Pixar’s regular Pete Doctor came onstage to discuss his newest project, set for the summer of 2009, entitled UP. As always, Pixar chose an unusual setting and even more unlikely main characters. Carl is a 78 year old man who promised his wife many years ago that the two of them would travel to a South American waterfall for the adventure of a lifetime. But as the years flew by, they never got around to it, and she passed away. Just as poor Carl Frederickson is about to be moved to an assisted living home for the elderly, he devises a plan to use thousands of balloons to lift his house into the sky and float away to South America.

Russell

The Pixar creative team journeyed to the inaccessible Venezuelan mountains themselves to get a feeling for the environment they wanted to create for the film. Many are so isolated that humans have yet to set foot on them. Doctor treated the audience to footage of Carl sailing away in his balloon-rigged house, as well as stills of one of the principle supporting characters, Russell, a young boy scout who is desperately trying to earn a badge for assisting the elderly.

Pete Doctor

Celebrity voices include Christopher Plummer, Ed Asner, and Bob Peterson, and the score will be composed by Michael Giacchino (who also did the music for The Incredibles. Pete Doctor then fielded questions from the audience. When asked how Pixar chooses which genres to pursue, he explained that they don’t specifically try to target genres so much as they find a story that they want to make. Pixar basically does whatever they want to do. UP will be using a new stereoscopic 3D technology for the big screen, but Doctor was unable to comment extensively on that, since UP hasn’t reached the point in which they can really start the process.

Doctor admitted that one of UP’s characters appears briefly in Ratatouille, and that “Easter eggs” exist in nearly all of their films and on their DVDs. He also spoke about his respect and adoration for Miyazaki, who partially influenced some of the designs and ideas that circulate in his mind – he personally worked on the translation of Howl’s Moving Castle. “He pays so much attention to small details.” That kind of thing is something Pixar pursues. He concluded by answering a question about motion capture – and that is that they have no plans to use motion capture or rotoscoping. UP and Pixar’s other films utilize caricatures that have more life than motion capture. “Good ol’ key frames for us,” he stated, to a very loud and welcome applause.

- Mike Massie