Lighting Study, Sharon Calahan, Digital paint over set render, 2010.
Lighting Study, Sharon Calahan, Digital paint over set render, 2010.
I believe there are three things you have to do to make a good film: you need to tell a compelling story with appealing characters set in a believable world. When you’re making a sequel, the rules for two of those three, the characters and the world, are set for you; your main job is to tell a great new story. This challenge can’t be under-estimated—coming up with the right story is the hardest thing about making movies. But for me, it’s a special pleasure.
It takes four years to make one of our films. So much of us goes into them—our personal experiences, the things we find funny, the things we like and dislike . . . there’s a little bit of everyone who helped create the story in the finished film. By the time we’re done, I don’t think of the characters and their world as creations anymore. I know them so well, they’re more like friends, or colleagues, or family members.
So for me, making another film with characters I know and love is like getting to spend time with old friends. I get to find out more about them; have the fun of seeing them in totally different places; and see them change and do things I couldn’t have guessed the first time around. Because, for us, the most important thing is to tell a great story, one that will entertain and surprise us as well as the audience—and, to do that, just as with any movie, we have to do something new; we have to go places we weren’t expecting.
Lightning McQueen and Mater’s adventures in this film just so happened to call for some of the most ambitious sets, environments, and characters we’ve ever done at Pixar. The crew on this film had a huge task in front of them, but they rose to the challenge and more. Seeing their inspiring work for this world was one of the biggest pleasures of making this film.
—John Lasseter
Armand Baltazar, Digital, 2010.
