Disney and Pixar have released the first teaser trailer for Luca, which is scheduled to release in June 2021. The film is directed by Enrico Casarosa, who previously wrote and directed Pixar’s short film La Luna, and has worked on most Pixar films since 2006.
Luca is set in a seaside town on the Italian Riviera and follows two friends during an “unforgettable summer.” But the friends have a secret they must keep from the rest of the town: they are both sea monsters. Jacob Tremblay voices the titular character of Luca, and is joined by Jack Dylan Grazer and newcomer Emma Berman. Maya Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan voice Luca’s parents.
The latest issue of Empire reveals an exclusive photo (above), as well as new information regarding the inspiration and story behind Pixar’s upcoming animated film, “Luca”.
From Empire:
The legendary animation studio’s next movie, Luca, is another mix of fact and folklore – the first feature from director Enrico Casarosa, who previously helmed the short La Luna.
Set on the coast of Italy in the dazzling summer days, its central character, Luca, and his friend Alberto are actually sea creatures who appear human on dry land, but take on a fishier form underwater. In a Little Mermaid riff, the pair get to experience life up where they walk, run, and stay all day in the sun – befriending a human girl along the way.
For all that it’s about magical sea creatures, the heart of Luca goes right back to Casarosa’s childhood. “I was born in Genoa, and my summers were spent on beaches,” he tells Empire. “I met my best friend when I was 11. I was really shy and I found this troublemaker of a kid who had a completely different life. I wanted to make a movie about those kinds of friendships that help you grow up.” According to the director, the result is a Pixar film that pays homage to Fellini and other classic Italian filmmakers, with a dash of Miyazaki in the mix too. It sounds like the cinematic summer blast we’ll all be desperate for when winter finally ends.
The new issue of Empire goes on sale this Thursday, January 21st.
The latest film from Disney and Pixar, “Soul” was released on December 25th, 2020, and was met with a generally positive reaction from audiences. Many praised the film for its writing and storytelling, its emotional musical score, and the art of the characters and environments.
To give us a look into what went into bringing “Soul” to life, several artists from Pixar took to their personal Twitter accounts to share a few examples of the art processes and break down what went into creating some of these massive environments, such as The Great Before.
The Twitter account @JunHanCho1, who was the Set Supervisor for the film, began with sharing some inspiration behind some of the New York sets, such as a house seen in the background being inspired by a shading artist from Pixar!
For example in the scene where Joe rushes towards his audition towards the subway, the yellow house to the right is inspired by the shading artist, Jamie’s grandmother’s house. #PixarSoul#PixarSoulSets
He also goes onto share one of the modeling guides the artists used, making sure to note that a “sense of Jazz” should be incorporated into the prop and set pieces.
The "astral plane" world operates by different rules, obviously. For one thing, everything is translucent, which meant many, many things were volumetric. That was fun. Especially the Hall of Everything.
However, the lighting in the astral plane also bent some physical rules. Watch the colors around the characters in particular. pic.twitter.com/lFrc0v0lCI
While the thread gets a bit technical, if you happen to be interested in 3D art, it’s fascinating to read about how the team went about lightning a volumetric set.
And if you do happen to interested in the nitty gritty and want more detail, @RyanMichero, a Lighting Lead for Pixar, followed up with his own thread discussing the tech behind the movie.
And now we're in the Great Beyond, first look at the soul chraracters! #PixarSoul This movie's preproduction played out as if we were working on two completely different movies at the same time: the NYC human world movie and the soul world movie.
The soul characters are made almost entirely of volume primitives (at Pixar, saved in the f3d format), with the sole (ahem) exception of the eyes. We did experiments with volumetric eyes, but we were concerned we would never be able to get the eyes looking "right" #PixarSoul
@JunHanCho1 was even kind enough to share an early working version of the walkway to The Great Beyond.
Here’s a look at an early version of the Great Beyond Walkway done by shading artist Peter. This is done not with volumes but with a fancy shader that we could change in real time. #PixarSoul#PixarSoulSetspic.twitter.com/ZuzOEnFs7L
It takes a small army to create a 3D film, and Pixar employs some of the best artists in the industry. It’s exciting to see how many of them took time to share a “behind the scenes” look into what went into creating the movie, and we’ll be sure to pay extra attention to those details next time we watch “Soul.”
“Music is all I think about. From the moment I wake up in the morning, to the moment I fall asleep at night,” says Joe Gardner, the middle-school teacher with a serious passion for jazz music who is at the center of Disney and Pixar’s Soul. Disney+ has debuted a brand-new trailer for the feature film, which is available exclusively on the streaming service beginning December 25, 2020. Check out the trailer and details below as shared by TheWaltDisneyCompany.
The story is particularly relatable to the artists behind it. For Jamie Foxx, who lends his voice to Joe, it begins with jazz. “Like Joe, I hear music in everything,” said Foxx. “When you’re a jazz artist, man, you talk a little different: ‘Hey, cat!’ I got a chance to go to a few jazz fests and meet Herbie Hancock, Chick Correa—hang out with those guys. They have a way of talking, a way of dressing—everything funnels toward their music, toward the jazz.”
Director Pete Docter shares Foxx’s love of music, but he conceived of the character before jazz entered the picture. “I’ve been so lucky to work with some incredible people and make movies that have been seen around the world,” he said. “But I realized that as wonderful as these projects are, there’s more to living than a singular passion—as expressive and fulfilling as that may be. Sometimes the small insignificant things are what it’s really about. This film is about broadening the idea of a singular focus to thinking more widely about what life has to offer and what we have to offer life.”
