The Good Dinosaur (2015)

1. Hi, everyone. My name is Peter Sohn.

2. I'm the director of The Good Dinosaur,

3. and I have some friends that helped me out to make this movie.

4. And I would love to introduce them,

5. and also have them explain what it is that they did on the film.

6. And so, Kelsey, I'd love to start with you.

7. Sure. My name is Kelsey Mann,

8. and I'm the Story supervisor on The Good Dinosaur.

9. As a Story supervisor, my primary job is to oversee the team of Story artists.

10. And our number-one goal is to take the written word of the script

11. and really translate that into a visual medium,

12. which is what cinema is.

13. So, basically, we do that with our pencils,

14. and we just draw the movie from the first shot to the last shot.

15. My name is Mike Venturini,

16. and I'm the animation supervisor on The Good Dinosaur.

17. So, my primary job was to work with our crew of animators.

18. We had about 84 animators at peak capacity.

19. And I helped them collaborate with you, Pete,

20. to bring the performances of our characters to life.

21. I'm Sharon Calahan,

22. director of photography, lighting.

23. I was responsible for the final look of the film,

24. and that mostly includes

25. the design of the color and the light of the scenes,

26. and how all of the elements,

27. like the effects and the sets and the set dressing,

28. everything, integrate into the final image that you see in the movie.

29. And I'm Sanjay Bakshi,

30. the supervising technical director.

31. I'm the bridge between your artistic vision and your storytelling,

32. and how to achieve that in the computer, basically.

33. And so, this is one of the earliest

34. sequences that we came up with.

35. It was just a breakdown, the big "what if" scenario,

36. just to give us a little license to what we were going to be doing

37. in terms of playing around with evolution.

38. This started off, funny enough, as a trailer concept.

39. Trying to find the previous version of dinosaurs.

40. Kind of what dinosaurs felt like from the '50s and '60s.

41. Early on, this project was greatly inspired by

42. the 1964 World's Fair of dinosaurs that Walt Disney had set up.

43. It's funny, we tried this sometimes with it,

44. sometimes without it,

45. but it always found its way back,

46. setting the stage for the story we were about to tell.

47. You know what? We were greatly inspired by the Northwest,

48. and it would be a big part of the world of this movie.

49. And these are inspired by actual places up in Oregon and the Wyoming area.

50. And this was all to set up a beautiful, yet dangerous place.

51. I remember us, too, wanting to tease that out, where we were like,

52. "Let's just open on some landscapes

53. "and get a feeling for what this film was going to be like."

54. So, we were like, "We should start with a tiny, little farmhouse

55. "at the foot of a giant mountain range."

56. And then, so you're like, "Are there people here?

57. "What are we getting into?" Then we thought,

58. "It would be so great to slowly introduce the dinosaurs into that world."

59. We start to see the farmlands and the crops here.

60. And you're like, "What is this exactly?

61. "Is this farmland?"

62. Then, boom, giant feet come into the frame.

63. Remember these shots.

64. These shots, we're going to come back to later in the film.

65. So, remember these shots here.

66. What Poppa is doing right now

67. was probably one of the first concepts on this movie,

68. getting a large Apatosaur and putting his nose into the ground

69. and plowing and moving the earth.

70. There was something so simple and sincere about farming dinosaurs

71. that really started this whole thing up.

72. We really focused on trying to find dinosaurs

73. that were appropriately machine-like, finding a character in the design,

74. but also trying to find what was really fun about them

75. in terms of the large scale and weight.

76. So, we came up with this gag of the dinosaurs

77. watering the crops by spraying a mile across the crops.

78. And we thought it would be a lot of fun to have it in the film.

79. At this point in the film,

80. just introducing dinosaurs in the world,

81. we're not really focusing on their characters or personalities yet.

82. We're more inspired by farm equipment, large tractors,

83. mechanical movements, just to sell the idea that they're farmers

84. and they're gigantic in this world.

85. And so, here is the introduction of the family.

86. You got to meet Mom and Dad on this simple farm out on the frontier,

87. and then having a lot of fun in terms of trying to show the characters

88. of one of the children that are about to be born.

89. And how Mom and Dad are very loving.

90. For this scene, we really wanted it

91. to have this golden halcyon early morning look

92. that really just feels homey and warm and very nurturing.

93. And that old barn feeling,

94. with the little bits of light going through the chinks and the holes in the sides.

95. That was a big part of the look of this.

96. And so, when you talk about the warmth of this home,

97. what are you exactly focusing on?

98. Well, a lot of it is just how to position the light and color it

99. and shape it so that it evokes a mood.

100. I think having the patch of sunlight and the little bits of light

101. are very jewel-like and happy-feeling.

102. And the color is a very warm, happy feeling.

103. That was the mood I was trying to create with this.

104. Well, this is one of those sequences that stayed around.

105. From the very beginning, the humor of who Buck and Libby are

106. has always been there.

107. But Arlo himself had gone through a lot of changes,

108. and trying to find the right way

109. for him to be introduced to the world and to the film.

110. Here's our little guy, Arlo.

111. It was very quickly one of the biggest challenges

112. of trying to find Arlo

113. in terms of how to sell a character that is born a little fearful

114. and born incapable. He is the runt of the litter.

115. You can see how big Buck is and how electric Libby is.

116. For me, as a storyteller, trying to sell the beginning of this character's arc

117. was an interesting challenge.

118. I remember pushing very hard

119. about just making that little baby Arlo just fearful.

120. And it was almost like a one-note thing,

121. where anytime you saw Arlo, he was just terrified of everything.

122. But he lost a little bit of an appeal because he was just that.

123. And the guys really kept talking about there's a way to open up this character

124. in small, little, subtle ways in animation,

125. of finding little looks here and there

126. that felt like Arlo was connecting to this family

127. and trying his best to make it out there.

128. A lot of times we get these great ideas coming out of Story,

129. and then in Animation we run with it.

130. You're passing a baton from Story to Animation.

131. And I remember early on, when this sequence was in development,

132. one of our animators did a test shot of Arlo hatching out of the egg.

133. And just right out of that test shot,

134. there was so much charm in him as a little baby

135. that I remember hearing in Story

136. they were really surprised and inspired by that.

137. And it helped energize a lot of their brainstorming

138. of "what if's" for this sequence.

139. So, that was a really fun way to just to see animators at an early stage

140. getting involved in the process and inspiring the Story team.

141. What I love about that,

142. I wish we could get more overlap between our departments.

143. 'Cause when you get that, there's such magic.

144. You guys have such great ideas,

145. and we can just incorporate that into the story.

146. I love that process.

147. It's fun because we just like to help create the personalities

148. that we're going to be animating later.

149. And the importance of, in this act one,

150. trying to set up a family that works hard, that's loving,

151. and how these kids would support that life on this farm,

152. is something that was really important

153. only 'cause, obviously, Arlo gets sent down a river,

154. and he's got to come back to this place.

155. And so, trying to set up a beautiful, universal family up front,

156. but that you know that their life is about working.

157. We did a lot of research to farms,

158. and, boy, these families, they really stuck together.

159. And it was really inspiring to see a family running their farm.

160. I grew up in a shop, where my family, we all worked together in a store,

161. and it was really fun and inspiring

162. to try to find a way to capture a little bit of that with this family.

163. Yeah, it really added to what we needed the story to be

164. because this is all about... Part of this film is a survival film,

165. and it's really what these families are doing out there

166. in this harsh, harsh wilderness.

167. Nature is gorgeous and pretty and beautiful,

168. but it could kill you in an instant.

169. And the way they survive that is together with families,

170. and having children helped you survive.

171. And everyone was expected to do their part,

172. to pitch in and help out the family.

173. So, we thought, "Okay, that would be great.

174. "Each one of these kids should have little jobs that they have to do."

175. And so, that's why we gave Arlo this job

176. of feeding these little chicken-dino characters.

177. That's his job on the farm and his contribution.

178. And he's trying his best, but his fear just keeps getting in the way.

179. The placement of the river beat here.

180. Funny, these little story beats which we had to get across.

181. You have to find the right spot to put them in,

182. and this moved around a lot.

183. This was like, "Make sure that the audience knows

184. "that the river is there, and the river is dangerous."

185. And we always knew we wanted to say that,

186. but then finding the right place to put it is always so tricky.

187. 'Cause you want it to naturally flow into the story

188. and not have it just be a left turn all of a sudden.

189. Like, "Now we're talking about the river.

190. "And now let's go back to whatever it is that we're talking about."

191. That was actually added near the end, and it felt like a natural spot to put it.

192. Part of trying to figure the story out was to try to find a farm

193. in a place that had a little bit more order,

194. in front of the Clawtooth, the land would be flatter.

195. And then, once he got thrown out in the river,

196. out into the wilderness,

197. that we would find terrain that was much more rugged

198. and not so flat anymore.

199. Here, Poppa and Momma are talking about a very important concept

200. that this father and mother believe in their kids so much,

201. that they will be able to accomplish something.

202. And about doing something bigger than yourself,

203. a little bit of this sacrifice.

204. And everywhere that we went in our research,

205. we would discover that that's how these families work.

206. They were doing something for a greater cause,

207. or something bigger than themselves.

208. And I just... Now, seeing the marriage of everyone's work up here,

209. and what this little metaphor of "make your mark" is...

210. I couldn't be more prouder of the work.

211. Sanjay, we've just gone through many shots of really technical difficulties.

212. If you wouldn't mind breaking down

213. the process of how to put all of this stuff together.

214. One thing I did want to talk about, a big challenge we had,

215. was because we wanted the environments

216. to be more realistic than we normally do them,

217. and our characters are so stylized.

218. I really felt like that was a big technical challenge

219. that we could take on to help meld them together.

220. So, whenever we could,

221. we made sure that the characters were interacting with their environment,

222. so they would feel like they were in the same space.

223. This is the third age change here.

224. We just went from infant to these toddlers,

225. and then, now this is our final Arlo here.

226. You know what was funny about finding Arlo's character in the beginning

227. was the research into camels,

228. and the research into pulling his shoulders in.

229. And, Mike, if you don't mind breaking that down for us.

230. Yeah, as we're establishing Arlo here in the first act,

231. we're trying to make him vulnerable, driven by fear a little bit.

232. And so, we wanted to set up an arc that we could play out through the film.

233. One of the things that one of our directing animators

234. came up with was this concept of narrowing his shoulders,

235. knocking his knees and bringing his feet in,

236. so he wasn't as sturdy under himself as he might be later in the film,

237. to just set him up to be more of a pushover physically

238. to show on the outside how he sees himself on the inside.

