We were invited to visit Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, California to talk to director Dan Scanlon and producer Kori Rae about their new movie, Onward, starring the voice talent of Tom Holland and Chris Pratt.
We also had the chance to see selections from the movie, view early portraits and drawings of the characters and see props and storyboards. There's so much that goes into an animated movie and Dan and Kori were happy to answer our questions about this new, inventive film! ~Alexandra Heilbron
Pixar Animation Studios are here in Emeryville, but you mentioned earlier in the panel that you both just came back from L.A. because you were working on the score. How many times do you go back and forth and is there anything besides the score that gets done in Los Angeles?
Kori: We go back and forth a lot, way more for production dialogue. So when we’re recording talent we do the majority of that in L.A. because that’s where a lot of the actors live or are working on other projects and that’s where Stage B, one of the great dialogue studios that we use at Disney is located. Then we go up to Skywalker Ranch to do post-production, and that’s north of here in Marin County.
You were given the green light for this project almost six years ago and after that you wrote a script. Once the script is written, your team gets together to work on it and it goes through a lot of changes. On the Blu-ray extras for Zootopia they showed the changes the film went through, which were a crucial part of what made it so amazing. What changes for Onward were you the most happy about?
Dan: All of them (laughs). Because Pixar is the kind of place, and we’re lucky here, this is the kind of studio where they all just want to make the movie better. So there was never a change where we thought, “Well, we don’t want to do that.” It was always them poking at something that we also realized wasn’t working, or maybe giving us an idea that would then change the movie for the better. As far as changes, they all led to the movie we wanted to make.
The characters changed from the first time they were drawn, and when I see the final character drawing for Chris Pratt’s character, Barley, it actually kind of looks like him now. Does that happen? Or is that just me projecting that onto the drawing?
Kori: It happens, and it happens even when I watch other films that are being made here, and I’m like, “Oh you actually designed them…” The characters were designed before we cast the talent, but what happens is the animators, when they get the [recorded] dialogue and they start animating the characters, I think that’s where a little bit of the actual actor and the talent come through because the animators are listening to them and trying to find the nuance of the line reads within the character. And so it kind of can’t help but come across a little bit as that character.
I love that you came up with the idea for unicorns being scavengers, because so many little girls just love unicorns, I even have grown friends who get excited about unicorns and then to see them being scavengers similar to pigeons or rats is hilarious.
Dan: We have a great story team and they would just come together and come up with gags and somebody drew that at one point.
Kori: Yeah, it was like, “What if this magical unicorn was now a rodent in this world?” And a lot of it was kind of thematically trying to take those fantasy elements and turning them on their heads a little bit.
Dan: Unicorns are so rare, but what if they were the opposite of rare? (laughs)
I noticed there were also a lot of horses in it, there’s even a character who’s half horse/half human -- he walks in the house and he’s knocking things off shelves and counters, which reminded me of a hilarious YouTube video I've seen of a pony in a house. Were there a lot of horse lovers on this film?
Dan: One of our lead animators, Jessica Torres, she's our horse expert. She loves horses and she really helped us with the animation, in getting everything right. And you know, she would call people on: “That’s more of a trot, not gallop,” and she did a phenomenal job. She animated the very first unicorn in the opening of the movie, the majestic one. She was like, “Thank you, this is my little girl dream job.”
You said during the panel earlier today you had a board where the team could write down their suggestions for a title and you thought 99.9 percent of them were jokes. Do you remember any of those titles?
Dan: No, because it was infuriating (laughs). Because you’d think, “I really need help and this goofy name doesn’t help me.”
Kori: I think there were just a lot of pants gags, pants and half-dad. Somebody might’ve said, “Call it Half-Dad” and we were like, what does that mean? Nobody’s going to understand that.
How did you finally come up with the title?
Dan: "Onward" is mentioned in the movie a few times, Barley says it. I think some folks just said, “Hey, maybe this would work?”
Kori: It was a long process. We searched for a name for quite a while. We put it out to the whole company. Then "Onward" made the list and it was perfect!
What is it like directing actors when they’re just using their voices? What's the most difficult part of that?
Dan: I think they probably feed off other actors, so it’s hard for them to be alone. I try to do my best -- I’m not an actor -- but to give them simple playable context for their character and then I’ll sometimes read them the other line, to try and inspire that connection. Then I have to describe what’s happening, so they really have to use their imaginations a lot. And the energy kind of tends to have to be a little bigger in animation, so it can be exhausting. It’s really always about trying to give simple context.
When you’re done with this project do you know what you’re working on next?
Kori: No. I haven’t thought about it one bit.
Dan: We’re just landing this plane.
Kori: We’ll get this one out into the world, then take a little break and come back and see what happens.
Onward opens in theaters this Friday -- March 6, 2020.
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