Ratatouille

Pixar Animation Studios (June 29 2007), Walt Disney Home Entertainment (November 6 2007), single disc, 111 mins plus supplements, 2.39:1 anamorphic widescreen, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround EX, Rated G, Retail: $29.99

Storyboard:

Auguste Gusteau’s motto that “anyone can cook” is really put to the test when little Remy finds himself in Paris and dreams of becoming a gourmet chef. There’s only just one teeny, tiny problem…Remy is a rat!

The Sweatbox Review:

What can be said that hasn’t already been said about this year’s clear animation winner? Essentially, all the good things you’ve heard about Ratatouille are true: the bad things are not. Although with their stunning track record, and only Carsbeing the slight creative dent in their gleaming fender, Pixar’s latest was apparently a hard sell for Disney’s marketing team, not least because the film was in production before the Mouse bought the Lamp late last year. Think about that:Ratatouille was in production as a full length animated feature film long before there was any prospect of secure distribution. There was perhaps no doubt that someone wouldn’t have snapped up anything the company tried to put out, but Pixar was, in effect, independently creating a movie whose lead character was a creature many couldn’t even bear to think about watching, with a decidedly uncommercial setting and oddly non-mainstream tone. That’s a pretty brave move for anyone, especially when you then saddle it with a title that no one could apparently pronounce!

Of course, back then, Ratatouille was Geri’s Game’s Jan Pinkava’s baby, and conceivably even more offbeat than what has eventually been served up by Brad Bird’s rewrite and final direction. With the story not gelling (or indeed, being toouncommercial), Pinkava was off (he gets a contractual co-story note and very small co-director credit somewhere in the end title scroll) and Bird, fresh from his Academy Award winning turn on The Incredibles, was brought in ostensibly for a rescue operation. With negotiations between Pixar and Disney coming to a close, it seemed that this odd little rat movie would be their next joint venture, and a named director like Bird undoubtedly soothed some anxious executives’ minds. They needn’t have worried…what Bird brings to the idea is his unparalleled eye for animated filmmaking. Ratatouille is easily his best computer animated film, though whether it touches the more emotional The Iron Giant is open for debate. Certainly for all the pyrotechnics of The Incredibles, Bird matches them in Ratatouille with huge portions of high comedy and bravo displays of cinematic verve.
He truly makes Ratatouille his own, evident from the Incredibles-like opening that provides a quick pre-filmed/televised recap of a pivotal character’s past. By the third spoken line in, you know you’re in good, masterful hands. In fact, I started enjoying myself so much that 40 minutes had passed before I realised 40 minutes had passed and I had forgotten to make any notes, such was the enjoyment factor of the film. One word I found while compiling my thoughts simply said “brilliant!” It only goes to show how much an animated film needs – apart from great animators, of course – a fantastic director who truly understands the medium, which makes the phoney numbness of the likes of Beowulf even more embarrassing by comparison. Certainly there was a little grumbling from Robert Zemeckis’ new motion capture unit at Disney’s when Ratatouille proudly announced that “no performance shortcuts” were used in its production! From the perfectly French stylised humans and Remy’s beating heart breathing, to the onslaught of a rabble of running rats,Ratatouille inevitably succeeds in looking so much more real than Beowulf because it isn’t supposed to look real.

It’s true that the design of our hero Remy isn’t the most original: comparisons to the Sesame Street Muppet Grover persisted with me whenever Remy hit an appropriate pose, even though this thought had come and gone in my mind when Ratatouille was served up in theaters earlier this year. At that point, ask anyone which film would have won the box office battles between an animated comedy about a chef-wannabe rat or the latest Catherine Zeta Jones “sophisticated comedy blockbuster”, also set in the kitchen, and the smart money could well have been on the lady, but it’s just another example of how Pixar’s writing process, refined and finalised by Bird here, can rise above the animation ghetto: Ratatouille is premium filmmaking, period. It’s just as sophisticated as a “true” French picture: at times I felt I was watching some amazing European animation from an independent studio rather than an all-guns blazing big-budget studio feature made predominantly by some crazy Californians!
Much of this is down to Michael Giacchino’s absolutely wonderful score, as varied, unique and original as the film itself. He shies away from the usual “Hollywood French sound” but still manages to have things sound distinctly Gallic, going for flirty flutes and bubbling bass lines that create the perfect texture to go along with Bird’s always moving, always involving images. Although it’s not the first time such convention has been used in animation, it’s also very clever how Remy and his human friend Linguini can understand each other but cannot actually speak to each other. It’s in these moments that Pixar show their amazing prowess with pantomime – Remy arguably works even stronger when he’s unable to speak to Linguini and remains mute – the level of personality acting should be inspiration to any would-be future Pixarians and does nothing less than raise the animation bar absurdidly high. Next summer’s WALL-E can’t come fast enough.

Apart from Bird’s superlative direction and Giacchino’s sublime score, specific mention should be made of Sharon Calahan and Robert Anderson’s cinematography and Darren Holmes’ editing, which both do wonders in helping to createRatatouille’s world and keep it alive. If only animated films could be judged on their filmmaking merits as opposed to being stuck in a fairly thankless category of their own. There’s real cinematography going on here, and carefully thought out editing that’s the best I’ve seen in major picture making for a good while…smooth and transparent as it all should be. As are the voices, not a huge name among them (apart from Peter O’Toole’s food critic), making a refreshing change where the characters can shine without the heavy burden of celebrity personalities filling in the gaps for poor writing:Ratatouille doesn’t need them since its characters are so well rounded, and since most are pulling off French accents, even the likes of Ian Holm, Brian Dennehy and baby bowler Janeane Garofalo go incognito.

Not that Ratatouille is all perfect. Patton Oswalt’s narration as Remy can feel heavy handed at times, possibly the result of Bird using Pinkava’s sequences in a new arc (Ratatouille, even with Bird’s name as writer-director, still feels more Pinkava’s concept with Bird’s clever but glossy coating). The film does flirt dangerously close to being overlong, but even then it’s only by five to ten minutes, if that, and if Ratatouille does begin to dip towards the end, a couple of twists – which cleverly never feel too convoluted – keep things interesting. A lack of true darkness or heavy dramatic scenes prevent Ratatouille from being just shy of beating all-time classics as Pinocchio, and even though, as with The Iron Giantand The Incredibles, Bird isn’t afraid to show death; as well as a few passing references throughout, there’s also a starkly shocking moment that comes and goes all too fast in an otherwise bright and happy movie. I also noted two instances of repeated gags: the “smell” of food, distinctively visualised in a swirl of warm, enticing imagery, and a terrific comedy line involving one character being another’s figment of their imagination. Both moments play out so wonderfully early on in the picture than when they’re repeated later on, it feels as if the filmmakers were stumped on how to top themselves in these brief moments rather than attempt something alternate.

