Use Your Illusion

In the 18 years that Lee Unkrich has worked at Pixar, things have changed a lot. “When I first started we were making not only our very first film as a studio, we were [also] making the very first computer-animated film in history,” he says. Since those days, Pixar has risen to become one of the world's most successful studios, turning out award-winning films like Toy Story, Ratatouille and Up, revolutionising CGI animation. “We're really at a point where anything that we dream up, we can get up on screen,” Unkrich says with a smile.

After starting out as an editor and going on to co-direct Finding Nemo and Toy Story 2, Unkrich's first solo outing as director was Toy Story 3. The third instalment of the franchise went down a storm, winning over reviewers and audiences alike and taking home an Oscar for best animation.

His films might be wildly popular, but Unkrich is often asked what a director actually 'does' in an animated film. Farcical images of him hovering on set, telling Buzz Lightyear or Woody to deliver their lines differently or change positions, come to mind. He admits, “It sounds funny to think of me leaning in and talking to toys, but the reality is that Woody and Buzz are 'performed' by lots of people. You've got Tom Hanks and Tim Allen doing the voices and I will be in the recording studio talking to them in the same way that they're talked to on a live action set. And conversely, there's the physicality of bringing Woody and Buzz to life. I work with the animators, talking to them about what's going on in Woody and Buzz's minds, how they might be behaving physically. At the end of the day, the job is much more similar [to live action directing] than it is different.”

Unkrich prizes animation's ability to tell stories that couldn't be told any other way. But whilst successfully making movies from the point of view of toys, cars, monsters and fish, Pixar has copped criticism of late for failing to tell stories from the point of view of women. Their most recent movie, Brave, is their first to have a female lead character. When asked about this, Unkrich points out that there have been female characters in supporting roles, such as cowgirl Jessie and Dory the fish. But he concedes, “If there's been any bias, maybe it's because in our early days at the studio it was a bunch of guys making movies and often your inclination is to write a male character because that's what you know.”

No one could accuse Pixar's audience of lacking diversity, however. The studio's films are known for their broad appeal to people of all ages. He explains why this is: “We never try to second-guess what kids want to see, because if we did it would be a disaster and we'd make bad movies… I think that by and large none of us had good taste when we were kids!” He laughs. “We try to make good movies that we would like to see, period. We just make sure that they're appropriate for children.”