[Herald Interview] Pixar’s Peter Sohn on making ‘The Good Dinosaur’

Any new film coming from animated film powerhouse Pixar is bound to drum up expectations. So it was no easy task for Peter Sohn, the first Korean-American feature director at Pixar, to work on “The Good Dinosaur” -- his first feature film after 15 years at Pixar as an artist and working on storyboards. 

Adding to the pressure, it was timed to celebrate the anniversary of the Disney-Pixar partnership that revolutionized computer-animated films with “Toy Story.”

“I feel honored to have gotten the chance to make a movie. That fact alone,” he told reporters at a group interview at the Four Seasons in Seoul on Tuesday. “I love movies, and getting to make one with (producer) Denise (Ream) and this crew is probably the greatest experience of my life.”

“The Good Dinosaur” strikes an interesting contrast with last year’s international smash hit “Inside Out.” While “Inside Out” created a fantasy world where emotions had emotions, and toyed with the mechanisms of the mind, the world depicted in “The Good Dinosaur” is more rooted in the real world. 

Despite the anthropomorphic dinosaur characters, the movie seems familiar because of its natural background landscapes. 

In a media presentation Monday, Sohn had described the long research process that went into creating the scenery.

“The backgrounds are very realistic,” he said. “We wanted to find something that was both beautiful and dangerous.”

Unlike in other animated movies, where the backdrops are painted, in “The Good Dinosaur” each blade of grass and wisp of cloud was generated and placed manually through a computer, based on actual geological data of mountainous areas in the United States. 

The naturalistic backdrops make it easier to connect with the dinosaur characters, who take on human roles.

“When we were drawing, finding ideas, I did a drawing with a longneck dinosaur plowing the earth. It made us think about the frontier life,” Sohn said. “Then all the other flips started to happen. Herbivores would become farmers, carnivores would become ranchers, and it became a world centered on family. It was a concept that was exciting for everyone.”

Asked whether Pixar intentionally centers its films on the themes of family and friendship, Sohn said, “At Pixar, it’s definitely one to tell family movies, a movie for all generations from young children to adults.” 

However, he also made sure to emphasize that Pixar filmmakers did not lock them into any particular mode of thinking. 

“It’s not like we go in with a formula. It’s an evolution about what the movie can be. ... In the world of family films, they have a way of becoming what they want to be,” he said. 

“The Good Dinosaur” opened in local theaters Thursday.

By Won Ho-jung (hjwon@heraldcorp.com)