But those are teeny nit-picks: for practically all of its running length, Ratatouille simply out and out entertains like no other animated feature since The Curse Of The Were Rabbit, pulling the sometimes formulaic Pixar in completely new directions. Even the clips I’d seen lots of times in the previews wowed and made me laugh again. Suspension of disbelief at such an outrageous idea as a rat who is able to cook with human assistance by hiding under a chef’s hat and yanking Linguini’s hair to cause convulsive movement is expertly handled: not since Superman flying or the resurrection of the Jurassic dinos will you accept the onscreen shenanigans without thought. As well as being a winning combination of technical exuberance and delightful gentle whimsy, Ratatouille is also Pixar’s first out and out romantic picture, with the relationships between Linguini and his secret sweetheart Colette as strongly written as anything in supposed more “smart and sophisticated” fare. A secondary sub-plot kicks into action fairly late in the game, but this only has the result of letting the first half breathe, allowing the sub-plot to boil nicely and build to an exciting climax.

There are some pure strokes of genius in the movie too: Linguini’s secret relationship with Remy isn’t blown but revealed by the pair themselves in a very nice moment in a film full of very nice moments. Ratatouille happily gets away from the buddy-buddy or cute relationships often found in Pixar’s movies and really strikes out to create believable humancharacteristics, even among the rats themselves. Even the “heavies” of the piece – O’Toole’s Burtonesque, Bowler Hat Guy-like Anton Ego (surely a take on Egon Ronay?) and disgruntled head chef Skinner – come off as either happy to be proven wrong, or comically designed so as to not take them too seriously, respectively. Ego has been suggested as a poke back at critics in general, but it’s not an argument I’m going to concur with, since he…well, you’ll need to see the film. Holm’s Skinner even reminded me of Bird’s Edna Mode a little, but I found a lot of Herbert Lom’s Inspector Dreyfuss from the Pink Panther movies in the character, whom one could never really take as a real threat.

Despite the supposed low box office run, Ratatouille is a delightful dish, prepared exquisitely and cooked to perfection, with very little fat and a flavor one can really get their teeth into. I wouldn’t even look at those theater numbers or take them seriously: Disney had an uphill struggle to market an odd little film and, placed between huge juggernaut franchise pictures, Ratatouille did very, very well to hold its own. Its strengths are currently being found in its international rollout, where the film is playing gangbusters in – where else? – Europe. In this day and age of hyper graphics, shouty voices and paper-thin plots, it’s so pleasing that genuinely talented people can still put out genuinely entertaining stories like this that all ages can enjoy. It is smart: a rare animated film that’s never in danger of being dumbed down for the kids and indeed feels more sophisticated than many “adult” comedies; as with the classic Looney Tunes, the film feels made with its crew in mind first and the needs of the young second, but never forgotten. I could keep gushing about Ratatouillebut my best advice is that you run out and catch this totally unique and original animated film. It’s a true feast for eyes, ears and the heart. And the food looks good enough to eat!

Is This Thing Loaded?

With the debut of Blu-Ray high definition and Disney’s whole hearted adoption of that format, the only way to delve deep into Ratatouille’s world and the secrets behind it is to go Blu and work your way through the multiple documentaries and extra features found on that version of the movie. For standard DVD viewers, Ratatouille’s debut on disc goes the way of recent CGI Disney offerings Chicken Little, Cars and Meet The Robinsons by providing a handful of niceties, the all-important new animated short and a catch-all featurette…slim pickings for the Pixar kind of movie that used to get double disc editions. However, and again like those recent slimline discs, there’s nothing apart from a lack of commentary (whichRobinsons managed to squeeze in) that really feels “missing” here, the processes of making these films well covered previously, even though it’s nice to be able to peek into earlier versions and see the development and catch the vocal cast in action.

As usual for a Pixar disc, there’s no Disney FastPlay system in effect, so the disc works with the usual previews for upcoming product (and the new, slightly odd promo for nothing other than the “Disney” brand that strangely uses Michael Kamen’s music for Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves). Those featured are the teaser for WALL-E (in anamorphic widescreen), Disney Movie Rewards, One Hundred And One Dalmatians, Snow Buddies and The Pixar Short Film Collection(again anamorphic). Though all of these can be bypassed by hitting the Menu key on your remote, none of them can be later accessed in any usual Sneak Peek option.
Providing the token peek behind the scenes, a handful of Deleted Scenes start off with a cool single alternate opening shot that swoops in from Paris, through Gusteau’s restaurant and into the back kitchen. Director Brad Bird points out, in his brief but welcome intros, why this was changed but it still does seem to have inspired the Main Menu animation, which brings us into Gusteau’s kitchen in such a way through delightful limited animation that recalls Disney’s 1960s Xerox period. In a Pay All configuration, the three deleted scenes play for just over 15 minutes with Bird’s comments, in anamorphic widescreen using animated storyboards. The “Presented with score from Ratatouille by Michael Giacchino” is perhaps a contractual obligation, but it still feels cluttered and appears at the top end of each clip. Despite some very impressive concepts (I would still argue that, even if not at the opening of the film, there would still have been room to show more of the actual restaurant, which we never get a real sense of), Bird states his reasons for chopping or changing these moments clearly and intelligently, and often his remarks give insight into the rest of the film in lieu of a real commentary track.

Fine Food And Wine: A Conversation With Brad Bird And Thomas Keller finds the director talking movies and grub with the esteemed chef. Running to almost 14 minutes in anamorphic widescreen, the “conversation” is set up by producer Brad Lewis, who compares each man’s working methods and the way the various ingredients are thrown into each mix to create a tasty result. While Bird gets in few words about creative filmmaking in the first half, the featurette leans more in favor of Keller and his The French Laundry eatery, which gets a lot of exposure. Things swing Bird’s way towards the end, when footage of his Tortoise And The Hare film he made as a kid is shown and he elaborates on how he got into the animation business. Even with these comments, though, the piece has little to do with Ratatouille per se, and that it’s been cut together from two different interviews doesn’t really lead to a smooth final product, ultimately feeling confused and choppy. If you want to keep the kitchen analogies coming, it’s like sweet and sour have cancelled each other out, leaving an unsatisfactory bland flavor. I actually resorted to trying to make out what the animators have on their shelves, the answer being that Pixar’s guys obviously take a lot of interest in other studios’ computer animated movies.

That’s technically it for the bonus features, since the remainder can all be found from the disc’s Main Menu. A Pixar big screen tradition are their wonderful animated shorts that play on the front of their features in theaters, and thetheatrical short Lifted is first up. Also just released as part of the Pixar Shorts collection, Lifted’s transfer here looks pretty much the same file, running five minutes in 1.85:1 anamorphic. The story of an oddball alien who brings his ship down to Earth to extract a perfect human specimen with many unforeseen and comical circumstances, Lifted might have perhaps made a better paring for release with The Incredibles, while that film’s Boundin’ or even last year’s One Man Bandwould have proven a more appropriate switch for release, considering the shared sensibilities, with Ratatouille. This short is definitely more along classic cartoon lines – with some lovely nods to Close Encounters’ lighting design and its John Williams music stabs – and is funny, but has simpler textures, a less intricate than usual detail, and more in common with Sony’s The ChubbChubbs, particularly in little Stu’s character design, than perhaps it should. For all the toying with gravity, it lacks weight, no pun intended, which could well have contributed to the lack of an Oscar win earlier this year. Long-time Pixar sound designer Gary Rydstrom jumps from mixing desk to director’s chair, but to hear his commentary on the short, you’ll need the Pixar Collection as it’s not replicated here.