239. Any of you animators out there,

240. understanding arcs and breaking down action

241. is really important.

242. And Mike and his team really pushed forward of like,

243. "Okay, in his performance, when he's weak,

244. "that he may walk a little bit more like a camel."

245. I don't know if that was the right reference.

246. Yeah, and it's going off the idea that he's a kid and to not...

247. You get involved in the production of these things

248. and you think of him as a big dinosaur, and he should be strong and powerful.

249. But trying to remind yourself he's a 10-year-old inside that dinosaur body.

250. So, it's going off the inspiration of,

251. if you see a bunch of kids running around,

252. playing soccer for the first time,

253. they're totally uncoordinated, and there's charm in that.

254. And so, it's starting the film with that level.

255. There's not a lot of coordination to the way he runs.

256. And we did that with his footfall patterns.

257. And then, as he progresses through the film

258. and gains confidence and experience, he becomes a little more coordinated,

259. and his footfall patterns start to tie together in strides.

260. And he's a little bit stronger of a character,

261. a lot stronger by the end of the film.

262. When you're working technically on a project like this, Sanjay,

263. how different would you say this process is

264. from live-action pictures?

265. It's completely different,

266. in the sense that you get nothing for free.

267. Everything on the screen is hand-built, hand-crafted by our art team,

268. designed and then built in the computer by artists.

269. And so, in that way, it's completely different.

270. And I think that in a lot of these scenes,

271. they were saying that there's between, on average,

272. 35 to 40 million little curves of geometry

273. that make up all the little trees

274. and blades of grass that go in the distance.

275. And some shots have way more than that.

276. And here is a really important story moment in terms of the theme

277. and Arlo's relationship with Poppa.

278. The sequence itself breaks down what Poppa's about to say.

279. Kelsey, if you don't mind?

280. This scene has gone through many different changes.

281. And when we work on boards, it's just black-and-white drawings,

282. and we're like, "Fireflies, that would be really pretty."

283. We always wanted to have

284. this beautiful moment between the two of them.

285. But when this scene really took shape

286. was when we added that fear factor for Arlo,

287. and this is a teaching lesson for him.

288. Poppa can take him out and say, "Look, I know this is all dark and scary,

289. "but if you push through that, there's beauty on the other side."

290. Man, did everybody hit the beauty on this moment.

291. This sequence is one of my favorite in the movie.

292. What I love about this is the way the scene builds

293. to this great culmination of Story,

294. Editing, Animation, Cinematography, Lighting, Effects, Layout, and Music,

295. all working in tandem,

296. orchestrated in a beautiful way where they hit this note all together.

297. And the mood of this thing is purposeful.

298. 'Cause Arlo is a fearful character,

299. how do we make that same farm that was beautiful

300. the shot before, now feel moody?

301. And, Sharon, I'd love for you to talk about how you broke that down.

302. Well, a lot of it was getting it dark enough to feel spooky.

303. And the mist really adds a lot to feeling

304. the uncertainty of Arlo not wanting to walk out into that field,

305. 'cause he doesn't know what's out there.

306. And one of the things that I was really trying to get in here

307. was a prismatic color change happening.

308. So, when the fireflies are first disturbed, they're yellow-green,

309. and as they have been alive or agitated for a while,

310. the color starts changing towards blue.

311. So, you get this subtle rainbow effect

312. that, I think, really adds some extra poetry to it.

313. This sequence really is about

314. so many technical people getting together

315. and doing their small bit.

316. Like Crowds getting the fireflies to work,

317. the simulation of the grass, the beautiful lighting, the animation,

318. all of that going into making this scene special

319. and having everyone doing their little part.

320. But when you add it all up, you get something, hopefully,

321. bigger than the sum of its parts.

322. We tried to figure out some of the themes in here,

323. that not only would this be a moment that's shared between Poppa and Arlo,

324. but, later in the movie, that we would try to mirror

325. a similar moment with Arlo's relationship with Spot,

326. thus furthering their relationship.

327. And like Kelsey said, trying to focus on something memorable

328. and as beautiful was the goal.

329. So that when you do see it again,

330. it would give you the same feelings as the story unfolds.

331. Sometimes you get that production tunnel vision,

332. where you're focused on trying to work efficiently and everything.

333. And then you show a sequence like this to John Lasseter, and his eyes light up.

334. And he reminds you of how special this moment is.

335. And it gives you the freedom to go back and reinvest in it,

336. and just really make sure we're not missing an opportunity

337. that's going to last forever.

338. It's always amazing when you work in Story

339. and you do this baton toss to the next department.

340. Hand it off to Animation,

341. then they hand it off to Rendering and Lighting,

342. and it's just... This one blows me away.

343. Look at this.

344. It's just exceeded all the expectations that we had

345. from our little black-and-white drawings.

346. There are milestone moments when you are working in Story

347. and trying to find what the film is going to be about.

348. But here, we always had this moment of meeting Spot

349. sort of at the end of the first act.

350. And to take this idea... This was maybe toward the back end of Story,

351. where we had a note session with a lot of the other directors here

352. and a lot of other creatives.

353. There was one idea to have Poppa give Arlo this job

354. to catch this critter, this pest.

355. And then the next thing would be that he failed at it.

356. And because of this failure,

357. that it would be this trigger to a lot of other events that happened,

358. putting it into "Arlo's hands."

359. And that would be something that John Lasseter would always talk about.

360. "Keep the story in the protagonist's hands."

361. Always his point of view.

362. And this was a big deal to finally get this moment,

363. 'cause Poppa never caught this critter.

364. There were versions of the story where Father had died before this.

365. And I can't see it the other way now

366. because this helps trigger pretty much everything.

367. As you see here, when Arlo's compassionate side here

368. triggers this moment to free Spot.

369. And then not only that,

370. but to have Father catch him in the act of failing this job.

371. And so, Meg LeFauve was our screenwriter,

372. and she was always there to help us focus Arlo's emotions.

373. Especially in this sequence here,

374. where Poppa takes Arlo out into the storm,

375. we wanted to find a place where we could find

376. the full spectrum of what Arlo's fears would be like.

377. Sometimes in the beginning it would be humorous,

378. but here, we were able to really find that dramatic fear in Arlo.

379. Yeah, she really wanted that fear not just to be one-note.

380. For it to feel like it was not just Arlo going...

381. Over and over again,

382. but having more of a truth to it, really.

383. She was really pushing for that.

384. So, when we cross over the fence,

385. we have the mist coming back in

386. as an element to make it feel spookier, as well as a lot of dead trees.

387. I love, too, where we take it with Poppa.

388. Remember I was talking about this, too. A lot of us are fathers,

389. and I remember John Lasseter talking about him being a father to his sons

390. and getting frustrated with the kids

391. 'cause you just want them to achieve different skill sets.

392. And when they don't rise up to that challenge, you get frustrated

393. and you're like, "I'm just trying to help you."

394. And having a bit of a flawed father

395. was something that was really important to us.

396. I remember early on, we got a lot of notes of like,

397. "Boy, Poppa is really saintly."

398. And this concept of like, "Okay, Poppa has had it."

399. And Poppa is like, "You need to get over this."

400. And a bit of Poppa crossing the line here

401. we thought would be interesting, that he's...

402. Yeah. But he cares so much about him

403. that he'll actually get caught up in the moment, like a real father.

404. He's a farmer, he needs the farm to work.

405. And he believes in his son, that his son will be able to help out

406. and become a member of this family in a way that he believes that Arlo can.

407. And then, so when he makes a mistake, this little overreaction was something

408. that we thought was pretty universal and pretty real.

409. I remember as this sequence

410. was coming through Story, too,

411. we were pinging on the "Poppa's too much of a saint.

412. "He's too mean. He's got to be redeemable."

413. And when we got this into the hands of the animators,

414. the performances they put in here,

415. when Poppa turns after he sees Arlo fall,

416. it really sold the pain he felt inside

417. and made him forgivable for these actions.

418. Another thing here that this would also trigger

419. the monster that is nature.

420. This would be another metaphor of

421. some of the obstacles that Arlo would face.

422. On top of these performances,

423. the effects work and the sets work here, to try to create our antagonist here,

424. which Arlo would face, obviously, later.

425. The river would be one of the major effects challenges in this film

426. because Arlo needs to follow this thing back,

427. and it essentially becomes a Yellow Brick Road.

428. And, Sanjay, would you mind breaking down that process?

429. Early on, when we saw the boards from Story,

430. we realized that the river would be in

431. pretty well all of the sequences of the movie

432. because it is the Yellow Brick Road home.

433. And we had never done a movie with as much water as this one.

434. And we knew the challenge of this film would be

435. to make the river be an active, changeable thing

436. that would reflect the emotions and the mood of Arlo.

437. So, it was a good challenge for us

438. to figure out how to make these little pieces of river

439. that we could simulate in different activity levels,

440. and then figure out how to reuse them from sequence to sequence

441. because it would be prohibitively expensive to do them per shot.

442. So, we figured out a nice technique,

443. where we made these little sections of river

444. and placed them into the set.

445. And then, we were able to reuse them.

446. And here's another story point.

447. In several versions of this movie, where Arlo was just too passive and too weak,

448. he didn't do anything.

449. And here, Arlo stands up for the family and says,

450. "You know what? Don't worry about it, Mom.

451. "We won't starve."

452. To have that gumption in him,

453. that fire that he's still there for the family, no matter what.

454. Even though he has these issues,

455. that inside, he's still willing to fight for this farm and family.

456. And again, you want to put the movie in the protagonist's hands,

457. and they need to be driving the story

458. and making the decisions versus being told.

459. Like, "You need to do this, you need to do that."

460. It's really in his hands.

461. Again, what was fun about this with animation was,

462. there was a lot of great lengths to try to figure out how he could walk.

463. We had these knobby knees to push toward a more gangly teen.

464. Arlo's meant to be around 11 years old,

465. and this youthful expression with his eyes and everything.

466. But in that same vein,

467. have Spot be an animal, not a human boy.

468. Even though he clearly is, looks like a human boy,

469. that his actions through animation and even through the boards

470. trying to find ways to say,

471. "Look, this is a canine, this is not a human,

472. "and he's not making human decisions, he's making animal ones."

473. We talked a lot about Spot being a dog,

474. and this is a "boy and dog" film.

475. So, in this world, Spot's considered a critter.

476. So, this is the first time we really catch a glimpse

477. of his personality and who he's going to be.

478. We did a lot of reference on dogs

479. because he's mostly going to be a dog throughout this film.

480. But in moments like this,

481. we also referenced squirrels or raccoons or other animals

482. that might rummage through your cat food bowls and things like that.

