Up is a 2009 American 3D computer-animated comedy-adventure film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and directed by Pete Docter. The film centers on an elderly widower named Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Edward Asner) and an earnest young Wilderness Explorer named Russell (Jordan Nagai).
By tying thousands of balloons to his home, 78-year-old Carl sets out
to fulfill his lifelong dream to see the wilds of South America and to
complete a promise made to his lifelong love. The film was co-directed
by Bob Peterson, with music composed by Michael Giacchino.
Docter began working on the story in 2004, which was based on fantasies of escaping from life when it becomes too irritating. He and eleven other Pixar artists spent three days in Venezuela gathering research and inspiration. The design of the characters were caricatured and stylized considerably, and animators were challenged with creating realistic cloth. The floating house is attached by a varying number between 10,000 and 20,000 balloons in the film's sequences. Up was Pixar's first film to be presented in Disney Digital 3-D.
Up was released on May 29, 2009 and opened the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first animated and 3D film to do so.The film became a great financial success, accumulating over $731 million in its theatrical release. Up received critical acclaim, with most reviewers commending the humor and heart of the film. Edward Asner was praised for his portrayal of Carl, and a montage of Carl and his wife Ellie aging together was widely lauded. The film received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, making it the second animated film in history to receive such a nomination, following Beauty and the Beast (1991).
Animation
Docter made Venezuela the film's setting after Ralph Eggleston gave him a video of the tepui mountains Venezuela and tepuis were already featured in a previous Disney film, Dinosaur. In 2004, Docter and eleven other Pixar artists spent three days reaching Monte Roraima by airplane, jeep, and helicopter They spent three nights there painting and sketching and encountering ants, mosquitoes, scorpions, frogs, and snakes. They also flew to Matawi Tepui and climbed to Angel Falls Docter felt "we couldn't use [the rocks and plants we saw]. Reality is so far out, if we put it in the movie you wouldn't believe it." The film's creatures were also challenging to design because they had to fit in the surreal environment of the tepuis, but also be realistic because those mountains exist in real life. The filmmakers visited Sacramento Zoo to observe a Himalayan Monal for Kevin's animation. The animators designed Russell as an Asian-American, and modeled Russell after similar looking Peter Sohn, a Pixar storyboarder who voiced Emile in Ratatouille and directed the short Partly Cloudy, because of his energetic nature.
While Pixar usually designs their characters to be caricatured, Carl was even more so, being only three heads high. He was not given elderly features such as liver spots or hair in his ears to keep him appealing, yet giving him wrinkles, pockmarks on his nose, a hearing aid, and a cane to make him appear elderly. Docter wanted to push a stylized feel, particularly the way Carl's head is proportioned: he has a squarish appearance to symbolize his containment within his house, while Russell is rounded like a balloon. The challenge on Up was making these stylized characters feel natural, although Docter remarked the effect came across better than animating the realistic humans from Toy Story, who suffered from the "uncanny valley". Cartoonists Al Hirschfeld, Hank Ketcham, and George Booth influenced the human designs. Simulating realistic cloth on caricatured humans was harder than creating the 10,000 balloons flying the house. New programs were made to simulate the cloth and for Kevin's iridescent feathers.To animate old people, Pixar animators would study their own parents or grandparents and also watched footage of the Senior Olympics. The directors had various rules for Carl's movements: he could not turn his head more than 15–20 degrees without turning his torso as well, nor could he raise his arms very high. However, they also wanted him to grow more flexible near the end of the film, transforming into an "action hero".
A technical director worked out that in order to make Carl's house fly, he would require 23 million balloons, but Docter realized that number made the balloons look like small dots. Instead, the balloons created were made to be twice Carl's size. There are 10,927 balloons for shots of the house just flying, 20,622 balloons for the lift-off sequence, and a varying number in other scenes.
Music
Up is the third Pixar film to be scored by Michael Giacchino, after The Incredibles and Ratatouille. What Pete Docter wanted more importantly out of the music was the emotion, so Giacchino wrote a character theme-based score that producer Jonas Rivera thought enhanced the story. At the beginning of the movie, when young Carl is in the movie theater watching a newsreel about Muntz, the first piece of music heard is "Muntz's Theme", which starts out as a celebratory theme, and echoes through the film when Muntz reappears 70 years later. "Ellie's Theme" is first heard when she is introduced as a little kid and plays several times during the film in different versions; for instance, during the sequence where Carl lifts his house with the balloons, the theme is changed from a simple piano melody to a full orchestral arrangement. Giacchino has compared the film to opera since each character has a unique theme that changes during a particular moment in the story.
