What Filipino artists can learn from pixar legend Peter Sohn
Pixar legend Peter Sohn, the director of the upcoming animated film Elemental, recently shared what he learned from fellow Disney-Pixar animators, including Filipino artist-friends, about how to tell good stories.
The multi-hyphenate started out at Pixar as story artist for Finding Nemo, whose first job was designing the scuba glasses and tank in the box-office hit animated film. He would venture into voice acting roles such as Emile in Ratatouille, Squishy in Monsters University and most recently, as Sox in Lightyear. As director, he first worked on Partly Cloudy, followed by The Good Dinosaur, and now he’s close to finishing most personal work Elemental, which he previewed at the Disney APAC Content Showcase in Singapore last month.
During a roundtable interview on the sidelines of the two-day event, The STAR asked the 45-year-old director/animator some tips for those who’d want to follow in his and other great Pixar artists’ footsteps.
His lengthy piece of advice, however, could serve well for any creative who wants to be better at storytelling: “I would say observe life and have an opinion on it. And I know that sounds so silly but I have a lot of great Filipino artist-friends and my favorite artists, they all come with a point of view. They all come with a specific point. And when you hear a diverse point of view, you just want to go, ‘Let’s put that up, make that louder.’ Or, ‘No one’s heard that, make that a louder thing.’”
He continued, “And with artists today, I just hope that they’re able to not copy other things, but observe the life around them and find a way to communicate that. And not be judgmental about it, like, you know, having fun with it and having a way to present it and communicate it in a way that is positive. I think there’s just too much negative stuff out there.
“And so, the idea of knowing the life around you and experiencing it, and being able to translate it in a way that communicates, I think is such a powerful thing for young artists to learn.”
Sohn is sharing this advice because it took him some time to discover and use his voice. “Because I didn’t know, I was always copying other things. It took me a long time to go, you know, these people don’t want that from me. They just want, ‘Tell that story you told when you were growing up, Pete.’ ‘Why? I want to draw like this other person.’ ‘No, do this.’
“It took a while to realize like, oh, the value of the individual voice is so important. And I would be hoping that artists can learn that at a young age because when they get older they can make films that really have an impact because (they) from a point of view that’s very real, versus a point of view of someone else’s, which a lot of movies are.”
The forthcoming Elemental is very much his voice, with its story partly inspired by real life as a son of South Korean immigrants. The story unfolds in Element City, where fire-, water-, land- and air-residents live together and revolves around the central characters of Ember, a tough, quick-witted and fiery young woman and the sappy, go-with-the-flow guy named Wade, as the media release said.
It took Sohn seven years to conceptualize and create this film “because so many different things happened in my life that would change the story.” From being a purely modern romance, it would evolve into a classic family drama with a more encompassing and inclusive story of love, especially as Sohn’s parents passed on during the making of Elemental.
“The original concept was like, you know, what (happens if) a fire fell in love with water? And how is that a problem? For me, it was like, ‘Oh, I fell in love with someone that wasn’t Korean. And it was a problem for my parents.’ And so (there’s) this sort of love story between these two characters fire and water. But then a daughter and a father started to form and that started to change and evolve through the years of making the story itself,” Sohn shared.
“I was raised to respect and honor our elders and parents and a big thing about this movie is respecting our parents for the sacrifices they made for us. I lost my parents while making this film and so it’s all about honoring our parents. I hope everyone can connect with that.”
In a way, Sohn’s journey into Disney-Pixar and the world of animation is deeply connected with his parents, particularly his mom.
“I love animation because of its visual storytelling. My favorite films have been ones that have been told visually where you don’t need to know the language very much. That’s because (when) I grew up, my mom took me to the movies all the time. All the time! But it was American movies and so she didn’t understand the English. I would sit there and I had to translate everything,” he said.
“But I remember seeing some Disney movies where I didn’t have to translate anything. She would just watch it and she would cry. I didn’t realize at that time as a kid, but as an adult in animation, (visual storytelling is) my favorite thing.”
His experience with his mom is the reason his Elemental characters are identified and differentiated by elements so that any viewer, regardless of race, ethnicity or cultural background and even age, can understand and possibly connect to.
“It’s not like it’s a white person or it’s an Asian person. These are elements. Meaning, anyone can connect to that. But I was also trying to find how to make them universal in a way that a kid or adult could understand what they’re going through.
“And that’s what I loved about fire and water — it was that immediately visually, like, that’s impossible. They can’t (be together) and so that type of visual storytelling is something that I enjoy a great deal and I hope we can get that into the film in that way. Hopefully, that’s something that can translate (with everyone),” he said.
Part of the reason that Elemental took long to happen was because he still had to come up with a new technology to realize his vision, bring his story to life and make his characters lovable to the audiences.
He shared, “Some of our early tests of Ember were real fire with eyes and they were terrifying! It was so scary, like you’d just want an exorcist to pick the demon out of Ember here.”
“But I remember Daniel (Munoz), our artist, took an iPhone footage of a fire in his backyard, then took the frames out, painted each frame and animated a fire character that felt like it could burn you to the touch and still be really appealing. But it was a very long process.”
Sohn also said that he and his team are completing work on water characters like Wade, which are “hardest to do” because they’re always animated, barely solid and difficult to contain in a single shape.
“The water character right now is still the hardest. We still have three months to finish the film and (Wade) continues to be very difficult because he’s constantly moving. His face is so simple that sometimes it looks weird, and the light goes through his face,” he further said.
“It’s just really hard but there are a lot of talented people at Pixar that are way smarter than me. And they’ve been able to find a way to translate this stuff in a way that I hope we can finish the film.”
Meanwhile, Sohn also gave us a view of what it’s been like working at Pixar, from storyboard artist to now director, and how it’s the “people” — despite how cliche it may sound — that keep him going despite work challenges.
“You’re in a small world and then you move into another world and as a director, you can see all the worlds… and as you know, seven years, five years on (Elemental), like the amount of artists that you’re seeing on a day-to-day basis is so inspiring because these people love what they do. And it’s part of a tribe,” he also said during our roundtable.
“You know I grew up in New York where there was a lot of racism so there’s a lot of places where it’s like. ‘You’re this color, you don’t belong here, get out of here, and you’re like, screw you, I was born here.’
“And then, you start to meet other artists and you would go, ‘Oh, this is my tribe. You are my people.’ And working at Pixar, it’s that idea of like it doesn’t matter what your skin color is, but we are all passionate about the same work. That’s the thing that you just keep going back to for sure.”
Elemental is slated for release in June.
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