483. This was one of our first production sequences

484. - to go through animation and... Oh, that's right.

485. We wanted to fast-track it

486. because this was really going to get our effects department off the ground.

487. The animation in this scene is awesome.

488. It was so exciting seeing Arlo come to life and playing his fears.

489. A really fun part of the lighting process

490. is defining the moods for each scene,

491. but also it's how they transition from one to another.

492. This was a scene that has a really sweet palette to it.

493. It's Arlo's last scene at home before he gets swept away down the river.

494. And I really wanted to contrast in an abrupt, visceral way,

495. so that you've got all this sweetness and the pink light of the sky,

496. and then he plunges into this really dark green, blue-green water surface

497. that's meant to feel really deep and really cold.

498. And just have that visceral shock.

499. And so, he's being washed down the river,

500. and when he's looking back home

501. is that last little remaining bit of sweetness

502. of the pink in the sky before it's gone.

503. And he's just submersed in this blue-green world.

504. Sanjay, you broke down the ocean water in Nemo,

505. and how that was a whole different thing compared to a river.

506. What makes it so difficult?

507. We basically simulate the river.

508. We make the riverbed, and we put the rocks in the riverbed.

509. And then, we basically... The way to think about it is

510. simulating a bunch of little, tiny Ping-Pong balls going down the river

511. and interacting with the riverbed, interacting with each other.

512. And that gives the flow of the river,

513. and the nice interactions that we expect.

514. And then, all those tiny, little Ping-Pong balls,

515. we put a surface over them that makes the river's surface.

516. And then, we add elements like foam.

517. Underwater aeration.

518. And, I think, another reason why it's hard

519. is because it's something that people know what it should look like.

520. And so, if it's a little bit off, your eye picks up on it.

521. So, it has to be believable enough that it doesn't look cheesy.

522. So, it takes a lot of finessing and tweaking

523. and back-and-forth between Lighting and Effects

524. to tweak all of the different layers and elements

525. into something that, as a whole, feels like a moving water surface.

526. This sequence of shots here

527. has to be some of my favorite shots in the film.

528. Coming from the fun of the first act and the danger of the world,

529. and then this who-knows-where part of the world

530. that you've never been to before,

531. slightly disoriented, just really great animation and cinematography here.

532. Speaking of the cinematography.

533. We were greatly inspired by Carroll Ballard's film Black Stallion,

534. and how beautifully they shot and how pensive they were with the locations.

535. About this kid getting up and having all his systems beginning to start.

536. It's awesome 'cause if you've ever been

537. camping or hiking in the wilderness,

538. this moment is such a great transition

539. from the life on the farm with people around,

540. to the silence and the sounds of nature, out in the middle of nowhere,

541. which really set up this whole next bit of the film in a great way.

542. What's fun for the animators, when we got to this part of the film,

543. was that we didn't have a lot of dialogue left in the film

544. because so much of this journey is going to be lonely.

545. He's paired with his companion Spot.

546. They don't share a common language.

547. So, the animators are going to have to find a way

548. to communicate through their performance.

549. It's like if you've ever just been out in the wilderness hiking

550. with your dog, it's peaceful and quiet.

551. This was a fun scene for the lighting design

552. because we needed to make this set feel really big,

553. and for him to feel isolated and lost, and to have it feel a little bit uncertain.

554. And we tried to get a lot of that emotional tone in there

555. with the moving cloud shadows,

556. so that the light was constantly changing

557. and holding back a little bit on the color palette.

558. Sharon, please go further with the clouds,

559. because that is something that you fought for early on.

560. To find a way to do the clouds in a volumetric way

561. as opposed to a two-dimensional way,

562. which I don't think audiences really understand that,

563. like The Wizard of Oz, there would be a lot of matte paintings.

564. But in this, you really fought for a different look.

565. This was something that Sanjay and I talked about early on,

566. when we were first on the film,

567. was what we needed to do to create this expansive world

568. that you felt like you were a part of

569. and the characters were interacting with.

570. And we realized that being able to do physical clouds

571. that could move like clouds and light like clouds,

572. like part of the environment, would be

573. a way to take a step further into the immersion.

574. We knew we needed clouds that had animated simulation on them

575. like you saw with the storm cloud

576. in the scene where Poppa and Arlo are going into the wilderness,

577. that needed to have a specific motion.

578. And to have clouds that all look like they belong together,

579. so some weren't matte painted and some were more dimensional.

580. Yeah, that's another reason we wanted to make them volumetric,

581. was we knew you wanted to use them as a cue

582. for where Arlo's state of mind was.

583. So, there'd be such a variety of them.

584. This is, uh, the beginning of act two,

585. and I remember handing this sequence out.

586. You remember this, Pete, where we had,

587. I think, four or five artists.

588. And we handed this all out in a row, which is pretty unique.

589. Usually, you hand out little pieces here and there.

590. But this is one where we're like,

591. "All right, we're all going to hold hands, and this is what we're going to do."

592. And we all handed it out as one big chunk.

593. And everybody went off and boarded their little part,

594. and then we all got together and we pitched it all in a row.

595. That's really when we were trying out

596. that style of the more pensive, slower, quiet,

597. no-dialogue style of the film.

598. And it was really, for me, when the film took off.

599. And suddenly, I'm like, "This is the film we're going to be making."

600. Yeah, I remember being so excited after that first push,

601. when trying to find this tone immediately.

602. This first push here with the gang,

603. I remember that they put everything they had into it.

604. I felt like they were all inspired,

605. and you can get a sense of the artistry of some of the Story artists

606. because the job doesn't entail that you can draw backgrounds very well.

607. The job is really about trying to sell

608. major story points and major character points,

609. but the Story people went far beyond

610. trying to capture a world that none of us had seen yet.

611. We weren't giving a lot of reference in terms of the world.

612. We'd find photo places of some of the research trips that we had done

613. or locations that we had gone to and, with that in hand,

614. the Story artists really painted a picture of the wilderness

615. that was thoughtful and beautiful,

616. and the back and forth of what we had learned out there,

617. that the place could be dangerous and mysterious,

618. but also soul-enriching and beautiful.

619. And this was done in drawings, just in simple drawings that capture that.

620. And that was a tough feat,

621. and I remember that moved the story needle

622. when we were with the Braintrust in some of the Story sessions

623. because people could feel like, "Oh, my goodness,"

624. without the dialogue,

625. how much we would have to rely on the location

626. and some of our visual storytelling.

627. I remember this whole corridor of the film when we first saw it.

628. It had so much personality

629. as far as the type of movie you were trying to make and the tone.

630. And then, what was fun was to watch it evolve,

631. and this idea that, "Is it too intense? Is it too dire?

632. "Do we got to truncate this a little bit and lighten it up?"

633. And we played around with it structurally.

634. But then, realizing that,

635. "No, we're not being honest with the world that we're creating,"

636. and then seeing it come back into the film.

637. This part of the movie, I've just always loved it.

638. It really establishes what a journey like this might actually be like.

639. You remind me, Mike, of a note

640. that Lee Unkrich gave us after a screening,

641. where we had taken Arlo out into the wilderness

642. and we stripped him down to nothing,

643. in terms of all the obstacles that we threw at him.

644. - He wrote down on a note... "Suffer, suffer, little fun."

645. That was it.

646. We would refer to screenings like that. We'd be like,

647. "Which one was that screening?" "I think it was 'Suffer, suffer, little fun."'

648. "Oh, yeah, I remember that screening,"

649. 'cause we did so many different versions of it.

650. But we realized we had taken Arlo a little bit too far and beaten him down,

651. that it was actually not enjoyable to watch.

652. Yeah, yeah.

653. There's always that line of having to make the story point,

654. but not overstay its welcome or not hit it too hard.

655. And we hit the heck out of it on that screening.

656. That may have paralleled what we were going through, as well,

657. - Kelsey, just to say.

658. The other thing, too, about that. This whole world, again,

659. the Story artists brought such a beautiful moment.

660. Like those little creatures never existed until they were pitched.

661. A lot of these ideas can just come from the artists' minds.

662. One of my favorite things about this whole process has been

663. working with all these artists.

664. And that whole game of, that I have learned on the other projects,

665. to continue to plus, to continue to make it better.

666. Pixar, for me, I feel like that is one of the greatest things about this place,

667. is everyone's focused to try to make the greatest film possible.

668. And no matter what, "This is where the film is at.

669. "This is my part of it.

670. "What can I bring to this to make it better?"

671. And both in Story and Animation and in all the departments

672. that feeling was so apparent, and it was electrical,

673. and this quiet moment here reflects all that.

674. This sequence here is called "Spot Investigates,"

675. when we start really

676. pushing these two characters together to create the bond.

677. This was a fun sequence 'cause, again,

678. it was one of our first sequences that we got into production on.

679. And we really didn't know Arlo and Spot and who they were yet,

680. so the fun of getting the animators together and brainstorming

681. who are these personalities going to be?

682. And we had a couple lunches where we got to sit with you, Pete,

683. and start vetting Spot's personality.

684. The animators just loved being able to investigate your brain

685. and pitch you ideas about, "Why would he do this?"

686. Or, "How he would react to this situation?"

687. And trying to create how their brains would work as characters,

688. and then getting to see the animation here in the sequence.

689. And I remember, with Spot here, the challenge was,

690. he's a dog, and so why would a dog be doing this to a strange character?

691. And how do we animate him in a way where he's a dog,

692. and to never give Spot too much complex thought process

693. and always keep him a dog.

694. So, he's driven by instinct, at this point,

695. and not really a lot of complicated emotional reactions to situations.

696. And that was really fun.

697. I really loved talking to you guys about it

698. because really trying to break down...

699. Listen, if you want to be an animator, this is the game.

700. Learning to observe things and learning to find the character,

701. and how that character performs or acts.

702. And ever since we talked about a dog,

703. I remember, Mike, you were talking about,

704. "What are those decisions?

705. "What tools do we have in our research chest to use?"

706. An animal like a dog mainly uses his nose for a lot of its sensory input.

707. And so, there's a lot of sniffing that Spot does

708. that you and I, or a little boy, would not be doing,

709. where I feel like we would be much more tactile.

710. And then, the small, little details of the hands are not open like a human,

711. that they're closed more like a paw.

712. And that Spot's gestures would be more smell first,

713. and then look you in the eye like a wolf,

714. and not look at you from the side of the eye like a human.

715. There were all these little things that I remember you guys talking about,

716. that was really interesting.

717. We didn't want to be too literal to a dog,

718. so we also looked at other animals like raccoons and squirrels.