Despite a lot of enthusiasm for it online, I have to admit to not being overly impressed with the final DVD bonus, the all-new short Remy And Emile Present: Your Friend The Rat, A History. Ratatouille’s director Brad Bird obviously comes from a traditional animation background, and he’s been able to pepper even his two CG films with a little of the classic look in the credit sequences. Ratatouille takes things to extremes, creating new animation for its end titles, the style of which has been carried over into the disc’s menu designs and this addition. While it’s fantastic to see the 1960s Xerox Disney approach back on screens, Your Friend The Rat is overlong at eleven minutes plus, when a tight six-to-eight would have left ’em wanting more. Although the short contains a few shots created in CG (and even some in stop-motion!), it’s predominantly been hand animated and as such recalls Disney’s 1950s and 60s films like The Truth About Mother Gooseand Toot, Whistle, Plunk And Boom, which look to be obvious inspirations and mix entertainment with educational elements in the same manner. The first half is great, very much in those classics’ vein, but a capping song is markedly devoid of life or zip and the film loses momentum long before a final half fun/half serious disclaimer joke. Writer/director (and Ratatouille story man) Jim Capobianco’s short is enjoyable enough, but the fact it marks Pixar’s first hand drawn cartoon makes much more of a big deal out of it than should be. The golden rule of “less is more” certainly should have been applied here, though it’s great to see Alex Woo, of Rex Steele: Nazi Smasher fame back working in two dimensions after being part of the Pixar family for the past couple of years.

Finally on the Main Menu, let things run a little while and you should manage to come across a couple of Easter Eggs. Hover between the Your Friend The Rat and Bonus Features options, and soon a little tail-like rat squiggle should appear: selecting it leads us to a short one-minute clip on some of the other possible titles for Ratatouille; my favorite is perhaps “Cookin’ With Rats” or “The Cutest Little Chef In France”! Back on the Main Menu, and after that squiggle disappears, hop over between the Lifted and Set Up entries to catch another one: this will play a very short joke commercial for Ro-Dead rat killing spray.

While two other basic requirements (a commentary with Bird and the film’s two or three teasers and trailers) could have been simply additions and made the package feel much, much more substantial, it does seem that from here on in the message for collectors is to jump on the Blu-Ray wagon in order to sample the many added value features we used to take for granted. It’s a shame that both companies feel this is in their best interests; with Blu-Ray Disc sales not much more expensive than standard DVD, surely the inclusion of a few more basic features on the standard editions would benefit fans without taking away from the very reason to buy the Blu-Ray: to get the actual movie in hi-def?

Case Study:

Thankfully dropping the fun but slightly patronising phonetic pronunciation spelling from beneath the title, Pixar’s movie comes to disc as plain Ratatouille. The cover art goes for Disney’s usual center logo heavy format, with the four basic characters – and the Eiffel Tower, hey it’s set in Paris, right? – represented on the front, and another Eiffel Tower – did we mention Ratatouille was set in Paris? – on the back, along with some very uninspiring text and a much nicer “menu” that lists the extras and tech specs, though oddly not the 2.39:1 aspect (going for “Original Ratio” only). Inside, there are the Disney Movie Rewards and Ratatouille Sweepstakes codes, a chapter index/bonus feature listing, and a 16-page booklet that promotes Disney’s current DVD and Blu-Ray slate, including $10 off for those upgrading from standard to hi-def Ratatouille and a few other non-movie related (Remy advising a switch to energy saving light bulbs?) offers.

Ink And Paint:

As with many new films coming to disc in their same release year – and certainly those created and transferred digitally – there’s really not a lot to complain about with Ratatouille’s presentation on disc. The 2.39:1 ratio is retained, and even though this should be a given, it’s worth noting that most G-rated pictures at least offer a fullscreen version “for the kids”. As noted, the back cover doesn’t actually note the screen dimensions per se, leading one to wonder if bringingRatatouille to disc as intended was something of an issue. No matter, it’s here just as it was created, and looks stunning if ever so slightly soft, which seems more to be a production design aim and not anything to do with compression. The hi-def Blu-Ray release is sure to show up Remy’s fur and those many food feasts even more clearly!

Scratch Tracks:

Presented in Dolby Digital 5.1, Ratatouille is another brilliantly involving track from Pixar’s friends at Skywalker Ranch, and the EX encoding ensures it sounds as good as what DTS might have offered. The multi-layered sounds, directional effects and vocals are wonderfully mixed in with the dialogue, and not once was there a need to adjust volume. It’s a dynamic soundtrack, with many nuances that help the smaller moments work while letting the big moments blast. A less than special Dolby 2.0 mix is presented for those without surround capability, but I’ve had much rathered a commentary track to take up that redundant space. English subtitles are included, but there are no French or Spanish subs or dubs offered. The Audio/Video Set Up guide plays like a Ratatouille-themed version of the THX Optimizer that used to be found on Pixar discs, providing a way for viewers to calibrate their systems so that you can watch the movie as Brad Bird intended.

Final Cut:

Near top marks all around for me. Ratatouille is superlative filmmaking that should be enjoyed on all levels. Despite full marks, it’s not a perfect film, but strives to entertain so much, and does it so effortlessly, that’s it’s hard not to fully embrace it with both hands, especially after the diet of pop-culture filled, hyper talkative run of animated creature features. Ratatouille cleanses the palette and sees Pixar jump ahead of the game once again both in terms of technical ability and movie making maturity. The standard DVD comes as disappointingly unloaded as any of the recent Disney releases, thereby practically forcing an unfair jump to Blu-Ray as well as not treating Ratatouille to as many goodies as it deserves. Even though this special film has only received less than standard treatment, if you didn’t catch it in theaters, you should add Ratatouille down on your shopping lists as a vital ingredient to a hugely rewarding night in for the whole family.

Animated Classic Or Back To The Drawing Board?

Michael Giacchino cooks up tasty tunes for Ratatouille!

If you want to know the recipe for good music, don’t ask Michael Giacchino. He only knows about GREAT music! As Remy the rat in Pixar’s Ratatouille shows, every great meal starts with great ingredients. And Michael knows just how to select and warm up great musicians, and gain them to his cause. Just by providing exciting parts, filled with energy, passion, emotion… and a great sense of swing!
That’s where we reach the unexpected in his score for the Oscar-winning Ratatouille. No Frenchy muzak in here. Just an incredible melting-pot of different influences – different tastes – inspired by the film’s storytellers. So, meet again “chef Giacchino” who, after having “lifted” us up to the sky, put our eyes down to the plate for one of the tastiest scores ever, rewarded by a Grammy Award and an Academy Award nomination for best score!

