Pixar’s ‘The Good Dinosaur’ – interview with director Peter Sohn and producer Denise Ream
The Good Dinosaur is the latest offering from Pixar following on from Inside Out earlier in the year. It is the story of Arlo the Apatosaurus who befriends a boy named Spot as they share a journey of discovery and growing up together as “man and his dog”. Skwigly met with the director Peter Sohn and producer Denise Ream about what it was like to work on the film.
First of all, did the film turn out as you expected it to in terms of things like story and how it looked as it was obviously quite a big project?
Peter Sohn: It was more than I ever expected
Denise Ream: Yeah I think it exceeded both our expectations, we both came on at a time when it was quite a challenge you know. It was troubled and I don’t think I would have ever expected it to end up as beautiful and sort of emotional
It was definitely a beautiful film. In terms of the scenery as well, that must have been quite difficult to produce artistically and technically.
P.S.: Yeah, I was really trying to create a world that was really immersive and visceral just like we experienced out there and how beautiful it was. Everywhere we would go we would comment on the gorgeousness of everything but our guides would say “look that mountain was formed by a giant landslide, that must have been very devastating”, and so trying to capture both of those things was a huge part of the process with the sets and there was new technology kind of created for it and we worked really hard.
D.R.: Honestly, trying to work on the story and getting the story right was hard. Which was incredible when you see how beautiful the movie is and how rich it is, that’s seems easy by comparison now than the story process.
So it was a bit of an uphill climb for that?
D.R.: Absolutely
The characters were also all very interesting, it was odd because you didn’t really see them as dinosaurs, they had a very human aspect to them. Was that a struggle to get that through on screen, bringing that kind of emotional level that an audience can relate to?
P.S.: Yeah, it was a challenge that got us excited from the beginning the whole concept of flipping it was kinda the whole heart of the thing so when you find Arlo how do you make him feel like a boy lost in the woods. How do you do that? There are a lot of artist that helped find the ways to do that, like his eyes are a little bit bigger, his knees are a little knobbier likes he’s still that growing kid and so his reaction through the animation will all feel like boy.
D.R.: But the voice, you know, the voice actors really add a lot to that sort of human emotion and really the animators are spectacular in what they did to plus the performance, it was amazing to watch.
As a Pixar film a lot of people will consider it a children’s film there’s that darker side to it, like the section (without spoiling it too much) where they get drunk from the fruit. There’s also quite traumatic parts in the film. How do you manage to bring it to a more adult level without taking over the childish charm of the entire film?
P.S.: It’s a balance for sure. We worked very hard to find what was appropriate for Arlo’s story. It’s about a character trying to go through his fears and how does he get through it. He would be tested in ways that were exactly what we experienced out in reality, nature can be devastating but also beautiful at the same time. Loss is something we greatly talked about, it became very personal thing and so we wanted to respect it and honour it but at the same time like the berries and everything it’s something that happened in nature so we just exploited everything nature that can bring.
The Good Dinosaur will be out in cinemas tomorrow on the 27th November.