719. We were mostly looking for nothing that was abstract,

720. gestures and ideas that would be familiar to the audience

721. the way a dog was.

722. So, we looked at other animals that we're familiar with

723. to try to create something relatable.

724. We don't want the character to be un-relatable.

725. Right.

726. Yeah, and these rocks were based on one of the stops we made

727. in one of our research trips,

728. where they have these basalt cliffs

729. that have these column design elements to them

730. that is really unique.

731. In Yellowstone, there's a cliff called the Sheepeater Cliff

732. that looks a lot like this, and that was what it was styled after.

733. The trick with this one, as far as lighting design,

734. was taking advantage of that topology and the geometry

735. and getting it to look interesting,

736. and getting the path to read clearly to get Arlo to really stand out and read,

737. so the action reads like in a shot like that.

738. And that feeling of that vertical drop being dizzying.

739. What's funny about this bridge moment is,

740. this all took place in snow,

741. on the cap of a snowy mountain, the same idea.

742. And it's funny how we've repurposed some of these story moments

743. in totally different locations to work into this film.

744. It is just one little hint to how volatile story can be,

745. that you can tear something out completely,

746. and then not ever see it again.

747. And then, much later, realize,

748. "Do you remember that one moment that we had? That worked really well,

749. "and I feel like that could work really well here,

750. "even though it's a totally different location."

751. It's just how Story works here.

752. Yeah, I love how an idea can be cut,

753. and then years later, it can come back.

754. A lot of these ideas get cut not because they're bad ideas,

755. they just weren't right for that story moment

756. and that version of the film.

757. And so, ideas always come back.

758. It's fun to watch how the snake

759. and Spot interact with the environment here

760. to really ground them in the set,

761. the dust kick-ups and those rocks moving.

762. Pete, that little look there was inspired by a story,

763. I think, you had with watching someone's dog.

764. Yeah, it was Mark Andrews' dogs.

765. Mark Andrews had me housesit for him.

766. It was in the evening, and they ran out to the patio door,

767. and I was like, "What are they doing? They're howling at the patio door."

768. I opened the patio door,

769. and all three large dogs ran out and attacked this bush.

770. And I was like, "What are they doing?"

771. And then the dogs all came back, and I couldn't see what was out there.

772. And then I closed the patio door, and the three dogs looked at me,

773. and they all had this happy, bright dog face,

774. but there was blood all over their schnozzes.

775. And I went back out, and there was a possum walking out of that bush,

776. but the possum's neck had been twisted around.

777. And I couldn't believe this horrific image,

778. but how happy these dogs were. Like, it's nothing to these guys.

779. Yeah, it was really fun trying to go from

780. that awesome animation of Spot defeating this snake,

781. and how aggressive he is,

782. just to, "That was nothing. How are you doing?"

783. That was great.

784. That was a really interesting scene to light

785. because we needed to make him just barely visible,

786. so that you could believe that Arlo can't see the shaman,

787. even though the audience can make him out.

788. And then here is another place where trying to find this character...

789. I remember, Kelsey, you did this first drawing of this guy

790. with a different type of dinosaur.

791. There was some character that you drew that had antlers like this,

792. and it was all birds. I remember that being the trigger of this thing.

793. Yeah, I remember seeing the image of a red bird on an antler.

794. We always wanted to have Arlo run into interesting characters on his journey.

795. It would be really cool if he just ran into this character

796. that had these antlers that are covered in birds.

797. I just thought the image, I'd be like, "Who is that guy?"

798. And from that, it developed into the pet collector.

799. And slowly, we did versions where he was covered in birds.

800. But then we thought, "No, he would want Spot,

801. "so he should collect pets."

802. So, then those birds changed all into different types of animals.

803. And then the contest of naming Spot came in.

804. And I love all the critters that we were able to get.

805. Sanjay, at first, I remember one of the problems that we had was,

806. we only have three other critters that we could make.

807. We don't have the time or money to make more.

808. It was almost like an Apollo 13-NASA solution

809. to try to build that many characters out of three.

810. Yeah, it's a worst-case scenario for our character team,

811. where the whole point is a variety of different characters,

812. and you only see them in this one scene.

813. It's worst-case scenario,

814. but that team adapted some of the critters

815. from other movies that we've made here

816. into the characters we needed for this brief moment.

817. Well, one of the guiding principles

818. that we were using in styling our world

819. is heavily borrowed from landscape painting, which is massing

820. like values and colors together into bigger, interesting shapes.

821. And so, it becomes less about the individual element

822. and more about this backdrop that works in a cohesive way.

823. And I think that really served us well in that scene,

824. where we needed to get this tiny, little red bird to read

825. against just all of this green and busyness.

826. And it's funny, the characters that Arlo meets along the journey

827. are always supporting what Arlo needs to go through.

828. Arlo, one of his base issues is that he was born afraid of everything.

829. And to meet someone else down the line,

830. a character that is afraid of the world,

831. he has got these animals collected

832. because he feels that they protect him from everything.

833. And so, it would always feel like,

834. "Ooh, could Arlo end up like this person one day?

835. "Was this the end of the line for Arlo?"

836. And that each one of the characters that Arlo meets

837. does stem into that spine of what Arlo is trying to go through.

838. It's always funny about animation in a character like Spot's size

839. to be able to blow that amount of air and pop that amount of these gophers.

840. And we work in a technical place where, logically, people will go,

841. "That's not possible.

842. "There's not enough air pressure that, that kid could do that."

843. But always go, "But that's what's fun about it,"

844. and trying to play that game.

845. Denise Ream, the producer, and I

846. would have so many joyous moments in making this film.

847. But this moment in particular, by the time we got to the scoring stage,

848. the music that Mychael Danna and Jeff Danna wrote for this moment

849. really hit us hard.

850. It's such a gorgeous moment here,

851. watching Arlo learn from Spot how to swim

852. that, when we finally saw the music being played live

853. and have that merge with the picture right above the orchestra,

854. we got very emotional over it.

855. This is just one of many moments of the film

856. where the score would just lift us to a new place,

857. and we'll always thank them for that.

858. He's also at a phase here, in his relationship with Spot,

859. where he's learning stuff from Spot.

860. And they haven't totally bonded yet,

861. but he's started developing a dependency on him

862. because Spot can survive out here, and he can find food,

863. and he can protect him from dangerous animals.

864. And like in this sequence, he finds these clever ways to have fun.

865. And Arlo's just along for the ride here.

866. And they're starting to come together as a pair.

867. I remember, we did a pass after one of the screenings

868. where we watched all of these sequences

869. that we had animated out of order,

870. and we realized that, "We got to really watch the arc of Arlo's

871. "progression of anger towards Spot."

872. And that, "You're a critter, and you ruined my life!"

873. To a dependency on him,

874. to developing a bond and feelings for him.

875. And we had to go back into a lot of these sequences

876. and tinker with the expressions a little bit

877. and make sure we were playing

878. his emotional development appropriately through this.

879. It's just so fun to see Arlo and Spot playful with one another

880. and doing boy-like things.

881. And again, just to echo what we were talking about in "Fireflies."

882. So, this is that mirror moment here,

883. where it'll trigger Arlo's memories of what had happened to his father.

884. We also wanted to show Arlo progressing

885. and, at this point,

886. "It'd be really cool that Arlo could show Spot

887. "something he's never seen."

888. Arlo slowly becoming more like his father.

889. Remember, initially, this beat wasn't here? Pete, you remember that?

890. It used to be just the stick-figure moment,

891. and then, as act one solidifies,

892. and that typically happens when you work on these films,

893. is you get an area working pretty good,

894. and then you get another area in act one that's like,

895. "Hey, that's feeling pretty good. We need to pay that off a little bit more."

896. And I remember just thinking,

897. "We should bring that fireflies beat back in the second act.

898. "And maybe we can do that right before they actually get to that little spot

899. "where they talk about their families."

900. And so, that was a thing that we added later.

901. What's funny is, then later, after all that's been done

902. and it's animated and it goes through lighting,

903. and that fireflies sequence in the first act gets lit and it looks beautiful,

904. John sees that

905. and realizes the magic moment. That is, we came back into this sequence again,

906. and pumped it up a little bit with just the lighting magic

907. that we got from the first-act sequence.

908. This, again, was another one of the early sequences we got into.

909. And we didn't know a lot about these characters,

910. and the whole film hadn't materialized yet.

911. And here we are, heading into an emotional moment between the two.

912. And similarly to Story, we had a new workflow we tried on this show,

913. where we would take a sequence like this and cast it to the animators,

914. and normally, you'd give animators three shots here or three shots there.

915. We cast animators seven to ten shots in a row,

916. so they could really work out a big acting arc

917. and you wouldn't lose continuity.

918. And then we also sent 'em away for a couple of weeks and said,

919. "You guys, we totally trust you guys as actors.

920. "And so, you work as a group and start building the sequence

921. "and work as a team. And when you're ready,

922. "bring it back to us and let's show Pete."

923. And I remember sitting in a screening room,

924. watching this sequence for the first time entirely blocked out

925. and just sitting in silence after it played through.

926. And Denise, the producer, in tears in the room.

927. And the acting totally landed.

928. That was something really cool that we stumbled across

929. that we used the rest of the film.

930. Just because it's such an acting-driven film

931. without the dialogue to rely on

932. that you really have to think about how the characters are thinking

933. and communicating with each other.

934. This is just such a beautiful sequence.

935. I remember John Lasseter saying,

936. "With this film, since it's so quiet and pensive,

937. "there's nothing to hide behind.

938. "You can't hide behind a bunch of action,

939. "a bunch of dialogue, a bunch of activity.

940. "It's really a vulnerable, raw state that's exciting,

941. "but it's also extremely challenging."

942. Being in the room with the animators

943. and just hearing the conversations they were having amongst themselves

944. about how to progress Spot here, because this is the first time

945. we're going to see him vulnerable and human.

946. But we have to leave room to go the rest of the film,

947. so we can't go too far.

948. And the animators really carefully, calculatingly placed every little blink

949. and every little eye dart and every little glance at Arlo

950. to make sure that he was vulnerable, but didn't turn into a boy here,

951. 'cause we had to save that for later in the film.

952. But just to give a little bit more context

953. to what you were saying, Mike,

954. about giving the animators that room,

955. freedom to perform that way in big chunks.

956. If you don't mind breaking that down, 'cause that's not usually how it works.

957. Typically, when you're working at a quick clip in production,

958. you're taking these sequences and you're putting a lot of animators in,

959. and they're all getting a couple of scenes,

960. and the goal is to get the sequence done at a quick pace.