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Animated Views: You were in Paris for the World Premiere of Ratatouille. What was it like, to be in Remy’s city?
Michael Giacchino: Being in Paris was fantastic! I had the greatest time. It was the best place to see that movie. So, I took my whole family, we all went. Being there and seeing it with my kids in French, with my kids was the best moment. It was really nice being in a theater in Paris watching it all in French, no subtitles, just the way it should be, you know. It was a great experience. And also, working with the French singer Camille [pictured with Michael, right] on Le Festin, the title song, was a great experience, too. She was just wonderful. I don’t know if you know how I came to find her. It’s a very strange story…
AV: Please, can you tell me?
MG: I just found her on the internet simply by googling “female French vocalist”. I just typed these words and hundreds and hundreds of people came up. I just started going through listening to things and I came across her website and I just absolutely loved her voice and the songs that she had written. She seemed like a great creative person. So we called her asking : “hey, do you want to sing the song for the movie?”. That was completely out of the blue like that!
AV: How did you work with her?
MG: We had a great time working together. She’s a great person to work with, very creative, very serious about what she does, but also somewhat goofy, too, which is really nice.
AV: Did she have any input in the creation of the song?
MG: You know, when I went to the recording session, we kind of had the framework for the song. But of course, she had great ideas in certain ways of singing things. She was very good at just coming up with really great little ideas for the way certain sentences could be phrased. And we worked together to make those harmonies happen, too, which was really fun. We did have a framework for the harmonies in the background. That was something we just did there while we were recording the song.
AV: Where did you record it?
MG: We recorded in Vancouver, actually.
AV: She also did the French voice of Colette.
MG: Yes, she did. After she sang the song, they really liked her voice and they temped her for the role of Colette and she got it.
AV: Brad Bird’s films like The Incredibles are not very much song-oriented. How did you come to put a song in Ratatouille?
MG: It was interesting. At first, they had wanted some sort of old-fashioned kind of typical French-sounding song for this one section of the film and I really felt that we should do something different, something special to what the movie is. Because the movie itself was so different, so special. I wanted the song not to be something that was cliché of what we consider French. I wanted it to just be a good song that hopefully could last for years, because the film would be on for ever. I just wanted to do something that was right for the film, and the song really comes out of the main theme of the film.
That theme was written very early on. It was the first thing I wrote for the movie. So, when it came time to do the song, I was trying all these different things and then I thought: “why am I trying all these different things? Why not just use the main theme and turn that into the melody for the song?”. And it ended up work quite nicely, I think. It was Brad’s idea to have it there in the middle of the film and then he wanted it for just the very end. He said: “why don’t we start the song earlier and finish it as a recap?” And it was just about us kind of working it out together exactly how it was gonna fit in. But Brad always did want a song that kind of identify the movie.
AV: Since the film was initiated first by Jan Pinkava and then taken over by Brad Bird, at what stage of the production did you come on board?
MG: When I came on board, Jan was still there on the film. He’s a wonderfully talented guy, one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. But I really wasn’t there when he decided to kind of leave Pixar. For me, my relationship was mainly always with Brad. Because I think that first it was Marc Shaiman who was intended to do it. But things kind of change as they do on these projects from time to time. And there was nothing against Marc either because he’s amazing. It was just a circumstance thing. So, I accepted to be part of Ratatouille because Brad asked me. He’s one of my best friends, you know and I had a great time working with him on The Incredibles.
AV: Every subject Brad Bird touches becomes one-of-a-kind. Is it the same in your working relationship?
MG: That’s how he operates. He doesn’t want to do something unless it’s going to be original and different and tells what might be a familiar story in a different way. It’s the same in matter of music. He does allow me to kind of mess around and come up with my own ideas. It’s not the kind of thing where he’s so forceful about what he thinks he needs. He has his basic ideas, what he wants and really leaves the construction of it up to me, which is really nice. Then we can work together. What I really enjoy is my time on the scoring stage with him because we can work together, we can listen to it and say: “wouldn’t it be better if we did this?” and then we change it right there on the spot. That’s always a really fun thing to do. Working with him, he really has a way of getting everyone’s creative best out of them. He has a good way of kind of energizing his group, which is really amazing because, you know, he asks nothing less of himself as well. It’s the same thing.
AV: Was there any temp score to guide you when you came on board?
MG: Not really. It was really a rough thing because they were working so fast. By the time that Brad came on, they had to do the whole thing in a year and a half: they re-wrote the script, re-boarded the film, etc. It was a mad dash. So, basically, there were pieces of music just for himself so that he could have something there but they were not indicative of what he wanted for the film because he kept saying he didn’t know what the film should sound like. And neither did I when I first came on because it was such a different movie. And the film ended up being kind of a mix of a lot different things and yet, somehow, it seems to all work together. It’s kind of like jazz in a way. I think it’s very à propos in the way it turned out because jazz is in many ways just like cooking, when you’re just kind of throwing in different things and seeing what works. It’s all about that experimentation and the film’s score was very much like that. Which made it both extremely hard and extremely fun at the same time.

AV: When we think about the subject of the film – a rat who wants to become a chef in Paris – we don’t imagine the diversity of styles you put in your score, from jazz to South American music and to Gershwin, all these amazing ideas that work so well together, just like an unexpected and delicious recipe. How did you come to that?
MG: You know, I don’t know. A lot of it was guessing and hoping and just taking my best shot. In looking at Paris, Brad and I talked of how we felt the people. Traditionally, when they think about Paris, they think of accordion and of very specific cliché things. But the truth is that it’s made up of so many different kinds of elements. That means so many different people, so many different kinds of music. You know, there’s a big jazz movement there, there’s a big orchestral movement there, there’s a small kind of “café sound” there. It’s all there. I believe that everything that’s in the movie was drawn out of the city itself. It would have been very easy to just kind of look at a film like that and go: “oh, there should be nothing but accordion and jazz violin and jazz guitar, and then it’ll be good”. The film goes much deeper than that, as Brad wrote a script that is about the characters. When you kind of throw that into the mix, it guides what you need to do.
AV: The film is also about “good taste”. How do you put that concept in music?
MG: You know, there’s nothing wrong with an accordion. Accordion is a fantastic instrument. It’s just about, I think, how you use it and when you use it. So, you’re right, the film is guided by good taste, so it was one of those things that we had to be on to look at.
AV: Speaking of accordion, legendary accordionist Frank Marrocco (Doctor Zhivago, Schindler’s List, Toy Story 2, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc) did a fantastic job for that score!
MG: He’s incredible! Frank Marrocco can play anything on his instrument. Even in the song, I mean. We tried different sounds, from harmonica to standard accordion sound, and then he was there and he said: “what about this sound?”. And he had this accordion and he came up with this sound that was kind of neither, you know. It almost sounds like a clarinet but it’s not, it sounds a little like an accordion but it’s not. He just gave us that wonderful sound that kind of placed it no so much in France but just in the world.

