Film Journal July 2018

where things shift and the story kicks
into high gear.” The antagonist this time
around is a mind-controlling villain
called Screenslaver. “The landscape has
changed to the point where you start
to go, ‘Oh, man, has every single thing
that can possibly be done already been
done?’ You can get distracted by that.
I’ve always felt that the Parr family was
the point of the movie more than the
superhero stuff.”
Bird continues, “The biggest challenge
always is trying to get the story to work
as good as you can before the clock runs
out. On this film, a year was taken off our
schedule. Toy Story 4 wasn’t quite ready
to go, so we got moved up. If something
didn’t immediately pay off in regards to
the core of the story which is the role
switch [between Helen and Bob] and the
fact that they’re discovering Jack-Jack’s
powers, then I had to be brutal and cut
it. I ended up writing a lot of stuff that
I thought was good but didn’t fit. You’re
always wrestling between clarity and
pace. It’s like Jenga [the block-stacking
and crashing game] with story points.
You have to pull pieces away to keep the
pace going, but if you pull the wrong ones
away, then it starts to fall apart.”
It is important to recognize that the
world can be a threatening place when
telling stories to children. “A lot of people
don’t remember that about fairy tales,”
Bird observes. “The original Brothers
Grimm stuff is dark. Part of the point of
stories is to have you explore things that
life holds for you in one way or another.
Maybe they’re not as dramatic as a witch
trying to eat you, but there are villains
and temptations in the world. There are
things that look scary that you find out
are actually okay and things that look
okay that you should be scared of or at
least wary of. Stories are ways of testing
the water for all the things that life can
potentially bring to you.”
Since the first film, technology has
significantly evolved and improved. “With
the original we were doing everything
that computers were bad at, such as fire,
water, fabric and humans,” Bird recalls.
“There were only a couple of humans
that looked decent—in particular, Geri
in Geri’s Game, who ended showing up
in Toy Story 2 as the guy who sewed
up Woody, and Boo, the little girl in
Savvy siblings and business partners Evelyn and Winston Deavor (voiced by
Catherine Keener and Bob Odenkirk) summon Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson),
Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) and Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson)
to share a plan designed to make Supers legal again.
Monsters, Inc. We were constantly on the
brink of failure through the whole making
of the film. There’s stuff that is still hard,
but you’re not always courting failure. We
could also do this on a larger scale. We
were able to do crowds. In the first film
we were struggling to fill the stands at the
track meet. Our lighting tools are more
sophisticated. People keep on thinking
that it’s going to be cheaper and faster on
the next film because you’ve put all of this
money into R&D, but the thing is, every
time there’s an improvement, artists want
to use it to do something new.”
Aiding the production was the
ability to render lighting much earlier
in the animation process. “You used to
have to light and then wait for renders,”
Bird explains. “Sometimes they would
take a while. You would make your best
guesses. Pixar now has a way to render
lighting at low resolution. It looks like
grainy film but has all of the properties
of light. You can judge a shot quickly,
which is great. Also, everybody on the
team got to show their work whether
or not it was finished at the same time,
© 2018 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.
which enabled us to spend our effort on
where it was going to matter.”
The designs of the characters were
updated. “We did sculptures of what we
wanted them to be like and got them right
on. As good as our computer rigs were [for
the original], they weren’t good enough
to capture all of the nuances. On this film
we had much better tools and that enabled
us to go back and get how we wanted the
characters to look the first time.”
The setting of the story has not
been altered. “We’re still in that late-
1950s, early-1960s groove,” Bird notes.
“Incredibles 2 is more urban than the last
film.” Despite the shortened production
schedule, time was still made for
incorporating little character moments
like Dash straightening an elderly lady’s
glasses after he rescues her. “If somebody
likes the film enough to see it more than
once, they will be rewarded because
there’s stuff happening all over the place.
Hopefully, it’s done in a way that is not
competing with other things that we want
you to look at.”
Another treat is the music composed
by Michael Giacchino, as well as the
sound design by Ren Klyce. “Seeing it
in Dolby Atmos is going to be a trip
because we’re playing a lot with sound
spatially in the theatre. We’re being crazy
with it in a good way. It’s going to be
immersive. I would encourage anybody
who is interested in the film to see it in
the various high-end formats such as
IMAX and Dolby Vision, because we
take advantage of them.”
“I’m proud of the team and the work
that everyone did,” Bird says. “There are
probably five or six particular things that
I can’t wait for people to see. We have
some killer action sequences but also some
good animation acting. There are a lot of
talented animators at Pixar.”
Asked about the return of the
egocentric, pint-sized fashion designer he
voices, Bird laughs. “Edna is still short
and bossy!”
A nice surprise for Bird was the
appearance of the Iron Giant in Ready
Player One. “Steven Spielberg gave me my
first start in the business as a writer and
director,” he notes.
A passion project remains 1906,
which deals with the massive turn-ofthe-century
earthquake that devastated
San Francisco. “The way that I want to
do it is unusual. At this point, people are
interested in part of it and not interested
or frightened by other parts. Hope springs
eternal. It may happen.”
26 FILMJOURNAL.COM / JULY 2018
024-068.indd 26
5/23/18 3:38 PM