961. On this show, consistently what we tried to do was

962. give animators more shots, so five to ten shots,

963. and not more time, but a redistribution of their time,

964. so they could really focus on the acting.

965. Where we felt like that was going to be important, is that

966. a lot of times when you get scenes and they have dialogue in there,

967. the pacing of the dialogue really locks the structure

968. and the timing of the moment down,

969. and you move the character's thought process

970. along at the clip of the dialogue.

971. And a lot of that acting has been vetted out by our voice actors,

972. and you have a great foundation.

973. In this film, coming out of Layout, going through Editorial,

974. you're trying to time this moment out, and you're guessing,

975. 'cause you don't have a lot of the performances in there.

976. So, we really had to take the time to think deeply about the performances,

977. and what the characters are acting and feeling

978. and get that on the screen,

979. 'cause we don't have dialogue to tell us any of that.

980. On big sequences like this, where there's lots of acting happening,

981. we really pushed and pulled frame ranges around a lot.

982. Yeah, that made me really nervous.

983. And the stuff really swelled

984. and grew because animators had these great ideas of,

985. "This is how I feel like this emotion would play out over time."

986. But the other thing that we normally do is,

987. we start approving shots one at a time,

988. and a sequence takes shape over a long period of time.

989. And working like this, we could see the whole sequence

990. quickly right out of the gate.

991. And that's when you can tell if these acting choices were going to work,

992. or if they needed more time or not.

993. You could convince yourself by watching the whole sequence.

994. I can't argue with adding frames when you're bringing tears to my eyes,

995. or you're pulling something out of me emotionally.

996. Right.

997. And that was really great to see.

998. This is a great scene that talked about

999. how we use the weather to change the mood.

1000. You can feel in this scene, where the wind is starting to pick up.

1001. It's early morning, but the clouds are moving

1002. and the grass is starting to move.

1003. It feels like there's a weather system starting to come in.

1004. And then, Arlo turns and looks and sees this big cloud coming his way.

1005. And it gets darker, and then he gets into this immersive dust storm.

1006. And then, we have this flashback scene that's highly stylized and graphic,

1007. that is Arlo's memories of when his father gets washed away.

1008. And it's really visceral, I think, in the impact it has.

1009. Yeah, and this was always something that we pushed down the line

1010. to see what you guys would do in Lighting.

1011. Because in the boards, people always got confused.

1012. Was this happening to him in real time, or was it a flashback?

1013. We would talk about how to push that even further.

1014. And I love the ultimate look that we found here.

1015. 'Cause it is important to understand

1016. that this monster of nature is still haunting Arlo,

1017. and that he's still terrified,

1018. and that he wouldn't be able to get through it,

1019. or at least he didn't believe so.

1020. A game-changer moment in the film. We added this beat.

1021. There was different versions, the way we did this.

1022. There was a time where he got very sick

1023. and went into a fever, but he stayed in the same place.

1024. And what we really wanted for him to do was lose the river.

1025. So, we thought,

1026. "He could have this flashback and return back to his former self."

1027. You want a couple of steps forward, a couple of steps back,

1028. and so we knew we wanted a big step back here.

1029. And we thought, "Lose the river

1030. "and lose that Yellow Brick Road that was taking him home."

1031. We thought it would be really great...

1032. You want that to happen because of the character's actions.

1033. So, we thought, "He could have this flashback,

1034. "back to when his Poppa passed away and that fear of the beast."

1035. We wanted also that reminder

1036. of that thing that he's going to face at the end of the film.

1037. We didn't want to have it just at the beginning and at the end.

1038. You want to have a little bit of a reminder of,

1039. "Okay, you're doing great,

1040. "but you have to eventually face this at some point."

1041. So, that's why that beat was added, and why we have him wake up here

1042. and, "Where's the river? What am I going to do?"

1043. In this scene, it was really fun to design a look

1044. that was the aftermath, the next morning.

1045. Where there's all this devastation,

1046. but there's something really gorgeous about it

1047. and almost pristine in its devastation, if that makes any sense.

1048. This almost angelic feeling.

1049. Every scene, I'm trying to come up with a signature color,

1050. and this one, it's the aqua of the waters,

1051. but it's really more about the white of the steam.

1052. Some characters come quick,

1053. some characters you find along the way.

1054. And then there's the characters you struggle with,

1055. and you try many different versions of them.

1056. For me, these are the characters that we did a lot of takes on, Pete.

1057. Honestly, sometimes, they're the most gratifying,

1058. when you know how much work they were to get,

1059. and then, when you see it in the final film, it's so satisfying.

1060. I absolutely love Steve Zahn's performance here,

1061. and what you guys did with the animation on the pterodactyls.

1062. These characters, animators,

1063. we were seeing the screenings,

1064. and it was a little hard to visualize who their personalities were going to be.

1065. And with all the acting we got to do without voices,

1066. this was one of those moments

1067. where Steve Zahn's performance in here really landed their personality.

1068. And once we got that, animators knew exactly where to go with it.

1069. And, Michael, I remember you mentioning

1070. that these were some of the hardest characters to animate.

1071. Yeah, these rigs are challenging,

1072. understanding their physicality.

1073. But then when you add the technical complications of the rig,

1074. most of the way our rigs are built is,

1075. they align to a world space of coordinates.

1076. If you think of up, down, left, right, as your key coordinates.

1077. Front, back.

1078. Anytime you get in a weird off angle, the rigs get really hard to control.

1079. And so, when you have characters like the pterodactyls

1080. that move around in all these different orientations,

1081. and they're never really parallel to any coordinate in the world,

1082. it gets challenging.

1083. And that's what you have with their necks and their heads and their wings.

1084. Trying to find a cute animal,

1085. we have not the most time to do these types of things,

1086. so I'm always amazed at the gang

1087. and how they can put forward something that works so well.

1088. When you have these one-off characters,

1089. we enter a contract with you,

1090. "Okay, we can do that character, but it can only do these seven things.

1091. "Is that okay, Pete?"

1092. And we negotiate to figure out how we can limit how well we build it,

1093. especially when it's used for a specific purpose.

1094. And with these pterodactyls, just on the art side,

1095. we would always try to find some little flip with each species of dinosaur,

1096. as if the herbivores became farmers.

1097. With these pterodactyls, we were really pushing for the concept

1098. that there were scavengers out there, like these vultures.

1099. So, it was always fun in the coloring and the styling of these guys

1100. to just get a little bit of that hint of that darker type of parasite.

1101. This is one of those beats that I remember, "Ka-ching."

1102. From an early point on with these pterodactyls,

1103. I remember, Kelsey, when we were in the room with all the other directors

1104. that one of the highlights of the pitch

1105. that was that little "stare off" between the two of those characters.

1106. It was just a bit of fun.

1107. And one of the little key moments

1108. when we were talking about the pterodactyls was this turn.

1109. That all of a sudden, you thought that they were positive,

1110. and then, once you get that these characters, these pterodactyls

1111. are the threat, obviously having just eaten the small critter,

1112. it sets up the stakes for, "Oh, my goodness."

1113. That they would want Spot, and they would eat him and hurt Arlo.

1114. And that danger becomes so apparent. And I remember pitching it,

1115. and then getting into that moment where the stare-off,

1116. that we would always refer to as this "Larry David moment,"

1117. where you were checking each other.

1118. Like, "Is this guy lying?" Then you would stare into their eyes.

1119. And I remember how important it is

1120. when you're pitching a story, getting into those moments

1121. so that you could sell the character.

1122. But to your point, Kelsey, we never really found their intent

1123. until Adrian Molina would come in and find this version

1124. where they just believed in the storm

1125. and how dangerous they could be because of that belief.

1126. And so, yeah, how thrilling these pterodactyls are in the chase,

1127. and then the small little trick of Arlo thinking that he's found help here.

1128. And this was a really cool early-on visual done by one of our Story artists.

1129. This little turn that you would realize,

1130. "Whoops, that is not the help."

1131. And then everything that you love about T. rexes and dinosaurs,

1132. wanting to capitalize on that,

1133. but also wanting to have a good twist on them as well.

1134. And the whole concept of the asteroid missing the Earth,

1135. and how these guys may have evolved.

1136. What was fun was that herbivores became farmers,

1137. and then these guys are carnivores.

1138. There was an early session where we were joking around

1139. that these guys may be ranchers.

1140. And that fit really well, that they had their own ranch.

1141. That they would cultivate their own meat.

1142. Also that when you meet them,

1143. they are what you think of as T. rexes in the movie.

1144. But then the small switch that these are not the mean guys,

1145. these are good guys.

1146. And not only are they positive, they're a family, you know?

1147. And that didn't start off that way.

1148. When we started off the rancher concept, we started off with these guys.

1149. I think it was JR, JL, and JW,

1150. and they had no real relationship to each other,

1151. other than they worked on a farm together.

1152. I mean, on a ranch together.

1153. It was like they're all work buddies.

1154. Like a cattle baron and his ranch hands.

1155. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

1156. And then, so we went on a couple trips to go visit ranches out there.

1157. I went with you on a trip, Kelsey.

1158. And then I know you, Mike, went on a trip with some other of the animators

1159. and the character guys to go visit ranches first.

1160. And then you guys came back with some stories that really inspired

1161. because I remember from that point, where it was like,

1162. "You know what? Let's make these guys a family.

1163. "It'll also parallel what Arlo is going through.

1164. "They're missing the backstory, these guys.

1165. "Where is their mom? Who is this dad? He seems pretty harsh."

1166. But all the stories began to inspire who this family would become.

1167. When we got out there and met the McKay family,

1168. we met 'em in the morning, and we were on horses and cattle driving.

1169. There was no slow introduction or coddling.

1170. They were very helpful.

1171. They didn't disregard the fact that we had no experience.

1172. But we just began watching.

1173. We're there for character exploration, right?

1174. So, they think we're primarily interested in the mechanics of cattle driving,

1175. but we're interested in watching them as personalities.

1176. And they're just the most amazing, wonderful family.

1177. And what we noticed right out of the gate was,

1178. Joe, the dad, was the head of the pack.

1179. He got on the horse,

1180. and he would tell each kid what their primary responsibility was going to be.

1181. And they knew from experience exactly what that meant.

1182. And they were going to hit the trail.

1183. And while all this was happening,

1184. the kids would be bickering with each other and prodding.

1185. They come home for the summer,

1186. and they help the family do this.

1187. So, they haven't seen each other for a while,

1188. and they're falling back into their old routines

1189. of prodding and poking at each other.