AV: Now, I’d like discuss specific scenes with you and talk about what you imagined for them. First of all, there is the beginning of the film, which takes place in a peaceful place in the French countryside, but with a very special granny…!
MG: Well, you think of French countryside as peaceful and serene, but in many ways, I always tried to just follow what Remy was doing. And what he was doing most of the time was thinking about cooking, thinking about food, thinking about the things that he loves to do. So, most of the time, my music was in that frame of mind. And I really did want, when the grandmother came, to be 100% different. Suddenly, it was big, orchestral action that you wouldn’t really expect from a grandmother. In the same way as when she pulls that shotgun. You’re not expecting that, you know. So, the music just goes a bit over the top there, and even more over the top after the rats come out of the ceiling and run to evacuate the house. In that, it’s about as frenetic and crazy as the film gets, I think. And when she puts the mask on, she’s like a villain and it was about hitting this huge, villainesque kind of ominous chord for that very moment.
AV: Surprisingly enough, there is no music then, when Remy is going down the rapids in the fewer. Can you explain why?
MG: We actually wrote a cue for that, but very early on, even before we recorded it, we knew we weren’t gonna use it. But we recorded it anyway. It was just one of those things like “well, let’s record it to have it”. But we were looking for spots not to have music and I think that was the perfect example of a place where you needn’t to heighten the drama or the fear of what was happening by adding music because that was already there. There is a point sometimes where you can over-dramatize a scene and risk pulling your audience out of it, and I think that was one of those things there that worked better without the music. Because then, after the scene, when he’s there all alone by himself and the music does come in, it means something more. You haven’t been hit over the head with “fear, fear, fear”, and then by “loneliness, loneliness, loneliness”, you know what I mean? It’s just about letting the action speak for itself and then underlining the idea that this guy is completely alone now.
AV: To me, one of the most beautiful cues of your score is Wall Rat, when Remy is climbing the walls, to get to the rooftops of Paris.
MG: It’s an interesting scene because, musically, it starts out very small: the string quartet and the flute as he’s moving through the house and between the walls, all of that, and as he gets closer and closer to the top, it starts filling up with more and more instrumentation. What I always try to do is to comment what’s happening in the picture somehow but in a way which is almost musically invisible. It’s almost as if you took a piece of music, put it up against a picture and it just happens to fit. A piece of music that was written away from the picture that just happens to fit so that it could work on its own or work with the picture. But really I try not to hit it over the head too much, because if you get too “Mickey Mousey” with it, it feels awkward and disjointed. So the challenge is: how do you do this and still make it feel like a natural piece of music. That’s one of the things I always enjoy sitting down trying to do. And then, finally, in the outside, the reveal of the city is what he’s been dreaming of all his life and that’s when you get that first big statement of his theme up there.
AV: This scene is also interesting in that it associated Remy’s two themes, one for the climbing and one of the discovering of Paris.
MG: Exactly. One represents who Remy is and the other represents who Remy wants to be. There the very “ratty” theme that’s his reality and then there’s the more wistful theme which is his hopes and dreams.
AV: Strangely enough, you didn’t use Remy’s dream theme when he’s cooking the soup for the first time.
MG: Well, I used that because here he was trapped in this kitchen and even though it would take him a second to kind of escape a little bit of that, he’s still in that kitchen and anyone could see him any second. So, it was about him using his rat theme in more of a kind of a distracted way like there’s the rat theme and then he’s distracted by the idea of fixing this soup. But he’s still kind of in danger. So, it was just about kind of suddenly using that in a really fun, joyful way, and then get back to where we were. Because I felt that it wasn’t a true moment of self-realization yet. It’s almost kind of an accident that he ran by that thing and he’s still in the middle of escaping. I wanted to try and save that other theme for the very true emotional moments and this one wasn’t one for me. It was more of a fun kind of sidebar, like I said, a distraction. He’s still a rat in a kitchen at that point. It was still too early in the story to really make that a more emotional moment.
AV: Let’s go now to Linguini’s theme that is played by a whistler during the scene when Remy and Linguini are practicing cooking together.
MG: There’s a guy in my orchestra. The name is Bobby Shulgold. He also plays the flute on all of that stuff, and he’s an amazing whistler. I had used him on Alias for a whistling piece and I always wanted to do it again, I always was hoping something would come up which would make sense to use him and that was the perfect thing. Brad wanted kind of a sort of a cowboy-ish poky feel to the music on that one, kind of like breaking your horse in, which is what Remy was doing with Linguini. So, that’s kind of how that came about.
AV: As for Colette, there are two different parts to her theme. Can you explain why?
MG: The main part of that theme, which also shows out at the beginning of the end credits, is very confident. It’s almost like a tango-ish thing and in tango, you know that the dancers are always extremely confident, extremely sure of themselves. That’s who she is on the outside. In the kitchen, that’s who she has to be. But then there is a part of her that is a little more romantic, a little bit more unsure, and that’s the inside of her. She’s a very complicated character. She needs to be strong on the outside but the truth is that she is not that person in the inside.
AV: Anyone Can Cook, that comes at the end of the movie, as Ego is reading his critic, is a very emotional moment, all the more unusual for the ending of a movie like this.
MG: Actually, that whole cue at the end of the movie was one of the first things I wrote. After I saw the movie for the first time, I went home and that’s what I wrote. Not to picture. I just wrote that theme. I think that that scene inspired that theme to come about. For me, that is the moment in the movie when everything is wrapping up, everything comes together and it tells exactly what this movie is. Everything else came out of that. And Ego is the one who kind of puts forward the message. It’s a very emotional scene. When you get through that whole movie and you get to that point, it is very emotional. And it’s very strange to be watching a movie about a rat who wants to cook and get emotional about it. That’s why the movie works. Because Brad writes “characters”. He doesn’t write “caricatures”.

