The Nerd Stash recently attended an exclusive press conference that Disney hosted for the upcoming Pixar film, Elemental. Director Peter Sohn and producer Denise Ream both attended the event while sharing their insights into the creation of the animated film. The official synopsis for Elemental reads as, in a city where fire, water, land, and air residents live together, a fiery young woman and a go-with-the-flow guy discover something elemental: how much they actually have in common. The cast of Pixar’s Elemental includes Leah Lewis as Ember Lumen and Mamoudou Athie as Wade Ripple, Ronnie del Carmen as Ember’s soon-to-be-retired dad, Bernie; Shila Ommi as Ember’s love-seeking mom, Cinder; Wendi McLendon-Covey as Wade’s stormy and Air-Ball-loving boss, Gale; Catherine O’Hara as Wade’s welcoming mom, Brook; Mason Wertheimer as Ember’s admiring earth neighbor, Clod; and Joe Pera as an overgrown city bureaucrat, Fern.
Biggest Personal Challenge During Production of Pixar’s Elemental
Denise Ream: “I think that when we were sent home basically managing and producing a movie this complex remotely without being with the crew was a big challenge. I felt like I had one hand tied behind my back. So that was a challenge, personally.”
Peter Sohn: “Yeah, for me it was honestly the passing of both my parents. Like, I didn’t realize how much it would affect the production of this, but, you know, in the beginning of the development, my dad went and then toward the end my mom went. And I mean, both of those times shook me in a way that you just, you know, like, I don’t know if it was an upbringing, but like, we’ve just got to keep working, keep working, keep working. But I definitely slipped off the rails there, but you know, to honor them, I put as much love and work that I could into the film, but that was the biggest personal challenge.”
The Design & Construction of Element City
Peter Sohn: “There’s an internal story issue. The internal storyline is trying to build a city that will support what Ember’s going through. Part of her journey is understanding her identity, how she ties to her own culture, and then to the culture of the city that she has lived in or been a part of. And so, trying to make Fire Town the neighbor that she is like a hearth where she’s very comfortable.”
He continues: “And then the city itself outside downtown, and I mean outside Fire Town in downtown into Element City proper is that it would be a little bit harder for Ember, but it would be a struggle for her because the main infrastructure would be water. But through this journey with Wade, she begins to see the city in a new light. So, we needed to discover parts of the city that were beautiful and meaningful to her, and both positive and negative. And they were all designed with that in mind. And so, when a place felt a little bit more dangerous of Ember, we pushed the design of the buildings to opposite the set and the idea of it to be not only memorable, but also to be dangerous.”
Denise Ream: “I would also add that we went to a lot of locations in the movie, and so there was a high degree of complexity. And so, the sets department had a pretty big challenge with covering all of these different areas we had to do a lot with kind of a little time.”
Films That Served as a Source of Inspiration for Elemental
Peter Sohn: “So many. I mean, for each layer of the film, there would be some film that would be a source of inspiration, you know? For example, for the romance, there was Moonstruck.”
Denise Ream: “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”
Peter Sohn: “Yeah. Shall We Dance, from the Japanese version.”
Denise Ream: “The Godfather.”
Peter Shon: “The Godfather and Godfather II, yeah, that amazing immigration scene in the beginning. There were films that we were being inspired by how they shot a location. A lot of French films. I mean, City of Lost Children, the pushed sort of theatric set design that was in there. All the way to Amelie, like, this sort of, like, I know they had cleaned up Paris in that film and made this sort of postcard version that was a really interesting concept. But for any sort of element in the film, there was a film that sort of, not all the time, but you know, we’re just film lovers here, and so we’re always appreciative of being inspired, you know, from movies.”
Developing a Social Hierarchy in Element City
Peter Sohn: “It was really based off of Ember’s character and her family. Meaning, what would be the hardest for fire characters? What kinda city would be the hardest? And building a city that the main infrastructure was water. Sorta like, oh, okay, so water got there first, they built this city. And then earth came next, so maybe it’s a delta.”
He adds: “Maybe this neighborhood has got canals and rivers through it, and then air and then fire. But that was that main sort of core, and then we built everything around that startup. But then as I was saying earlier, Ember’s journey about what we needed to support for her understanding of herself, we started designing the elements in that way, but we also wanted fun. We also wanted to exploit the four different elements. And so, these ideas of, what does the water district look like? What does the air district look like? What does the earth district look like?”
“Taking what we knew that Ember needed to go through, starting to fuel, like, oh, this is a city bureaucracy, so that’s got to be this fun old neighborhood. Oh, this is a really fancy water neighborhood, so to make that feel like a different class from where Ember comes from. But again, all being based off of the character’s journey.”
Pixar’s Elemental is currently scheduled to be released only in theaters in the United States on June 16, 2023.