1190. But when Dad talked, everyone stopped, listened.

1191. Just watching Joe and how stern and rugged he is as a man,

1192. but how loving he is as a father.

1193. And how much the kids were pushing and pulling with each other,

1194. but loved being there to help Dad and do their job.

1195. I remember thinking, "Our T. rexes have to be a family."

1196. There's too much fun in the dynamics here.

1197. And you get so much for free if you just establish a father and siblings

1198. that you don't have to tell your audience all this backstory with 'em,

1199. you just get it.

1200. Again, it's everything to support your protagonist.

1201. And that helped Arlo's story,

1202. for them to be a family and have that kind of relationship.

1203. And you get to see, again, they're a bit like Buck and Libby,

1204. only out in the wilderness.

1205. They are capable, they are what Arlo hopes to be.

1206. This run, um, that Butch is doing

1207. was something that we really tried to find a really subtle quality to

1208. nod to the cowboy on top of the horse.

1209. It was a struggle to try to figure this out.

1210. Yeah, we had one of our animators

1211. who started doing some of those pencil tests with the T. rexes early on.

1212. He understands a horse gallop really well,

1213. so he just started animating some tests of Butch running,

1214. where his legs were like the hind legs of a horse.

1215. And then we tried to figure out

1216. how to get the upper body to act like the cowboy on the horse.

1217. And we studied less equestrian and more Western-type horse riding.

1218. And we iterated on this,

1219. and we got it to a point where I think we convinced ourselves

1220. that this was going to work, but we never quite figured it out.

1221. Then when we got into these shots, we cast them to one of our animators,

1222. he took over that exploration and took it to completion in the shots.

1223. We iterated on those galloping shots quite a bit.

1224. And we were playing with different kind of gaits and gallops and transitions,

1225. and trying to get it to not look too much like a cycle or too lightweight.

1226. Because we're really only dealing with half a horse,

1227. so the mechanics were really hard to sell.

1228. But in the end, I think the idea turned out fantastic.

1229. And it's just a fun, original take on T. rexes and how they might work,

1230. and just pushing the character of our dinosaur movie.

1231. Yeah. What I loved about it, it's a metaphor for me now,

1232. but during the time, in Story, I remember, Kelsey,

1233. that we were always, early on,

1234. the idea of what a Western was versus a frontier movie.

1235. And we never wanted to go into a full Western, only we had.

1236. There were some story experiments that were definitely...

1237. There was a saloon and there was the sheriff and everything.

1238. We had a bartender in there serving up drinks.

1239. Yeah, exactly, and it was a real parody.

1240. You could really feel it,

1241. that we were making fun of a genre versus doing something sincere.

1242. When we got into this place,

1243. finding out that run was part of that same focus of,

1244. "Oh, it's a dinosaur movie, we're out in the wilderness."

1245. But there was a percentage of frontier that you could feel.

1246. This is how they survive out here.

1247. It was really fun coming up with these raptor guys.

1248. I remember...

1249. Who was the original Story guy on this, Kelsey, do you remember?

1250. Austin Madison was the one... That's right.

1251. who took the first pass on it.

1252. And I remember Austin coming in,

1253. and he was so jazzed about the drawings that he had done...

1254. Yeah, that's right.

1255. that he wanted to push his scene to be more like that.

1256. And we ended up doing that.

1257. We ended up pushing more and more of the hillbilly aspect into this.

1258. And also finding the right place for it.

1259. 'Cause we had a lot of it here in the middle of the fight,

1260. which then derailed Arlo's storyline.

1261. You're like, "What is Arlo doing right now?"

1262. That's right. We're spending time

1263. with these goofy raptors.

1264. It wasn't until we started putting stuff at the beginning into their introduction

1265. that it really worked out.

1266. Once again, and this is one of those last-minute ideas,

1267. that we'd spent a little bit more time with them before you get into the fight.

1268. 'Cause initially it used to be Arlo would scream,

1269. and then they just jumped and attacked right away.

1270. And so, we added that beat later.

1271. And we had fun with the sim of

1272. trying to get Velociraptors that were feathered.

1273. The past couple of years, there was all this paleontology evidence saying

1274. that there were these anchor points in the skin on some of these dinosaurs,

1275. that perhaps they could have had feathers.

1276. Some of the fun with these Velociraptors

1277. playing these hillbillies,

1278. with the hair that corresponds with that type of character.

1279. It was a fun thing to add to also have them differentiate

1280. the different kind of mullets and facial hair on them,

1281. so that they could look different from one another.

1282. This scene is a nice showcase for the effects work

1283. on all of the dust on the Bisodon.

1284. Yeah, another way we can make

1285. the characters feel grounded in the set is

1286. have them kick up dust and move the grass.

1287. And all these Bisodon went through our crowds department

1288. to get their motion right,

1289. and to Animation for the hero Bisodons.

1290. Hopefully, you can't tell the difference

1291. between the ones that are hero-animated

1292. and the ones that are done more procedurally through Crowds.

1293. It was so great spending time with that family.

1294. There's a lot of stuff that's literally pulled for this film. Right here.

1295. I remember going with you, Pete, and Joe would tell us what to do.

1296. And he used all this lingo that we wouldn't understand.

1297. We're like, "What did he just say?"

1298. And always one of the kids would lean over and tell us,

1299. "He just wants you to ride up there and take that cattle to the left."

1300. "Oh, okay, okay." They always translated for us.

1301. And we're like, "We have to put that in the movie."

1302. And all day with these guys. I felt like it was a man test for us.

1303. For me, especially, I remember talking to Joe.

1304. And then, like you were saying, Kelsey,

1305. over the din of this loud cattle noise,

1306. you would hear Joe, like, "Peter, I want you to blah-blah-blah-blah,

1307. "X and Y and Z up there."

1308. And I remember going, "What? What did you say?"

1309. And then him being frustrated,

1310. "I said I want you to go up and do the..."

1311. And he would use this lingo that I wouldn't understand.

1312. And then he would give up and just go, "Claire, get up there and..."

1313. And then Claire immediately would know what to do.

1314. And I remember, "My goodness, I failed as a man to help this guy out.

1315. "We're working so hard."

1316. But then, how disciplined he was that evening, there was a turn.

1317. All of a sudden, I saw the softer side of Joe and the family.

1318. And that they we were all working out there during the day...

1319. And the kids had some moments where they were really having fun,

1320. but once work was done, then the storytelling began

1321. and all these other... How warm they were when the work was over.

1322. Wanting to capture that in our guys as well was a big deal,

1323. only because we do want to focus on who Arlo is.

1324. Arlo, again, he's met some characters that have been fearful.

1325. With the pterodactyls,

1326. those characters represented people that weren't afraid of anything.

1327. "We're not afraid of anything!"

1328. And Arlo is definitely terrified of that, running away from them,

1329. meeting T. rexes that he believes are tough as nails,

1330. and they also are not afraid of anything.

1331. But then Arlo would soon learn from them

1332. that the toughest characters that he's ever met so far are afraid,

1333. and that it's okay to be afraid.

1334. And that if you weren't afraid, you're being silly.

1335. How could you be living life if you're not afraid?

1336. And all the great advice that Butch gives to Arlo,

1337. to say that fear is very much like Mother Nature.

1338. That you can never conquer it, but you can find a way to get through it.

1339. And how Butch says it, the great Sam Elliott says,

1340. "Find out what you're made of,"

1341. and began to focus Arlo's journey as well.

1342. I remember, when we were doing some early tests of the T. rexes,

1343. and we were exploring this "cowboy riding on a horse" concept

1344. for how the T. rexes gallop.

1345. We could have gone with our traditional T. rex gallop

1346. based off an ostrich,

1347. and we feel like when you think of a T. rex,

1348. you think of the successes you've seen in other films.

1349. But this idea that, "What if the legs of the T. rex were the horse,

1350. "and the upper body was the cowboy sitting on the horse?"

1351. And then when we paired that with Sam Elliott's voice,

1352. you remember how like, "Oh, my God, that's so alive!"

1353. - It has to be...

1354. This was early on when you were hoping we could get Sam Elliott.

1355. That's right. We didn't know.

1356. But once we saw that test, it was like,

1357. "If we can't get Sam Elliott, what are we going to do?"

1358. Oh, my God, yeah. "It has to be."

1359. You end up hearing... We always do the scratch voices here.

1360. And you live with that voice for a very long time.

1361. And then when it switches over, sometimes it's an instantaneous,

1362. "My gosh, this is amazing." Other ones take a little bit longer.

1363. And I remember, you guys cast Sam Elliott,

1364. and at first, I was like, "Oh, okay, he seems like the obvious choice.

1365. "I'm not so sure about that."

1366. But when he started to speak, and when it came out of that rig,

1367. I'm like, "He was born on this Earth to play this character."

1368. Any doubt that I had before was squashed by this giant T. rex voice.

1369. I remember, Pete, you saying early on, you asked Steve, our editor,

1370. "Did you do something? Did you effect the bass of this?"

1371. And Steve was like, "No, that's just Sam."

1372. When you think of Sam Elliott,

1373. you think of his iconic moustache.

1374. I love that Butch here, with his big white teeth,

1375. there's just moments where they just create

1376. that big white moustache.

1377. That big, giant white moustache.

1378. It all works so well.

1379. Yeah, this sequence after that day of cattle driving with the McKay family...

1380. I remember sitting around after dinner

1381. and Joe, after a long, hard day's work, was leaned back in his chair

1382. with his eyes closed, and just listening to his kids talk.

1383. And they all start doing storytelling and stuff.

1384. And then they would go, "Tell us that story!"

1385. And then it turned into, "Dad, tell that story!"

1386. He would come to and crack one of his eyes open,

1387. and then launch into this fantastic story.

1388. And then the kids would be like, "I love that story!"

1389. And here it is in the movie.

1390. With these scars, I remember having to come up with ideas of

1391. what kind of scars they could have.

1392. And I remember one of the Story artists saying...

1393. This is a true story, that they found a T. rex skull

1394. that actually had a tooth lodged into the skull.

1395. And they slowly deduced it,

1396. and they're like, "Wait a minute.

1397. "This T. rex died because some other large crocodile-type beast bit it,

1398. "and the tooth is lodged in this skull."

1399. So, this story came out of this fossil that they found.

1400. He actually said, "That would be such a cool scar to have,

1401. "that this T. rex walked around, 'cause he probably didn't die right away,

1402. "had this cool scar of this tooth hanging out of his mouth."

1403. And so, we based Butch's scar completely around that story,

1404. around a real-life thing that happened, and it turned out so great.

1405. This scene was a happy accident,

1406. which we rarely have in the computer,

1407. 'cause usually our accidents end up looking like disasters.