AV: The Endcreditouilles reminded me of the Incredits in The Incredibles.
MG: Yes, it was done with the same spirit. As you know, Brad loves to have big end pieces of music just like a kind of an overture, to celebrate the film. So, it was about taking all of the main characters’ themes, going crazy with them and being very improvisational with them adding in a lot of room for the players to solo, to put their own stamp on these themes. The idea behind that is very much like going a little nuts in the kitchen cooking something, trying from this and from that and seeing what works. It was about that idea of being free to do what you want to do. Jazz is to me the best way to express that idea, being free to go your own way. That’s what these Endcreditouilles were about.
AV: What is so fun about your score is that when we listen to the soundtrack, it’s like the story was told again through music.
MG: I always to write the music so that it is tailor-made for a specific moment in the story, you know. There are very specific reasons why each cue is structured the way it is. It’s not just saying: “ok, this is an action scene so I need an action cue”. It’s about knowing what’s going on within the story of that action piece. So I do try to tailor my music really specifically to each individual scene. That’s the way it was for me when I was growing up listening to films scores. It was about re-living the story of the film. So, maybe it’s why I’m so adamant about it, but I enjoyed that as a kid; I loved listening to these score and re-living those stories. It was the only way you could do it when there were no DVDs or videos. If you weren’t in a theater watching the movie, the only chance you had to re-live it was to listen to the music and re-envision it in your head.
AV: Did you record the orchestra all live and all together at the same time, just like you did for The Incredibles?
MG: Yes. You know, I’m not against synthesizers. I think they can be used in a very creative way. Jerry Goldsmith was the master of that. He knew how to use them without trying to use them as something that they weren’t. But Ratatouillejust didn’t have a real need for that. This one was about really things, real people and therefore, for me, it was all about real instrumentation, which is, you know, something I feel strongly about on most projects I do.
Recording voices separately, that’s not something I enjoy doing, because I feel that you’re not getting the full performance of the orchestra. That is almost the same as just using synthesizers: you’re not getting that energy that happens when players are in the room together. You have the string section playing against the brass section or the wind section playing against the string section or the percussion or whatever. They’re all together and they create a whole energy that you can only get if you have all the players at the same time.
If you layer on each section, you don’t get this energy and you’re also not getting the true sound of an orchestra. This sound is created because they’re all in that room together, messing with the air. That’s what creates that sound. And when you listen to scores that were recorded the other way, that’s not the true sound of an orchestra. I grew up listening to the true sound of it and that’s what I like! For me personally, I wouldn’t wanna do it any other way. You know, one of the greatest things on this project was to be able to work with these guys, all these incredible musicians. These players are just amazing. So, for me, as I’m writing it, I’m thinking in my head: “I can’t wait to hear them play it!”, because I know what these guys can do and how they sound.
AV: You also composed the music for the Ratatouille videogame. It’s very unusual to have the same composer doing both the film and the videogame. How’s that?
MG: You know, when they do these projects and they throw them out there, they sound nothing like the film does. It’s maybe because I come from videogames, but I try to just stay involved as much as can in the videogames that are produced about the projects that I’m working on. That way, there is a carry-over, they feel like they’re from the same family.
AV: In the videogame, we can pick out actual themes from the film, which is really rare.
MG: Yes, and that’s something I had to fight for because they had to pay for the use of those themes because Disney owns them. But I think it makes a huge difference. If a kid is gonna buy that game, he’s gonna want to kind of re-live the movie some way. So, the score is a huge part of it. It would like playing a Star Wars game and not having any Star Wars music in it. It doesn’t make sense, you know. So, on the first Incredibles videogame, they asked me to compose an original theme in the same vein as the one of the movie, but on the second one, Rise of the Underminer, I just put my foot down and said: “I’m not doing this unless we do it this way!”. That’s what I learned. You just have to be firm. The result is that it’s really nice to retrieve the themes of the movies in the games. And for the recording, we had different recording session, but with the same players. In fact, I did the music for the game before the second session for the film. Because we broke the sessions: we did some in November ’06 and some in April ’07, and the music for the game was done in the middle.
AV: In brief, what does Ratatouille represent to you?
MG: This film more than any other was truly a joy to see come to life, because it was the kind of music where the players were able to put a lot of their personality into it as well. So, that was really nice!

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The Ratatouille soundtrack
is available to buy now from Amazon.com

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Our special appreciation and admiration to Michael for this interview and his superb score!
Images ©Disney/Pixar

Enrico Casarosa on storyboarding Ratatouille

As all connoisseurs of animation know, a storyboard is the succession of drawings used during the pre-production of an animated film (and very often in live-action too) intended to visualise the story and to plan the whole layout of the movie, bringing everyone onto the same page in attaining the director’s vision on screen.
Storyboarding is Pixar’s Enrico Casarosa’s [below left] trade, and he just happens to have applied it most recently to Disney/Pixar’s current release, the critically acclaimed box-office hit Ratatouille. Jérémie Noyer’s Media Magic headed Emeryville way to speak with Enrico about his career, influences and rodent chefs…

