‘Elemental’ Preview: Director Peter Sohn Breaks New Animated Ground with Pixar’s First Rom-Com
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“Elemental” (opening theatrically June 16) achieves a number of milestones for Pixar. It’s the studio’s first rom-com and its first immigrant story about family struggle and sacrifice. And it’s the first Pixar film in which VFX touches every shot.
Set in Element City, where fire, water, air, and earth co-exist despite their fundamental differences, a friendship leads to unexpected sparks when the fiery and intense Ember (Leah Lewis) meets the watery, go-with-the-flow Wade (Mamoudou Athie). Because the character design and world-building of “Elemental” are inextricably linked to the primary elements, at its very core, the film strips animation, storytelling, and identity down to their essentials.
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But for director Peter Sohn (“The Good Dinosaur”), it’s a very personal story about paying tribute to his parents, who emigrated from Korea to the Bronx in the early ’70s, opened a grocery store, and raised a family.
“Family heritage has been a big part of this journey with a lot of people talking about their past and their family trees, and it’s been a highlight discovering these pieces from our crew as well,” Sohn told IndieWire at Pixar’s Emeryville HQ during a March 27 sneak peek of about 20 minutes of footage.
Sohn had two other personal components driving “Elemental”: His marriage to a non-Korean, which expanded his cultural awareness, and his lifelong fascination with chemistry, particularly the periodic table of elements. “Culture clashes and opposites attracting was my North Star,” he added.
The movie’s genesis began with the periodic table, which Sohn used to doodle in high school as an early form of expression. “There was this funny drawing that I remember discovering about like a fire and a water character,” he continued, “and that triggering a whole lot of different ideas, and I just couldn’t stop drawing these new, little things.
Courtesy of Disney/Pixar
“And then I was drawing little fire characters on boats taking these long journeys and how tough it was and scary it must have been for fire to be in the middle of the ocean. And so these themes just started to connect. And then my relationship with my wife [resulted] in my doing funny drawings the first time our families got together for dinner. There were fire dinner drawings of, like, the water character eating spicy, hot foods for the first time.”
To pull off “Elemental,” it was crucial that Pixar first crack the chemistry codes, beginning with fire and water. After all, Ember wasn’t on fire, and Wade wasn’t wet — they were literally fire and water. As a result, the journey was a process of reverse engineering, in which Pixar first had to define the look and behavior of the characters before embarking on the immense world-building. Element City was modeled after New York as a series of integrated neighborhoods comprised of the organic materials that would complement (and survive) each element. For example, Fire Town was constructed with ceramic, metal, and brick.
Courtesy of Disney/Pixar
According to production designer Don Shank, “design ideas inspired new technology, which inspired new design.” In terms of animation, that meant it was a balance between the logic of physics and the appeal of cartoons. But Ember’s journey drove the hierarchy, testing the limits of Pixar’s tech teams and resulting in the construction of a new pipeline for earlier and closer collaboration between VFX and the other departments.
A series of complex simulations for fire and water was created with new tools for rigging and manipulating the characters. Once the physics-based animation was honed, the artists dialed it back with greater stylization to make the faces and silhouettes more readable and the performances more human. The result was sophisticated sculpting with 2D outlining and some classic squash-and-stretch. The first major test for Ember was the look of a paper airplane going through her. Then came a procedural look of the flame with transparencies built into it.
“It’s almost like the head became this multi-plane camera where, when she moved, you’re like, whoa, whoa, — there’s dimensionality going on there,” Sohn said. “And then there was a walk cycle that was just a firecracker walking in step. Her foot was lighting up, and her flame was moving back like a torch being passed through a hallway. Going candlelight was another milestone where the flame was shrinking and she was becoming vulnerable.”
Courtesy of Disney/Pixar
Yet water was even more difficult to master. Wade contained all sorts of reflective and refractive lighting properties that obscured his facial features. “He was just so unmanageable,” added Sohn. “And he looked so weird all the time. I just kept pushing the water, and I went over the line just ’cause I couldn’t see, but the way he moved played into that. He so easily could turn into Jell-O just by slowing some of the ripples down a little bit, or how fast he could turn into a ‘Soul’ character if the ripples didn’t appear. There were just so many avenues that he could shift into very quickly and that would surprise all of us.”
As far as the storytelling, Sohn enjoyed leaning into the rom-com element between Ember and Wade and their families, drawing on inspiration from “Moonstruck” and “Amélie.” “I liked the idea of this inter-elemental couple and what holes in their lives would need to get filled for them to connect,” he said.
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