1408. But this scene, we have snow, and we talked about the next scene,

1409. "Well, maybe when they wake up in the morning,

1410. "there's some residual snow that maybe melts later on."

1411. And it was one of those things

1412. that we weren't sure we would have the time to do,

1413. so it fell by the wayside.

1414. But when we were lighting this,

1415. there was a shader problem on the hills that kept making them look frosty,

1416. and I kept trying to fix it.

1417. And then, all of a sudden, it's like the light bulb went off.

1418. It was like, "Duh, I should try to exploit this

1419. "and turn it into what we had always hoped it would be."

1420. And so, that's what we ended up doing.

1421. This is the beginning of the build of Arlo,

1422. where he's with his "magic feather."

1423. We refer to this spot as "Dumbo's Magic Feather,"

1424. giving Arlo strength and confidence that he would be able to achieve

1425. some things that usually on the farm

1426. by himself, he would not be able to achieve.

1427. But hopefully that we're beginning to feel Arlo's growth here.

1428. Even though he still may be a little bit afraid,

1429. but that he would keep pushing through it here

1430. to help these guys.

1431. I love this sequence.

1432. It's just such a culmination of events,

1433. of everything Arlo's accomplished at this point.

1434. Kelsey, you talked about two steps forward, one step back.

1435. And this is such a step-forward moment in the film,

1436. where, as an audience, we get to celebrate his accomplishments

1437. and the beauty of this moment,

1438. catch our breath, enjoy the wonder.

1439. Man, the lighting in this sequence

1440. and the score that Mychael Danna wrote for this,

1441. it just brings everything together in such an awesome way.

1442. It really is a great metaphor

1443. of the journey of making this film,

1444. to get to a place where it showcases the marriage of all the departments,

1445. from Story to Animation, from Editing, Cinematography, Effects to Music.

1446. And this is a really wonderful sequence.

1447. I think we put 1,000 clouds in this sequence

1448. to get the coverage that we needed.

1449. And tens of thousands of birds.

1450. This was a really good technical challenge for our Crowds team,

1451. to figure out how to get this flocking behavior.

1452. And for me, when Pete started talking about wanting to do this,

1453. and just to capture the beauty, and how Arlo is feeling more confident,

1454. and being able to feel more comfortable in nature,

1455. is a really fun sequence to try to get,

1456. so we could capture that feeling for Arlo and the audience.

1457. And during this scene,

1458. we started holding back on the warm tones for the most part,

1459. so that in this scene, when he goes running up the mountain,

1460. your eye gets accustomed to the blue.

1461. So that you have this really intense change to the orange

1462. when he breaks through the clouds,

1463. and you get that sense of wonder and awe.

1464. Again, some scenes take a while,

1465. and some scenes come together rather quickly.

1466. And this was one of those scenes that remained pretty much intact.

1467. We may have switched things around a little bit,

1468. but more or less, this is the way that the first pass was.

1469. I remember this scene.

1470. Although it was always in the film,

1471. it bounced around where in the film it was.

1472. Yeah.

1473. And the idea that this is going to be new information for Arlo.

1474. And where they find this other human in the relationship,

1475. the development of their own relationship was critical.

1476. And if it happened too soon, it didn't make sense with Arlo's choices.

1477. If it happened too late, he was being too selfish.

1478. And we found a really great place for it here.

1479. That was the main line we danced along,

1480. is that tightrope of selfishness.

1481. How far to go with Arlo, or not,

1482. because we wanted him to make, really, a wrong decision here.

1483. But you don't want to make it so wrong that the audience is like,

1484. "I don't like that guy. Now I'm disconnected."

1485. It's a fine line to walk along.

1486. And I like where we ended up in the film,

1487. where it's just enough that you're like,

1488. "It's not the right thing to do, but I understand why you're doing it."

1489. And one of the things that we did to actually twist that around,

1490. is that used to be the whole family up on the ridge.

1491. And then we reduced it down to just the lone male.

1492. And we thought, that's just enough to make you feel a little bit like,

1493. "I don't know about that."

1494. Something about the lone male versus the family that felt a little more unsafe.

1495. Again, another shot that really benefitted from the USGS.

1496. But every one of those little trees and rocks on those hills

1497. was all procedurally generated by us.

1498. We didn't get any of that for free with the USGS data,

1499. it was just raw topology.

1500. Yeah, and then the Sets team came up with techniques

1501. to figure out where trees would grow on,

1502. at what elevations

1503. and how the curvature of the rocks

1504. would influence where the trees would grow.

1505. Yeah, so we could get them just in the valley areas,

1506. or just on the north slopes, or just on the ridges,

1507. or we could teach it

1508. where to grow rocks and where to grow trees

1509. and where to grow certain types of trees.

1510. And there was a little bit of work here,

1511. trying to echo the couple of times we see the beast again.

1512. There was the storm and the lightning, and flashing in Arlo's eyes,

1513. just to give the audience a little bit of that memory

1514. before we go into this amazing sequence of the sky sharks here.

1515. And trying to take that concept of a shark going through the water,

1516. but upside down.

1517. Would the audience know exactly who these guys are yet?

1518. And then slowly realize that this is that group,

1519. that really dangerous group that had been looking for them.

1520. I remember seeing this idea in boards

1521. and just being blown away by the simplicity,

1522. but cleverness of these upside-down cloud sharks.

1523. It's so disorienting because you think of shark fins in water right-side-up,

1524. and this is all happening upside down.

1525. It's nice, it's creepy and freaky.

1526. Again, the score here really reinforces the eeriness of the moment.

1527. The animation in here,

1528. these pterodactyl models were our most complicated models on the film.

1529. So, all the physicality you see in these next couple of sequences

1530. was not easy for the animators to do.

1531. And this is one of the examples

1532. where we needed the clouds to behave in specific ways,

1533. with these supercell structures

1534. that needed to be twirling and changing form.

1535. And the mammatus clouds, too, that show the storm is coming.

1536. And this is one of our many rain sequences.

1537. Each one of them needed to feel a little bit different from the others.

1538. This one is greener in tone and, um, a little bit mistier.

1539. This is one of those scenes that doesn't seem like

1540. it's necessarily hard compared to some of the big scope things,

1541. but just getting Arlo tied up in those vines

1542. is a real animation and rigging challenge to make this believable.

1543. I can't tell you how hard this sequence would be.

1544. We have done story-wise what this kick would be for Arlo

1545. to pull through, to get to go find Spot.

1546. We literally had some times where Arlo just fell into mud, started sinking,

1547. and then he just came out of it, with no knock on why he had done that.

1548. But knowing that we needed to hit someplace

1549. where he would find his strength.

1550. And we had a lot of other story experiments.

1551. For example, one of them is the concept of his Uncle Clay.

1552. It sounds silly to talk about it,

1553. but it was sincere in trying to find a way to have someone out there

1554. for Arlo to face while he was dealing with his fears.

1555. And getting to a place where it was just so beautiful,

1556. where it was just slow-motion rain.

1557. Where we would just literally go into a dream,

1558. just stop the film to meet a dead father,

1559. a figment of Arlo's imagination,

1560. and where his conscience and spirit was taking him.

1561. I remember the last-minute Hail Marys,

1562. and we had a screening coming up, and Uncle Clay wasn't quite working.

1563. But the idea of Uncle Clay felt right.

1564. And I remember you and I getting lunch.

1565. In that lunch, you and I thumbnailed out and wrote it out.

1566. That's right. And we did it.

1567. - We had a week or so to go. That's right.

1568. And I remember pulling everybody in after that, saying,

1569. "Steve Schaffer, do you think we can get this cut in time?

1570. "We think we can draw it in time."

1571. And I remember us turning that around in a very short amount of time.

1572. Yeah, that's right. I want to say a week and a half.

1573. We put it in the screening, and it clicking.

1574. And suddenly, that area started to work for us.

1575. Yeah.

1576. And like a lot of scenes, you end up tweaking a little bit.

1577. It wasn't like, "That's it, and this is what's in the final film."

1578. But it was very close.

1579. A lot of those concepts are there,

1580. the biggest being that he runs into and talks to his father.

1581. It came from a lunch discussion that we had.

1582. There's some sequences, like you were saying, Kelsey,

1583. that would come very easily,

1584. and there were some sequences that come very hard.

1585. And the pterodactyls as characters were really difficult.

1586. But that sequence right there, when he sees his dad,

1587. we would do over and over again, trying to find the right key to hit.

1588. And getting his footsteps in the mud was equally challenging.

1589. We had to figure out how much water to have in it,

1590. how much it would ooze.

1591. And this is the part of the sequence

1592. where we started transitioning into a different style of rain,

1593. where we started adding a little bit of a prismatic,

1594. chromatic aberration quality to the rain,

1595. before Poppa ends up being revealed

1596. as not really being there and going away.

1597. So, this is a moment in the film

1598. where you'll notice in Arlo's run here,

1599. it's very coordinated.

1600. His feet are tied together. There's a lot of strength in that gallop.

1601. He's pulling with his head, was another idea we played with.

1602. You can see how the arc of his head is pulling in stride,

1603. instead of overlapping.

1604. Those were little ideas that we used

1605. to show that he had progressed physically here

1606. to echo what he's going through mentally and emotionally.

1607. So, if you go back and you watch that first sequence

1608. where Spot's on his nose and he's falling into the river,

1609. and look how uncoordinated his run is versus this,

1610. those are very specific choices we're making.

1611. We didn't accidentally come up with these two different ideas here.

1612. We intentionally did it to show a physical growth in him as a character.

1613. You'll see, when he's standing at the cliff there, his shoulders are wider,

1614. he has a stronger, sturdier stance, more confidence.

1615. A lot of this is a back-and-forth.

1616. Where we're like, "He should use skills that he learned from the movie, okay."

1617. Sometimes it's even inspired from an earlier beat,

1618. or it's inspired by what we want to happen at the end.

1619. So we're like, "He could head-butt."

1620. Somebody may have done a head-butt move.

1621. "He should do that earlier in the film. Where should he do that?

1622. "Maybe he should see Spot do it?

1623. "Maybe Spot should head-butt the red snake character."

1624. So, it's this back-and-forth of placing setups and payoffs.

1625. John Lasseter would say because

1626. there's dialogue, but not much of it,

1627. and how simple a story it is, that we would have nowhere to hide

1628. in terms of the look of it and the story and the emotions.

1629. Boy, was he right.

1630. Getting into the back side of this mountain, as simple as that sounds,

1631. what challenges that would still remain to be,

1632. trying to shoot back there

1633. and trying to find places to make all the story points make sense.