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Animated Views: I’m very glad to be able to speak with you and very excited about that because I’m a great Pixar fan and I found Ratatouille just fantastic; really, really amazing.
Enrico Casarosa: Yeah, I’m glad you enjoyed it. It’s just been great to see everybody’s reactions to it.
AV: First of all, can you tell me a little about your background, your Italian origins, and what led you to go and study in New York? I believe animation was not your first calling?
EC: Right! When I got out of college I actually started studying engineering so I was actually going down a very different path, but I actually spent most of my time sketching on my books more than studying them. So I eventually turned to illustration in Milan, for one year. You know, I grew up with a lot of Japanese cartoons, which are very similar in a way. I always loved Miyazaki’s work and a lot of his first TV series were on. So I fell into animation from illustration…I loved to draw and animation was one of my interests, and I had a friend who was starting some animation courses in New York, so the first thing I did was go to Boston for a summer workshop in animation at the school of the Museum of Fine Arts and that was really fun got the chance to study all the drawings around and then I ended up in New York, at several schools actually, here and there, but never finished one degree.
I studied at the School of Visual Arts and Animation, and at the Fashion Institute of Technology in illustration, which actually didn’t have a whole lot to do with animation, but I think to some degree it kind of does, especially fashion illustration which is very creative and full of movement. So then I started working in New York in animation.
AV: For Jumbo Pictures?
EC: Yes! I was working on Saturday morning cartoons. I was designing backgrounds, designing props and characters and while I was designing I slowly got more and more interested in stories, and got more excited by storyboarding.
AV: And I read that you started drawing storyboards for the 101 Dalmatians TV series?
EC: Yes, that’s correct. I was working for Disney then.
AV: What led you to the art of storyboarding?
EC: You know I think to a certain degree I felt like I had a certain amount of input, and think the storyboarding was certainly a little bit more fun. It enabled me to convey ideas and go back to things that I loved like beautiful composition and beautiful storytelling; I was always going back and looking at Miyazaki’s work and put that in my work, and there was no way to just do that with design. So it came from a wish to tell stories, and maybe a little bit was from my passion for comics. I’m a big comics fan. It’s storyboarding on the page.
AV: What would be the most important qualities that a good storyboard artist should have?
EC: Well ultimately it’s a lot about ideas. There are various kinds of storyboard artists and even here at Pixar we have people that can be a little more specialised in gags, but an excellent storyboard artist can fire through it all: from drama to funny drawings, and a way to tell stories with the drawing. Very often you see beautiful drawings that don’t quite convey story quickly.
AV: After television you got to Blue Sky Studios, working on the first Ice Age, so what was that change like, going from TV to a feature?
EC: Well there’s a little bit of a divide here in the US between TV animation and feature animation, so it was very challenging to take the job without much experience in this situation. So I had to throw myself into going there, given most of my experience was in TV, storyboarding somebody else’s scripts. It’s very hard for people to see your input and to tell what you came up with.
It was different going to a feature because I was being asked to come up with a situation and write something and invent a story, so it’s kind of a challenge going there, quite a big switch, and it wasn’t easy to make. But it certainly was worth it, for me in my career, where without that job I would never have made it to where I am now at Pixar.
AV: Which were your scenes in Ice Age, and how was it working with Chris Wedge?
EC: Working with Chris Wedge was really fun, he’s pretty open and he worked a little bit in over storyboarding for me. I did a lot there on the ending, when the baby goes home with the humans. I did a lot of work with the baby, a lot of gags, the big snowball gag, which is mine. When an audience laughs at something like that it’s pretty satisfying. But in storyboarding unfortunately, there’s always a difficulty finding all the scenes you have worked on because we pass them around all the story men, so you’re going to find a lot of drawings from a lot of different people. Sometimes you end up with something in a scene a little more than others.
AV: Why, how and when did you arrive at Pixar?
EC: The way I arrived at Pixar is kind of interesting. I was making comics with a few friends, and Ronnie Del Carman, who’s become a very good friend here, and who is head of story here at Pixar and was head of story on Finding Nemo at the time, he knew my work from comics. We started exchanging emails and kind of became friends, and then a position opened for Ratatouille. He was good friends with Jim Capobianco who was the head of story, for Ratatouille at the time, and he said ‘well maybe you should send in your portfolio’. So I sent in the portfolio and then after an amount of time – it wasn’t right away, it was around six months – waiting for the right time for the company to be up and running on it, and I think Jim was the only person working on Ratatouille at the time, so I was the first story artist to join them and certainly in that job of starting development. And they probably figured the fact I was European that it would probably help me storyboard a movie set in Paris. So I started work on it and things came out from there.
AV: Since you were there at the beginning of conception for Ratatouille, what was the storyline at that point, and how did you work with original director Jan Pinkava and handle the switch to Brad Bird?
EC: Well each story here at Pixar goes through so much change; we really, really are struggling to tell the best story we can, so in each movie – and I’ve been working on another movie since – there’s just a load of writing, re-writing and re-writing. We often kid around in our job, and say it should actually be called re-storyboarding! But at the beginning it was very much more of a synopsis or the beginning of a script. All the elements were there, it’s still the same movie, but it was a really great time because it was a moment where we could really start, for example, exploring how to convey the tone.
It was always such a non-visual concept so some of the first challenges were to do with how do we show things and make them amazing, and that’s how we started brainstorming ideas like flashbacks and things like that, but it was a very exciting time. When Brad Bird came on board and took over, having him seeing it made us re-reach, and he added some amazing writing, so it was eventually pretty organic. It was pretty long, I was on it for four years, but at Pixar here we just take so much time to tell the best story we can. I think that it was a good story and then they wanted it to be an amazing story, and Brad really made it sing.
AV: When you talk about brainstorming, does that mean you sit around a table with the story artists, the producer and the director and just throw ideas out from nowhere? Is it that kind of process?
EC: It kind of varies…storyboarding has a unique range. When we get to brainstorming it’s usually the question of having one problem, which needs to be explored more. So what we do is gather the head of story and a lot of the other artists into a room to start drawing and start throwing ideas around. The director is sometimes there, some not. It’s been a way of putting together brains to solve a problem, at a very specific time it can happen. Other times it really varies from having to storyboard and visual the script, which is probably what we do most of the time, more often than not. Brad Bird or any of the writers come up with six or seven pages or two or three pages – it’s never specific – of script, and you just go straight ahead and board it, visualise it and go to storyboard the whole sequence. So very often there’s a range between coming up with something or just realising what’s already on the page. So that’s the fun part, there’s a lot of variety in our work.
AV: So when the scripts arrive, they’re not set in stone, they’re still open to any other ideas, be they visual or humoristic, as long as they add to the intended story?
EC: Yeah, I think so. With most directors I’ve worked with there’s always the feeling of getting the page and if there is something that can be added or something we can have a discussion about then definitely the director is open to that. Now ultimately we feel strongly that if we are helping the director’s vision that’s the important thing. We don’t want too many in the kitchen, but there’s definitely always space to go ‘hey what if we do this’ in the scene. For instance in a sequence I was boarding all we had was Rémy walking down the street, and he’s all really confident and happy that he’s going to work at the restaurant, and I just added the fact that he just kind of flicks at somebody offscreen, you know, all confident and he points to them, and this bicycle comes by and the guy hits the car behind him. I just pitched that to Brad, and it’s a good example of how doing this can be fun, and Brad was completely open to that. It doesn’t always mean that it stays in the movie, but when you see something like that on the screen and people laugh and it makes you feel good about it. The script was so amazing that it wouldn’t happen very often, with the beautiful writing, so it’s really more about making a really good scene and then taking a crack at adding here and there if we can.
AV: When you draw your storyboards, do you already have an idea of the design of the characters or are you drawing from your own imagination because nothing has been finalised at that time?
EC: At the beginning there were some pretty good designs, and you can see a lot of them in The Art Of Ratatouille. They were still preliminary, so there is no actual set-in-stone design, but you have a pretty good idea from simply following the descriptions, for example Carter Goodrich, who was doing large parts at the beginning of design, and so we were all pretty clear…he did beautiful renderings of the cooks. They changed a bit throughout the design process, of course there are great designers and sketch artists here that draw in their kind of own way so they pass through designers and then certainly again into the 3D character. So there’s a little bit of change but we did have a certain amount of direction from the illustration. That can vary, you know, sometimes we have just one drawing or one little sketch, and storyboarding is very unique because not everything is exact or the best quality, because very often the model is still being tweaked. But we did have pretty good designs and Carter Goodrich’s work really stood out on Ratatouille.
AV: You just mentioned the book The Art Of Ratatouille and in there we can see a couple of your storyboards: from near the end where the rats are readying to cook in Gustau’s restaurant, and a drawing from Rémy’s cooking fantasy sequence. Can you tell us more about those two moments?

