'It's four or five seconds a week per animator': The makers of Pixar's new film, Elio
When Elio (voice of Yonas Kibreab), a space fanatic with an active imagination and a huge alien obsession, is beamed up to the Communiverse, an interplanetary organization with representatives from galaxies far and wide, he must form new bonds with eccentric alien lifeforms, including a chirpy, shipper liquid supercomputer called OOOOO (voice of Shirley Henderson).
Three decades ago, a new animation studio prepared to release their first-ever feature film in cinemas, a buddy movie featuring a quirky cowboy and a space superhero. The fledgling studio was called Pixar and their first release — broke the mould for animated storytelling and changed the course of movie history.
Almost thirty years after the world fell in love with Andy’s toys and other Pixar classics, their 29th feature film comes to our big screens. Elio, the tale of a space-obsessed boy who finds himself accidentally beamed into outer space — where he’s mistaken for Earth’s chief ambassador — sends its protagonist on a intergalactic voyage of self discovery.
While it might not quite scale the heights of classics like or Elio again blends the intimate with the universal in a richly detailed tale. It all comes about through years of story building and preparation, attention to detail and animators who spend dozens of hours creating just a few seconds of film footage over the course of their work at Pixar’s studios in California.
“The logistics are a big part of my job,” says producer Alice Mary Drumm. “For we probably had about 250 people at the peak of the crew, but we had over 400 people involved throughout the film. Almost everyone at Pixar touches the film in some way, and there are 1,200 of us. The average animator is animating about five, five and a half feet a week, which is basically one shot. It's four or five seconds a week per animator, maybe a little less. At our peak, we are probably going through one or two minutes of animation a week.”
It’s the kind of painstaking craftwork that makes Pixar best in show in a golden era for animated filmmaking. Featuring subtle nods to sci-fi classics like and and a backstory involving Nasa’s Voyager space probe, Elio tells the story of a recently orphaned boy who has a loving but testing relationship with his aunt. He’s a space-obsessed boy with a lively imagination who has long dreamed of encountering alien life - so he’s thrilled when he’s accidentally beamed up into outer space.
Elio arrives at the Communiverse, an interplanetary organisation with representatives from various galaxies, and is mistaken as Planet Earth’s leader. But when he’s tasked with helping prevent the fearsome and powerful Lord Grigon from seizing control of the Communiverse, he needs to get savvy fast with the help of his eccentric sidekick, Glordon.
Taking on a sci-fi movie means creating two very different worlds within one movie, and Pixar’s production team got to work, says director Domee Shi. “Tackling a sci-fi movie, you can basically design the alien world to look like anything, the sky's the limit, and that's kind of daunting. Production designer Harley Jessup and his art team did such an amazing job with finding the look and feeling of the Communiverse. He really challenged himself and the team to design a space that we've never seen before in any of our movies at Pixar, but also in other sci fi movies from other studios.
“A good North Star for us was thinking about space as this aspirational wish fulfilment for a lonely boy on Earth who feels like an alien. The moment that he arrives in space, it has to be the opposite feeling of how he felt on Earth. If Earth was desaturated, cold, and he felt visually boxed in, then space is huge, colourful, vibrant, full of organic shapes and alien designs that are not humanoid at all, but still feel quite friendly and appealing.”
From the antics of superhero family to the happy/sad emotional rollercoaster that was as the studio approaches its 30th year, almost everyone has an opinion on the former movie they hold closest to their hearts, which tale resonated with them the most as they watched on the big screen for the first time.
They include, it emerges, the filmmakers themselves. “I grew up watching Pixar movies, and they were some of the first times I experienced cinema that could change me,” says Madelaine Sharafin, making her feature directorial debut with Elio, who was a toddler when debuted in cinemas. “I hadn't realised that a person can watch a movie and come out feeling incredibly different about themselves and about the world, or even that a movie could make somebody cry.
“The one that really changed things for me was watching which I think is one of my favourite movie endings of all time (when Sully and his best friend Boo are reunited). I think it's brilliant. I would finish the movie, and then I'd immediately restart it, because I was so moved. I didn't want to leave that feeling.”
Looking back for director Domee Shi, it was the opening moments of in which a grumpy and heartbroken widower takes to the skies — not knowing he had a stowaway on board — that first resonated.
“Pixar films, they just felt different than other animated films,” says Shi. “Because they always have such an emphasis on good story, and they really treat animation like a medium, not a genre. They never shy away from telling stories with deeper or more adult themes, and you always walk away from a Pixar film feeling a little bit changed in some way, and that's our hope with Elio too.
“The film that impacted me the most was probably Up just because I bawled my eyes out when I watched the first 10 minutes of it. There were no words spoken, but you got the sense of an entire relationship, marriage, a life. It was just amazing to see, like pure visual storytelling on the big screen.”
For producer Alice Mary Drumm, it was the studio’s imagination in bringing audiences a movie where the central character was a rat that resonated.
“There are so many great movies,” she says. for me, was one — it’s just incredible that any studio would make a movie about rats in a kitchen. It's such a crazy idea, and I think that encapsulates Pixar for me, that there's such creative freedom and such belief, while also holding the bar. It's about story and character, whether it's a rat, whether it's aliens, as long as we're focusing on that, and then we use animation, because we can do anything in animation. Those are the things that I think help us keep our compass at Pixar.”
- is in cinemas from Friday, June 20