1634. This was one of the most challenging

1635. sequences for the Effects team,

1636. because the river has to go from this fast-moving, rapid-flowing river

1637. to a full-on flash flood over the course of several shots here.

1638. So, a lot of work went into getting these shots to look right,

1639. and there's a lot of trickery happening here, too.

1640. It was really interesting 'cause this isn't a real river.

1641. This river is really manufactured to give us that runway

1642. that we needed for that flash flood to come down.

1643. And so, all to tease cinematically

1644. the idea of that beast rounding the corner here.

1645. And so, a lot of this stuff, as real as it looks,

1646. this is not from the USGS. This is handmade backgrounds here.

1647. It was a challenge that was ongoing,

1648. of getting the hero parts of our sets to integrate well

1649. and transition into the USGS and procedurally generated data.

1650. And emotionally, this whole section, I remember getting to this point

1651. that I would always try to talk to you guys about the love story of this.

1652. That once Arlo and Spot are split up, that it would be about,

1653. in the classic great love dramas,

1654. the two people trying to get to each other

1655. and fighting through every obstacle possible

1656. to try to get to the person that you love.

1657. And we are saying that even Arlo is terrified,

1658. but love would get him through,

1659. love is the thing that will help Arlo see the beauty on the other side.

1660. And it gives him great strength here to get to him.

1661. And I remember we were talking about here, he would see the beast,

1662. and would he be able to brave the thing that killed his father?

1663. This simple idea of nature dropping this flood down in the world.

1664. And then this moment right here, between the two of them.

1665. He loves him, and he would sacrifice himself for Spot.

1666. And that's his biggest growth.

1667. We did a lot of things where he was physically better and more capable.

1668. And we're showcasing a lot of that.

1669. And you're like, "Why am I not feeling anything?"

1670. It's like, "Yeah, it's all about the relationship

1671. "and the love of another thing, and we need to focus on that."

1672. So, this whole ending, we did lots of versions where he's in the flood.

1673. And the best part is when two friends were swimming towards each other.

1674. That's when things started... You were like, "Oh, I feel that."

1675. So much of working on this movie

1676. is just trying to find something that you can emotionally connect to.

1677. And when you find that, you just hold on to it

1678. and you say, "That's the point of it."

1679. It's these two friends who love each other, swimming towards each other.

1680. That's what the heart of this is all about.

1681. The tricky part of the waterfall

1682. was really the transition edge

1683. from the top surface of the flowing water to the vertical part of the drop.

1684. And that really took a lot of finessing to get that to look just right.

1685. And there's a little moment that's a little nod to Pete's love of melodrama

1686. and old David O. Selznick movies,

1687. with a little bit of melodramatic ending.

1688. This is a fun moment where you get to see it evolve.

1689. Do you remember the first time we animated it?

1690. It played perfectly.

1691. And then the idea... After you watch it in the film,

1692. and you have the gravity of the whole movie behind it,

1693. the idea that, "He should blow on Spot."

1694. Which echoes the whole firefly thing

1695. of blowing on the firefly and lighting it up.

1696. And then we go back in, and we put that in there,

1697. and it's like, "Oh, yeah, that's even better."

1698. And then the idea of, "What if Spot just patted him on the nose

1699. "to say, 'Thank you, I'm okay, bud."'

1700. And you go back in, and you add that in.

1701. And then just the layers of how it continues to evolve

1702. even after it's technically been approved and done.

1703. This is one of those scenes that we had from very early on.

1704. And I can't tell you from a story perspective how helpful that is,

1705. to know where you're going.

1706. A lot of times, you know how to begin,

1707. but you don't know where you're ultimately leading towards.

1708. It's like having a compass on the deck of your ship.

1709. "You know, everyone, we're heading north."

1710. And that was such a great thing to have early on,

1711. is we knew where we wanted to go.

1712. Then the trick is earning it.

1713. And it's all about leading up to that point.

1714. And we watched this thing over and over again.

1715. I don't know how many times we were like,

1716. "I don't feel 'Goodbye Spot' anymore.

1717. "The previous version, man, I felt it in spades."

1718. And, "What did we lose?

1719. "And how can we earn that even more so than the last time that we had it?"

1720. When the sequence hadn't even changed.

1721. It was literally the moments before it,

1722. or the half hour before it that really changes,

1723. and all of a sudden, you're feeling about it differently.

1724. Again, this was a great sequence to send all the animators in.

1725. We sent 'em away.

1726. This is a bigger sequence, so I think they had three weeks

1727. to go through all the shots and bring it back to you, Pete.

1728. I remember when they brought this back, and we watched it again.

1729. The room was just silent

1730. because it was such an emotional experience

1731. to see the whole thing play out.

1732. And then you made the comment...

1733. I don't remember your exact words, but you made the point to say,

1734. "This is the climax of our film.

1735. "There is zero dialogue in this whole moment.

1736. "There hasn't been dialogue for a while leading up to this.

1737. "We just paid off the movie without a word being spoken,

1738. "and that's pretty amazing."

1739. And I just have to say, the animators on this film

1740. did some of the most fantastic acting I've ever seen with no dialogue,

1741. really thoughtful choices.

1742. And they loved working on this film and having that challenge,

1743. because it doesn't come around as often as you might think.

1744. In Pixar, we have dailies, and we have everyone in the room.

1745. You have most of the animators all watching the same thing.

1746. On the many years and the couple of other films that I've animated on,

1747. I feel like how delicate that you guys talked about the performances.

1748. And when I would talk to you guys about,

1749. in that delicacy, how could we really sell the emotions?

1750. And I remember to a lot of people what we would talk about

1751. would seem so detail-oriented and maybe not that important.

1752. But every little gesture here,

1753. everything has been created and talked about.

1754. One of my favorite things is that room. When people start talking in dailies,

1755. everyone's priority is trying to make the best thing possible.

1756. Sometimes it may not be the right idea,

1757. but most of the time, when you have that priority,

1758. everyone is on the same page.

1759. And everyone feels the same thing, and everyone is feeling like,

1760. "You know what I was thinking?"

1761. And I remember other people nodding, "Oh, yes."

1762. Yeah, and that's where one animator

1763. couldn't figure it out on their own.

1764. There's a moment where Arlo's watching Spot bond with the family

1765. and contemplating what this means,

1766. and he's going to decide to push Spot over to the family.

1767. And I remember sitting in there

1768. having long conversations of things that never got on the screen,

1769. but were important to understand.

1770. And it's, "What is Arlo thinking right now as he's watching this?

1771. "Is he happy? Is he afraid? Is he nervous? Does he understand?"

1772. Then, when the animator would go into the shots,

1773. that's where we would decide,

1774. "I need to add 18 frames in on this shot,

1775. "because I need to give Arlo enough time in his mind to watch this

1776. "and be thinking, 'This family is good for Spot.

1777. "'Look, he's happy. I think I know what I need to do.

1778. "'Spot belongs here. He's better here than if I take him with me."'

1779. That needs time of Arlo doing nothing but watching.

1780. But you give the screen time, so that the audience can understand

1781. that his brain is feeling, thinking that, and he's feeling that.

1782. And then it pays off.

1783. But we would have to have those conversations.

1784. And you were great with letting the animators really pitch you ideas.

1785. You know what I loved about what Sharon started off with here,

1786. was that mist that these creatures, these other humans would unveil

1787. who they would be.

1788. Trying to keep them as mysterious as possible for the most part,

1789. until this Poppa figure

1790. investigates this other lonely boy out here, and what was going on with him.

1791. But every time we went into this in Story,

1792. in the drawings, it would always look like Spot's family,

1793. and it would always look like,

1794. "Wait a second, I thought he just told Arlo that his family had died.

1795. "Who are these people?"

1796. And then trying to find a way to communicate

1797. that these were a different species, almost like a different wolf pack.

1798. That they all have this different colored hair,

1799. and that they might have a little bit of this Asiatic eye

1800. that would just be a little bit different,

1801. but enough that you could buy they're not menacing.

1802. That they would be warm enough to be a new family for this little boy Spot.

1803. I love that not a single word is uttered in this sequence until they howl here.

1804. Arlo would return to the farm in this golden swath of fall colors here.

1805. Even though we wanted to showcase the farm struggling,

1806. that it was still beautiful like this.

1807. And so, then, again here, trying to create that bookend

1808. where we've really established that comment that Poppa makes,

1809. that, "You'll be me and more."

1810. And that here we would try to do it cinematically,

1811. that Arlo would come back onto the farm stronger and grown up.

1812. More like his father, which then also

1813. would help set up Momma's line here

1814. in just a little bit, where she mistakes him as Poppa.

1815. Subtle details, if you watch the beginning of the movie

1816. when Poppa takes Arlo out to follow Spot's footprints,

1817. Arlo can't even get over the fence, and here he just steps over it with ease.

1818. Yep, right over it easily. Little details like that.

1819. And just so people at home watching understand

1820. what an animator does to try to make a moment like that read.

1821. This was a coming home moment for Arlo,

1822. and Momma hasn't seen him for a long time.

1823. And one of our animators did reference by watching video of veterans

1824. returning home from being overseas and reuniting with their families.

1825. That kind of love and coming together,

1826. and pulled details out of that to put in here,

1827. and that's why when you watch it, it feels real and authentic

1828. because it comes from a real emotional place out there in the world

1829. that we try to give to the audience.

1830. You can't capture life.

1831. You can capture it in the performance for sure, and the voice acting,

1832. but animation is frame by frame,

1833. trying to capture the idea of spontaneity.

1834. This is probably one of the greatest experiences I've ever had in my life,

1835. probably the toughest gig I've ever had.

1836. Kelsey Mann, Mike Venturini, Sharon Calahan, and Sanjay Bakshi,

1837. thank you so much for all the help.

1838. It has been one of the greatest honors to work with you,

1839. and everyone else on this crew that I completely fell in love with.

1840. I can't tell you how my journey on this thing

1841. has completely paralleled Arlo and his fears, not having a lot of confidence.

1842. I remember jumping into this thing being terrified of this,

1843. trying to make a movie.

1844. And my confidence levels had dropped down a million.

1845. But I can't tell you...

1846. Like Arlo and the characters that he meets, and the T. rexes and Spot,

1847. you guys have been that Spot for me, where you guys have helped me.

1848. And I can't thank you guys enough,

1849. in terms of giving me that strength and confidence on this back end.

1850. I'd do it again in a heartbeat, Pete.

1851. Thank you very much. Yeah, thanks, Pete.

1852. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

1853. Thanks, Pete.