EC: Yeah, the idea of the rats cooking was actually something in Brad’s version of the movie was very similar to what we had. I didn’t storyboard the final version of it, but that was one of the elements they used from what we used to have. It was always a kind of a challenging sequence in some ways but they always wanted rats all over the kitchen, which is in some way crazy and exciting, and disgusting! We right away came up with the idea of the dishwasher, you know, that cleaned them all. It was a lot of fun and it’s also about coming up with ideas for all the rats, like the rat skating on butter in the pan or the big guy punching the steak, so it was a lot of fun to brainstorm and come up with a lot of ideas for these rats, these little rats who cook around the kitchen.
AV: At that point the kitchen isn’t as much as a place of work but also a playground. That must have been fun coming up with what a rat could get up to in that kind of environment.
EC: Oh absolutely. We had the challenge throughout the movie, even with Rémy, on how we could have fun with him, how can we cook in a different way but make it work, so we had to decide that first. Now, for the cooking fantasy sequence, that was hard. That sequence is pretty famous around here because I did it 15 times at least…it was one of those sequences that stayed with me a long time!
It was originally a very silly dream sequence, of course, for Rémy, but we wanted it to be valid and it was great to bring something of Miyazaki about it…we had flying colanders and he was flying in the sky with steam clouds. We had ideas of a Winter Wonderland where he would be making snow angels in sweet sugar, so that’s what some of the drawings in the book are. It was really a lot of fun to try, and we went in many directions, with crazy cooking and I think seriously it stayed in the video game in the part where you’re running around in the sky!
So there were various degrees in story progression from when we had it from Jan in story reels and I don’t think there was that much of a need for that sequence in Brad’s version, but I think it might make it out on a DVD or something.
AV: Again from the book, I read that you were also involved in layout?
EC: Not exactly. What you find in the book is that someone takes the storyboard and then does the painting over it, so you can see it in color. For example on the book’s cover, Harley Jessup, the art director, did the painting but they also gave credit to me because that was based on a story beat I had drawn. A story beat is something I did a lot in the beginning, which is when you don’t have the entire movie storyboarded yet but you’re trying to sell the story, you have beats. From just one image you try and convey the feeling of the whole sequence, or maybe two or three drawings that show the whole sequence. And I had a lot of fun with Jan Pinkava in the beginning on a lot of the story beats, and I think some of those are in the book. For example the one with Rémy cooking on the cover was a drawing of mine that Harley colored, so it’s not exactly that I did layout, because layout is much more of a technical thing here, where they take our drawings and it’s the first step into the computer 3D world. So what that means is that some of the amazing artists here took some of our boards, some of our drawings, some of mine, some of the other storyboard artists’, and colored them and from that they can develop the lighting.

AV: So it’s a very collaborative process!
EC: Yeah, it really is. There’s no doubt about it, and that’s what’s exciting about being in a place like Pixar. In the arts there are just so many jobs that are pretty solitary, but at Pixar we just come to work and we inspire each other and do a lot of work together which is pretty amazing, you know. I can’t think of a creative process that has this many people involved.
AV: Talking about collaboration, you mentioned Ronnie Del Carmen, who you work with inside and outside of Pixar. Can you tell us about working with him either on the SketchCrawl project, or the book Three Trees Make A Forest?
EC: Once I arrived at Pixar I immediately got started talking about books, comics, things I have a passion about. I had a little experience because I had self-published some comics, and Ronnie knew about that work, and his interests were the same, so we started collaborating and using the same printers I had been using. We made a book of all our sketches and figure drawings together, and it’s been a ton of fun…we’ve gone more than a couple of times to the Comic-Con, in San Diego, so it’s really about having another outlet for our creativity. The Three Trees Make A Forest book is a great example of that. There’s a third artist in the book, another friend we met, Tadahiro Uesugi. We just admired his work for years and we started talking to him by email, and then we met him a couple of times in Japan…a very friendly person.
We started up a friendship and he came here once, and we went there to visit him and then we organised a show, where we really wanted him to be one of the participants. And that’s where the idea of the Three Trees Make A Forest evolved and we had the artists in LA and we had a lot of fun. It almost took two years, but the publisher made a nice book and we’re very happy with it. It’s the culmination of things we’ve done, and it was the first time we went with a real publisher, which was really nice. We hope to keep on doing that, with more art shows…it’s almost kind of like a little artistic muscle that we don’t use normally, so we love to once in a while just put ourselves in that situation and, you know, say ‘well, what if there was an art show every six months?’, we’ve started thinking. So that’s there, and we’re still making little comics on the side and trying to get them out there.
I’ve also just finished The Venice Chronicles, another personal project which I’ve been working on and uploading to my site in single pages for almost a year. I hope to have a print version out there soon.
With SketchCrawl, that’s a highly different thing. The first time I went out on my own and spent a whole day just drawing. I found it very exhilarating and drew for almost ten hours straight. It was amazing, it just felt so liberating. As artists, we often go around with our sketchbooks in our bags and we always want to draw, but sometimes we don’t get to, not as much as we’d wish. I wanted to change that, so one day I thought I wouldn’t put the book in my bag at all…I’d just draw all day, sketchbook in my hand. Slowly it turned into this thing where other friends came and we did it together, and then I came up with the idea of making a website where we could put the call out to the whole world. We’d decide on a date where we would all go out and all just draw at the same time. It seemed like an interesting idea and we’ve done more and more of those, and there’s some exhilarating about knowing that there’s a certain amount of people that are all doing the same thing at the same time, you know.
It’s been great, and a little bit of an excuse to travel, which is another great way of meeting artists with an interest for sketching and drawing. We just had our last marathon and that was a great success where we raised money for a cause, which is Emergency USA…they’re non-profit, building hospitals throughout foreign countries all over the world. So we raised money by putting on a little art auction, and it works really well. We still put a call out for a World Wide SketchCrawl every other month or so. At one of these in San Francisco we had about 80 people sketching around the city! And with cities all around the globe participating we have hundreds of artists drawing on the same day and sharing this event! It’s just a lot of fun to be out there with all these people drawing around you. It’s been really great. And we’re also super lucky that we’re in a company where they’re very, very open…they recognise that we need this outlet. Pixar are very, very supportive of these activities.
AV: So this openness must contribute to the unique feel of Pixar’s films?
EC: Yeah, absolutely, we’re very lucky to have very smart, open-minded people that welcome these things and recognise that having those chances only makes us better in our work. You know, we’re all artists and whatever creative energy we have needs a certain amount of outlet. And there are screenings, and we have great classes here, and of course the artists’ Pixar University, which is great…we can draw figure drawing twice a week, or go and do yoga, we can sculpture; there’s always something you can go and try. And certainly I think all that helps us, because if you’re going to make movies you need to take a chance to make them different. They are challenging, they’re not just formulaic. It really carries over into making something that’s exciting, something that’s creative.
AV: And now that Ratatouille is finished, are you working on another project at Pixar that we might know about?
EC: Yeah, it has been revealed, and I’m glad so I can tell you! I’ve been working on Up, which has just been announced a few weeks ago, with director Pete Docter from Monsters, Inc, and I’ve been on that project for more than a year. We’re having a lot of fun, and it’s been great working with him, so I’m excited about that one. It’s just exciting again working on movies that are off the beaten track and are different. I just love to work on things like that.

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The Art Of Ratatouille is available to buy now from Amazon.com

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Pre-order the Ratatouille DVD (released November 6 2007) from Amazon.com

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Photos ©Disney/Pixar, and Disney, courtesy of Enrico Casarosa. Photo of Enrico, Ronnie Del Carmen and Tadahiro Uesugi at top courtesy of Ronnie Del Carmen, with our gratitude and admiration! And with very special thanks to Erin Harrison at Pixar.
This article was originally published in French at Media Magic. It is reprinted here by exclusive arrangement and with express permission from its author, Jérémie Noyer. English version ©Animated News & Views.