'Hoppers' Filmmakers Break Down the Mabel, Loaf, Ellen bear attack scene | Pixar's Set the Scene

0:00 I've been slapped many times by beavers.

0:03 [laughter]

0:03 Cuz I did get to see beavers and they certainly slapped.

0:05 like, "You know what?"

0:08 This is [music] Pixar's set the scene for Hoppers.

0:11 Yeah, it is.

0:11 Beaver, PUT HIM DOWN!

0:13 OW!

0:14 OW!

0:15 So today we're going to look at a sequence that we called Bear Intervention.

0:19 Mabel is now in a beaver body.

0:21 It's like a robot beaver body, but her consciousness is in it.

0:24 And she's able to go into the animal world and her goal here is

0:27 to convince a beaver to come

0:28 with her, but this beaver is not cooperating at all.

0:32 BEAVER!

0:33 HEY!

0:34 Over here!

0:36 So glad I found you.

0:38 What?

0:39 Me?

0:40 Yeah!

0:40 You're going to save the glade.

0:42 We have like one day to dam it up and make a pond, so let's go!

0:49 Hey, uh you coming?

0:53 Uh What?

0:56 Whenever you make a movie, you have to make the big leap from storyboards

0:59 into the CG and this was our first scene.

1:03 And we finished the scene and we put it into the movie and then we were like,

1:07 "Hmm." Well, how you doing?

1:08 I like this as much as I like the boards.

1:10 The original version of this sequence,

1:12 Mabel was kind of trying to trick Loaf into coming with her.

1:17 And it was funny like when we first started, but then we realized that she's not

1:20 a character that's going to beat around the bush.

1:22 If she wants something, she's going to tell you right away.

1:24 Please, we're running out of time.

1:26 The glade, they're building a beltway on top of it.

1:30 Uh Piper Curda was definitely the right person for the role because she could

1:35 bring that sense of urgency and passion and still be really funny about it.

1:39 Like she wasn't angry, she was just desperate.

1:42 It's like her saying, "Please." instead of her saying,

1:44 "Like do it now." You know, you often said that you know uh an actor

1:50 is good when they can be funny when they yell.

1:53 And Piper nailed that.

1:54 I think we came back to this sequence every single time we recorded her.

1:58 But we would just have some new take on it, some new version of it.

2:01 And she would just like roll up her sleeves,

2:03 get in there and be happily trying another version of it.

2:06 So I guess I want to say, "Sorry, Piper." [laughter] And thank you.

2:15 Yeah.

2:15 [laughter] There's obviously a lot of animation

2:17 here done by a lot of amazing people, but there was a beat here that Brendan

2:20 [snorts] Beesley put in where she's trying to explain

2:23 uh cars and and freeways to this beaver

2:27 and she like kind of does this little driving thing.

2:30 It's so cute.

2:31 I love that.

2:32 Yeah, it's really really charming.

2:33 fell in love with that in dailies, I remember.

2:35 Yeah, [laughter] it was brilliant.

2:36 It it's it's for cars.

2:38 Cars are you know, you know cars?

2:41 No, doesn't matter.

2:42 The point is it's bad.

2:43 We can stop it, you and me.

2:45 What do you say?

2:46 In this shot you can really see a lot of the design style like coming together.

2:50 We were really trying to decide what is this movie going to look like?

2:52 What do trees look like?

2:53 What do leaves look like?

2:54 All of the arrangements here have to be orchestrated by the set team.

2:58 It's like a bouquet of flowers that has to look beautiful.

3:01 That's right.

3:01 So it's not an easy thing to do.

3:03 If anyone has tried to do a bouquet of flowers,

3:05 I certainly have and I failed many times.

3:08 So imagine doing that for a frame and trying

3:10 to make it look pretty, it's not easy.

3:12 Every frame.

3:13 Yeah, every [clears throat] frame.

3:14 Let's talk a little bit about Loaf as a character.

3:16 So he's a bit of a chill guy and part of the joke

3:19 here is that he's minding his business and living his life.

3:24 He's a sleepy fellow.

3:25 His best beaver life.

3:26 He's living his best beaver life.

3:28 Uh our good friend Eduardo Eduardo Franco.

3:31 played Loaf.

3:32 No relation to Dave Franco, the Loaf in the movie.