Docter began working on the story in 2004, which was based on fantasies of escaping from life when it becomes too irritating. He and eleven other Pixar artists spent three days in Venezuela gathering research and inspiration. The design of the characters were caricatured and stylized considerably, and animators were challenged with creating realistic cloth. The floating house is attached by a varying number between 10,000 and 20,000 balloons in the film's sequences. Up was Pixar's first film to be presented in Disney Digital 3-D.
Up was released on May 29, 2009 and opened the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first animated and 3D film to do so.The film became a great financial success, accumulating over $731 million in its theatrical release. Up received critical acclaim, with most reviewers commending the humor and heart of the film. Edward Asner was praised for his portrayal of Carl, and a montage of Carl and his wife Ellie aging together was widely lauded. The film received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, making it the second animated film in history to receive such a nomination, following Beauty and the Beast (1991).
Animation
Docter made Venezuela the film's setting after Ralph Eggleston gave him a video of the tepui mountains Venezuela and tepuis were already featured in a previous Disney film, Dinosaur. In 2004, Docter and eleven other Pixar artists spent three days reaching Monte Roraima by airplane, jeep, and helicopter They spent three nights there painting and sketching and encountering ants, mosquitoes, scorpions, frogs, and snakes. They also flew to Matawi Tepui and climbed to Angel Falls Docter felt "we couldn't use [the rocks and plants we saw]. Reality is so far out, if we put it in the movie you wouldn't believe it." The film's creatures were also challenging to design because they had to fit in the surreal environment of the tepuis, but also be realistic because those mountains exist in real life. The filmmakers visited Sacramento Zoo to observe a Himalayan Monal for Kevin's animation. The animators designed Russell as an Asian-American, and modeled Russell after similar looking Peter Sohn, a Pixar storyboarder who voiced Emile in Ratatouille and directed the short Partly Cloudy, because of his energetic nature.
While Pixar usually designs their characters to be caricatured, Carl was even more so, being only three heads high. He was not given elderly features such as liver spots or hair in his ears to keep him appealing, yet giving him wrinkles, pockmarks on his nose, a hearing aid, and a cane to make him appear elderly. Docter wanted to push a stylized feel, particularly the way Carl's head is proportioned: he has a squarish appearance to symbolize his containment within his house, while Russell is rounded like a balloon. The challenge on Up was making these stylized characters feel natural, although Docter remarked the effect came across better than animating the realistic humans from Toy Story, who suffered from the "uncanny valley". Cartoonists Al Hirschfeld, Hank Ketcham, and George Booth influenced the human designs. Simulating realistic cloth on caricatured humans was harder than creating the 10,000 balloons flying the house. New programs were made to simulate the cloth and for Kevin's iridescent feathers.To animate old people, Pixar animators would study their own parents or grandparents and also watched footage of the Senior Olympics. The directors had various rules for Carl's movements: he could not turn his head more than 15–20 degrees without turning his torso as well, nor could he raise his arms very high. However, they also wanted him to grow more flexible near the end of the film, transforming into an "action hero".
A technical director worked out that in order to make Carl's house fly, he would require 23 million balloons, but Docter realized that number made the balloons look like small dots. Instead, the balloons created were made to be twice Carl's size. There are 10,927 balloons for shots of the house just flying, 20,622 balloons for the lift-off sequence, and a varying number in other scenes.
Music
Up is the third Pixar film to be scored by Michael Giacchino, after The Incredibles and Ratatouille. What Pete Docter wanted more importantly out of the music was the emotion, so Giacchino wrote a character theme-based score that producer Jonas Rivera thought enhanced the story. At the beginning of the movie, when young Carl is in the movie theater watching a newsreel about Muntz, the first piece of music heard is "Muntz's Theme", which starts out as a celebratory theme, and echoes through the film when Muntz reappears 70 years later. "Ellie's Theme" is first heard when she is introduced as a little kid and plays several times during the film in different versions; for instance, during the sequence where Carl lifts his house with the balloons, the theme is changed from a simple piano melody to a full orchestral arrangement. Giacchino has compared the film to opera since each character has a unique theme that changes during a particular moment in the story.