Likewise, co-director Kemp Powers, who initially joined the project as a writer, didn’t have to look far to find inspiration for Joe Gardner. “We’ve been working on Soul for years, but the film feels timelier now than we ever could have imagined back when we began,” he said. “In a year where everything we know has been turned upside down, we’ve all been forced to find new meaning both in the relationships we have and the small moments that truly make life worth living.”
In the film, Joe is on the brink of getting his big break playing for a jazz quartet. But he finds himself on an unexpected detour from the streets of New York City to The Great Before, tasked with helping new soul 22, voiced by Tina Fey, find her spark to earn her way to Earth. “He’s sure if he can share his life story with her—his passion for jazz—she’ll be inspired and they’ll both get to go to Earth,” said producer Dana Murray. “They do make it back to Earth, but that’s really the beginning of their adventure. It’s a funny and touching story of friendship and self-discovery, and we can’t wait to show it to the world.”
New details have also been released about Soul’s voice cast. Five-time BAFTA winner Graham Norton (The Graham Norton Show) revealed last weekend that he lends his voice to spiritual sign twirler Moonwind. The voice cast also includes Rachel House (Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Thor: Ragnaraok) as the count-obsessed Terry, and Alice Braga (Elysium), Richard Ayoade (The Mandalorian), Wes Studi (Woke, The Last of the Mohicans), Fortune Feimster (Bless the Harts) and Zenobia Shroff (The Affair) as the voices of the Counselors. Comedian Donnell Rawlings voices Joe’s barber Dez, and June Squibb (Nebraska) provides the voice of Gerel. They join Foxx, Fey, Phylicia Rashad, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Angela Bassett and Daveed Diggs.
Rated PG, Soul features jazz compositions and arrangements by globally renowned musician and Grammy® nominee Jon Batiste, and an original score by Oscar® winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (The Social Network).
April is all about Autism acceptance! Pixar Animation Studios’ SparkShorts program promotes Autism with a short film available on Disney+ called “Loop”. Check out the wonderful details behind “Loop” from The Walt Disney Company here:
Throughout April, celebrations across the globe promote autism acceptance and ensure that autistic people are seen, heard and celebrated for their unique experiences of the world. Inclusion is also at the heart of Pixar Animation Studios’ SparkShorts program, an experimental storytelling initiative that welcomes new creative voices at the studio to share their stories.
Erica Milsom is the director of “Loop,” a SparkShort now streaming on Disney+, which is centered around two kids at canoe camp who find themselves adrift on a lake, unable to move forward until they find a new way to connect and see the world through each other’s eyes. This film breaks new ground by featuring Pixar’s first non-verbal autistic character. In this Q&A, Milsom talks about the care and authenticity that went into bringing “Loop” to the screen.
What inspired the story of “Loop”?
Erica Milsom (EM): A year prior, I was volunteering at a non-profit arts program for adults with disabilities and had this profound experience of sitting next to an artist who didn’t communicate using words. I found myself nervous without language to connect, and I put forth a lot of effort to create small talk with them, which didn’t work at all.
One day, the teacher gave me the task of making a rain stick by nailing hundreds of nails into a long tube. When I stopped talking, and worked on this tube, I found that the people around me came to life. They didn’t talk, but they would look at what I was creating, and they’d take me over to look at what they were creating. It was an eye-opening experience for me to learn how people connect so differently.
One of Pixar’s strong suits is creating stories using characters without dialogue. So I had the thought to put our Pixar animators in the shoes of someone who communicates without language.
When did you decide to make this a story about autism?
EM: I reached out to a couple of groups in Pixar, [including] one called Quirky Kids, which is a group of parents with kids who are different. I asked them how their kids who have differences around communication would react in the situation of two kids in a canoe who don’t share a common language. Everyone I spoke with reacted differently, but it became clear that [parents of children with] autism had this really interesting point of view with how they experience things.
What was important to you when bringing “Loop” to life?
EM: There’s a movement in the disability community called “Nothing about us without us.” What it means is that you shouldn’t tell stories about people with disabilities without including them in the process of making the story—and in a significant role.
For me, it was important that our voice talent for “Loop” was someone who’s autistic. As part of the process, we needed to understand what made her comfortable and what she needed. For Madison Bandy, the voice actress who portrayed Renee, being comfortable meant not auditioning, as well as recording at her house, with her family all together as a support system.
I love how perfect she was for the role because she could be an authentic voice for the character. Without her, we wouldn’t have made something that feels so authentic and true.
How did you go about depicting the autistic experience in “Loop”?
EM: During the film, we brought in consultants from the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) to help us understand and depict our autistic character, Renee. The first and most important thing we learned from them is that Autism is a spectrum, so no one person will represent the entirety of the autistic experience.
But I’d noticed in films I’d seen about autism that their sensory experience is so often displayed negatively, and I got really excited by the positive potential in it. So many of us try to hide what we feel and shove those feelings down. In “Loop,” I love how you can see what Renee is going through, and we tried to display that in the scene where she and Marcus are touching the reeds. It’s a wonderful thing when you can experience the positive side of that sensory difference.
The lighting department helped us figure out what a sensory experience could look like, and I loved one that had saturation and more color, because it showed how it could be positive.
What can viewers take away from Renee and Marcus after watching “Loop”?
EM: Listening to autistic people, it profoundly hit me that sometimes the way they are experiencing the world may come across to non-autistic people as though they want us to go away, but they actually just want someone who will stick around, let them be and protect the space around them. That’s why in “Loop,” Marcus just stays with Renee throughout the film.
It demonstrates the idea that any moment of stress or misunderstanding will pass, and staying open to the moment and relaxing helps everyone. In “Loop,” Marcus doesn’t know what’s happening, but in just giving Renee her space, he finds a way to the other side. From Renee’s perspective, it’s about understanding that someone can give you space and will see your point of view.
Even when it looks like there may not be a possibility to connect, there is. That’s the message here.