3:34 Nope.

3:36 [laughter]

3:35 Very different characters.

3:37 It's funny you you know, you think the "Huh?

3:39 What?" is such a simple line.

3:43 Uh What?

3:43 There are a million ways to say that.

3:45 It doesn't take much.

3:46 It's just like the wrong inflection up on one

3:48 part of the line could kill it all.

3:49 Yeah.

3:50 Look at the way he's sitting.

3:51 This is a very specific beaver trait

3:54 where they will actually sit on their tails.

3:56 I remember when when we were told that this happens,

3:59 we were like, "That looks so silly.

4:00 There's no way they do that." but they do.

4:03 They do.

4:05 [laughter] Dr.

4:04 Emily Fairfax is an ecohydrologist we brought onto

4:08 the project because she is an expert on beavers.

4:11 We ended up bringing her to Pixar, she spoke to our whole crew,

4:14 she spoke to animators and we learned just so

4:16 many facts about beavers from her, big and small.

4:21 Baby beavers will hold onto the parent beaver's tail.

4:24 We learned about the teeth,

4:25 they're usually orange which we did not make orange in this movie.

4:28 Is there um soothing oils?

4:30 Smell like vanilla?

4:31 It waterproofs their fur.

4:32 It waterproofs their fur, yeah.

4:33 They hate the sound of running water.

4:35 They create wetlands.

4:37 They crawl under their lodge and go in underneath.

4:40 They don't have an entrance on the outside.

4:42 So that predators can't follow them.

4:44 Emily says they're like little chicken nuggets.

4:46 Um they're so tasty.

4:47 Um predators really want to eat them.

4:49 Yeah, there's tons of delicious fat.

4:51 Yes.

4:51 I mean I can tell you what Emily Fairfax would give notes on that we got wrong.

4:57 [laughter] The water is too shallow.

4:59 Yeah, mhm.

5:00 A real beaver would be like, "Not deep enough.

5:02 I have to build a dam." Yeah, he wouldn't he wouldn't feel safe.

5:04 Nope, there's no way.

5:05 He wouldn't know.

5:05 And clearly he's not safe.

5:07 Exactly.

5:09 [laughter]

5:08 Yeah, I mean I guess he wasn't.

5:10 That's what you get, Loaf.

5:12 all part of the plan.

5:12 [laughter] Yeah, do better.

5:13 I should really get going.

5:16 Oh wait!

5:16 No, no, no, no, no, come back!

5:18 Just I'm so sorry.

5:19 Please.

5:20 What?

5:25 Lunchtime!

5:26 Oh no.

5:28 Yay!

5:28 I want to remember to talk about Melissa Villasenor.

5:30 Oh yeah.

5:31 Who is the voice of Ellen the bear.

5:34 Ellen the bear.

5:35 She's an impressionist as well as a you know, comedian.

5:38 Yes.

5:39 But she can do any voice and so it's almost like

5:41 you have a an infinite number of voices to choose from.

5:45 Why?

5:46 And you wanted to find an animal voice

5:48 that indicated her girth, how big she was,

5:50 but that there was also a kind of sweetness beneath it and warmth.

5:53 So I did you can buy that these two characters who met when she

5:56 was trying to eat Loaf still become friends by the end of the movie.

5:59 Spoiler alert.

6:02 [laughter]

6:02 I mean she might still eat Loaf eventually,

6:05 but they're going to be buddies between now and then.

6:07 So there will be constant tension between these two [laughter] the whole movie.

6:12 I think what's exciting about this scene and why everyone really liked it

6:16 early on, I think it's because it does kind of show the tone,

6:20 you know, that we were going to kind of go a little dark but funny.

6:24 She's going to eat Loaf like a little sandwich here and he gets in the mouth.

6:29 Yeah.

6:29 [laughter] I still do miss the a really

6:32 early edit pass where when Ellen got Loaf, it made a SQUEAKY TOY SOUND.

6:39 [laughter] NO!

6:39 [screaming] PUT HIM DOWN!

6:41 I DON'T KNOW WHY THAT BUMPED ME.

6:44 [laughter] OW!

6:45 HEY!

6:46 DROP HIM!

6:47 THIS NEXT moment here was animated by Jean-Claude Tran Mhm.

