On July 14, Elemental, the new Disney/Pixar production, opens in Spain. At Cinemacomics we have already been able to see a preview, as well as speak with its director Peter Sohn (Arlo’s Journey), about the film.
Elemental, is set in Element City, where the residents of Fire, Water, Earth and Air live together. The story features Candela, a tough, smart and passionate young woman, whose friendship with a funny, sensitive and easy-going boy, Nilo, challenges her beliefs about the world in which they live.
The movie visually looks amazing. Especially in the way the elements react to each other, as well as the design of characters of fire, water. But above all it is a story about family, love and the obstacles that people can find when relating to other people from other cultures.
This film, in the words of its director, has been his most personal project, since he has captured some of his personal experiences in the story that he has also written. Regarding this question, we asked you, how did you come up with the idea of making the elements the characters of the film?
“It really was a chemistry of various ideas throughout, you know, my life. And so one of them was just a fun doodling idea. I remember, you know, just sketching out different ideas, finding where that would take me.
And I came across these fire characters and then that led me to a water character. I could feel the conflict and the fun that could come from there. But that also began to tie into my own life with my wife, having married someone who wasn’t Korean. And the culture shock that she created, with my own family, on top of that.
You know, I don’t know about you, but as a kid, I didn’t really appreciate all the things my parents had been through. I mean, they had been through a war, you know, they came to the country without speaking English. And there were so many obstacles for them that, as a kid growing up in New York, I just didn’t understand or empathize. Then as I get older and each milestone passes, the more I start to be amazed at what they were able to do with so little and that I couldn’t do that now as a parent.
And that gratitude became this part of everything that tied everything together. But these element characters, you know, like in the pictures you’d seen of that periodic table, it really wasn’t a joke. That’s really a big part of how I started to form, oh, this idea for this simple visual metaphor of a diverse set of communities really came out of fun, you know?
Both Peter and Denise Ream, producer of the film, talked about the challenges they faced in bringing the different characters of Elemental to life:
“The most pleasant or easy, it was easy, that was fire. Bringing Amber to life was a very difficult problem, but the most exciting thing was seeing her come to life for the first time because she was our main character and she had the burden of the story. That was really exciting. I think the most challenging thing was the water,” said Peter.
To which Denise added: “Yes. Water is definitely always difficult from a visual effects perspective, but then add in, you know, try to create a performance out of it and you know, the reflective nature of the water.”
Do you want to see Elemental?
