How Pixar Created A Magical World For ‘Onward’
Things are reaching fever pitch at MickeyBlog HQ over the opening of Pixar’s latest film Onward in just a few short weeks! The film will tell the story of two eleven brothers who go on a mythical quest to have one last moment with their deceased father in a magical, mystical world where everything is possible.
D23 shared some awesome insights this week about all of the work that went into creating this magical new realm and we want to pass on some of these impressive details with you. Because the film is set in a suburban fantasy town where unicorns are vermin and dragons are pets this new realm needed to be both original yet familiar for Disney audiences.
One of the big obstacles was incorporating magic into the film, as story artist Louise Smythe said when speaking to D23, “We all have ideas in our heads about what magic is based on past films, or books we’ve read, or legends we’ve heard that have been passed down from generation to generation. So, we wanted to try to make our own version of magic.”
To create a magical realm that is both believable and fantastical the creative team had to come up with their own set of magical rules. These are as follows:
- Every Spell Requires a Heart’s Fire- according to Smythe, this is like reaching deep down in your soul and finding that confidence and that belief that the magic is going to work—and saying it with gusto!”
- Magical Decree – This is a “mental and emotional exercise,” Smythe explained. “You almost have to be in a certain state of mind when you’re doing that.”
- Assist Element – When brothers Ian and Barley attempt to conjure their dad they use a phoenix gem. Assist objects are required in this magical realm for higher-level spells.
- Components- These are required to do spells. In the incredible realm, Pixar has created this can be emotional, verbal, material or movement.
Another cool Pixar fact is that Smythe along with Kelsey Mann (Head of Story) formed a Spell Squad to help them come up with the musical incantations used in the film. They would play word association games, had whiteboards filled with ideas and narrowed down the options from there.
Once the rules of magic were established it was up to the effect teams to understand the role magic played in the film. Each spell was scaled between 1 – 10 with a level 1 spell having more subdued effects than let’s say a 10 spell which has more complexity.
As effects supervisor, Vincent Serritella describes, “For every sequence, we came up with this ‘magic theory’ packet where we would track and plot the intensity of the spell—and the success rate of the spell—and accompany it with how much visual screen space it occupies.”
The end result is that magic essentially becomes its own character. This was directly inspired by the film’s director Dan Scanlon’s life. He was only a year old when he lost his father. Scanlon recalls, “He felt like a legend or something of yore, and that’s really what led us to this world.”
Don’t miss your chance to check out Onward when it comes out in theaters on March 6th and to keep following along with MickeyBlog for the latest Walt Disney World news and updates!
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Source: D23