6:51 [snorts] and it is crazy.

6:53 And it was extra crazy because the first pass he did, he drew it in 2D.

6:57 Oh yeah.

6:58 He fully hand animated this I love that.

7:00 this moment.

7:02 Um and I think that's just the way he works.

7:04 Yeah.

7:04 I was like, "Are you trying to show off?"

7:07 [laughter] But that's just how Jean-Claude works, man.

7:08 That's the way he thinks.

7:09 He's just a genius.

7:10 Mabel also has very short,

7:13 chubby little arms and so I think even just like being able to animate Yeah.

7:18 her kind of pounding on her was probably a bit of a challenge

7:20 to make sure that kept the really appealing Mabel design look.

7:24 Yes, I wanted short, stubby arms, really small hands and just cute, round.

7:29 There's some amazing facial expressions here that JC found.

7:33 Um so that is one of the the fun things about animation is you can go

7:36 off model and you can make them look

7:38 really weird and stuff and sometimes it works.

7:40 This is definitely one of them.

7:41 Look at how small her pupils are.

7:42 They're super small.

7:44 It this [laughter] is just a crazy cartoony in a great way.

7:46 What?

7:48 She was going to eat you.

7:50 Well, yeah, she caught me.

7:51 It's pond rules.

7:52 Mhm, pond rules.

7:53 This is where we first learn that there are pond rules,

7:56 but we don't know what those are.

7:58 I mean this is clueing the audience in, okay,

8:00 there's a set of rules and it's been set up by this king.

8:03 And but we're with Mabel and we're like, "Huh?

8:06 Yeah.

8:06 What?" [laughter] Yeah, yeah.

8:07 Pond rules.

8:08 The tables have turned.

8:11 That's right.

8:11 Okay.

8:12 That's right.

8:12 Beth, can you talk to us about the wet fur?

8:16 Oh, the wet fur.

8:17 Yeah.

8:17 Anybody that's tried to make anything in CG knows that fur is complicated.

8:22 Character with hair has a gazillion tiny pieces on it.

8:25 So you have all those more pieces to trace.

8:27 And with water, the thing that's complicated about

8:29 it is the way actually light moves through it.

8:31 And then when you put the water on the fur,

8:32 then you have something that's very complicated and very expensive to render.

8:35 And it's tough because the minute you start doing stuff

8:39 like this, it starts drawing making it feel a little realistic.

8:43 Yeah.

8:43 And it you take attention away from the cute parts of them.

8:46 I got I guess I'm I'm sorry, okay?

8:48 No, it's not okay.

8:50 When Ellen grabs Mabel There's a king?

8:55 there was a lot of concern that it was going to look painful.

9:01 [laughter]

9:00 I think ultimately what we did was we took out the bite sound sound effects.

9:06 We used to have a big clunk.

9:07 There's a king?

9:09 On there.

9:11 [laughter] You know.

9:13 Yeah, maybe make sure that you see her face still when she gets yeah.

9:17 Her mouth is kind of you know, gently grabbing her.

9:20 Gently, maybe no teeth.

9:21 There's no teeth.

9:22 No teeth, just lips kind of gumming her.

9:23 She's not like I don't know.

9:24 Yeah, right.

9:26 Cute.

9:26 All right, let's bring this all home.

9:28 Very much like Mabel here, this is kind of like us.

9:31 The process is it's a constant process of us asking the movie,

9:35 "What do you want to be now?

9:36 And what are you turning into?" And the movie was

9:39 kind of slow in telling us what it needed to be, but we just kept working it.

9:42 The movie kept going, "What?" What?

9:47 [laughter] But ultimately, you know, we did it together.

9:49 We just keep working it and suddenly slowly

9:52 the movie kind of revealed itself to us.

9:54 Imagine we're all together here.

9:55 This is all [laughter] of us.

9:57 And we made a movie together.

9:59 Hey.

9:59 So, that was our journey.

10:01 Very much like the [music] Mabel's journey.

10:03 Yeah, and we set it.

10:05 We set the scene.

10:06 We set the scene.

10:07 Do we feel like the scene is set?

10:08 Scene set.

10:09 Scene set.

10:09 And [music] scene.

10:11 Yeah.

10:12 [laughter]