that the creative boffins at Pixar must have sold their respective souls to Satan in order to be able to consistently achieve such incredible, groundbreaking, smart, funny, vibrant, breathtaking, moving and thoroughly entertaining films, again and again and again. It’s the only explanation. No-one comes closer I think to taking an adult audience back to their childhoods and making them feel ten years old again, if only for a couple of hours in the dark. With their latest release ‘Up‘ director Pete Doctor and producer Jonas Rivera, (who were on hand to provide the usual Q&A after a 3D screening of the film at the NFT last Friday) have delivered not only a worthy addition to the likes of the ‘Toy Stories‘ or ‘The Incredibles‘ they have also taken that most contentious of recent technological developments – 3D – and for the first time to my mind actually taken the possibilities of that technology to enhance the story and the film, rest assured we’ll come back to that. If you have a child and don’t take them to see this then you are guilty of child abuse. It’s that good.

  As a young boy eager apprentice explorer Carl meets and falls in love with his soul mate Annie, an exuberant and enthusiastic spirit who shares Carl’s fascination with perilous adventure, chiselled jawed heroics and ferocious wild animals. In a breathtaking ten minute silent movie style montage we are taken through their loving, vibrant but unfortunately childless fifty year marriage together until Annie calmly passes on, a moment which I’d challenge even the most stone hearted cynic not to weep like a teased vagina through – it was pretty damn dusty in the NFT1 last Friday. Now elderly and having retired from his balloon salesman career Carl (voiced by the cantankerous Ed Asner), finds his home with whom he shared his life with Annie is the last holdout in a commercial development. Determined to honour Annie’s last wish to see South America Ed flies the house, furniture, fittings and fixtures all, out from the development in a balloon suspended magical realist sequence where the 3D really starts to kick-in, inducing multiple optical orgasms. Ed is not alone on his odyssey however, he has a young eagle scout companion in tow for his pilgrimage to South America where both of them soon become involved in an adventure involving talking dogs, verdant jungle and mythological avians.

  In case you haven’t guessed I quite liked this movie. It’s just so. so effortlessly charming, funny and entertaining with a moving core storyline to boot. The animation, the visuals are absolutely stunning, as with ‘Wall-E’ you can almost see technology moving forward year by year. The colours scintillate and glow, the three acts are timed to perfection with some superb action beats which is quite an achievement with an elderly hero, another example of how Pixar are committed to doing things differently and shatter convention. I pretty much got sick of all those self-aware, adult nods to the audience that usually mire animated films as soon as they were initiated with the first Shrek movie but the Pixar guys get a pass when they pull the same drill because a) they are seamlessly blended into the story and make sense and b) they’re actually funny. Gag wise I don’t think Up’s been bettered for a good few years and the audience was howling with laughter throughout the movie, from sight gags to character beats, from the aforementioned cultural references to good old fashioned slapstick that would have Keaton and Chaplin nodding approvingly.

   I watched ‘Monsters Versus Aliens‘ during the week, a fairly mediocre animated film with a few gags and some impressive visuals. How then is it that using much the same techniques and tools that the Pixar crew are able to make genuinely moving, groundbreaking and staggeringly entertaining films? One word – story. Their commitment to the story, to the tale they are telling and how that is instrumented throughout the plot is what I’d argue makes them stand head and shoulders above their peers in Dreamworks, to rival studios and yes, even the Japanese masters. It is this commitment, this discipline that you can see on the DVD extras for ‘Wall-E’ and their earlier films, this purpose was also evident as the Q&A got underway after the film had finished. First of all, quite amusingly director Pete Doctor had lost his voice so it was left for producer Jonas Rivera to do all the talking, they did however bring in a flipchart and some pens for Pete to illustrate his answers where feasible, much to the audiences amusement – Pete was the guy behind ‘Monster’s Inc‘ by the way if you were wondering. Rivera talked through the initial ideas of making a film about escape, of drifting away and how contrary to expectation when pitching the idea to Andrew Stanton and John Lasseter – ‘OK, it’s a kids movie about this guy whose wife dies in the first twenty minutes and he becomes an eighty year old action hero’ instead of the expected ‘are you out of your mind?’ response they got a ‘great, neat, OK, how do we make it work?’. The impression you get that there must be such a fertile working atmosphere at Pixar that no-one is afraid to come up with the most insane ideas where the commercial prospects are not factored into the equation, or at least not during the inception stages. Their enthusiasm and dedication for their work is palpable and reflects the best quality of film-making – people who love movies and commit themselves to making films that they would love to go and see, people with a healthy grounding in film and animation history coupled with the absolute state of the art equipment and production techniques in the world.

  They moved to discuss some of the 3D aspects of the production. In the film it is not used as a gimmick, as a cheap effect to bedazzle the audience with objects flying at the screen which doomed the process in previous incarnations. In ‘Up‘ the 3D is incorporated into the story, from flattening out its use and projecting the dimensions as reasonably flat during the quiet and solemn sequences in the first act of the film, then opening it up as the film gets more active and physical, when the house is flying over the jungle and during some of the final action scenes. There are some vertiginous moments where the camera flips down to show a 3D vision of the world turning beneath the flying house where you instinctively clutch the armrests to stop yourself falling – its quite an experience. Rivera talked about how 3D creates convergence points where the brain instinctively directs the eye to a certain part of the frame as it processes the dimensions, an especially difficult element to take into the equation when editing the fast paced sequences without sacrificing narrative cohesion, the brain being unable to process the information being presented to it (a lesson a certain US director could learn) and eliminating headaches which the crew suffered during the films production. Each cut then has to be thought about quite carefully, simultaneously to carry the film forward and craft individual scenes and sequences whilst also utilising the depth of field to augment the storytelling process.

I think this is another example of the future of big budget movie making, I’ve no doubt that traditional 2D movies will be churned out from the independent sector and distribution arms of the major studios but the big, tent pole releases will move to this format, be it live action or animated. I was surprised that the recent announcement of the acquisition of Marvel by Disney wasn’t mentioned during the Q&A, The prospect of a Pixar illustrated Dr. Strange or re-boot of the Fantastic Four atrocities (which incidentally should be set in the 1960’s to really make it work) is almost unbearable. This all bodes well for Avatar which I am now positively committed to seeing in 3D for the first viewing, a choice I was uncertain of beforehand. And yes, I did manage to slip the word ‘vagina’ into a review of a Disney movie.