The short films that precede Pixar features have been an integral part of the package since the studio's beginnings: bite-sized tone poems greasing you up for the main features. Indeed, before you even enter the doors of Pixar HQ in Emeryville, San Francisco, you're greeted by giant-sized versions of Luxo the lamp and his ball from the company's debut, 1986 short Luxo Jr.
Their latest mini-opus, Lava, which runs in front of this week’s Inside Out, is one of the most charming yet: a seven-minute musical love story spanning millions of years, starring a pair of lovelorn volcanoes. "To generate stories I think about things I can geek out over, things that really touch me," says director James Ford Murphy, who’s been at Pixar for 19 years.
Murphy fell in love with Hawaii after visiting on honeymoon. "Hawaii really touches me. The geology, the people, the amount of music that has come out of this remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean -- it just blows me away," he says. "The fact that there are still active volcanoes in this place, the fact that there's a whole chain of islands that have sunk back into the sea... it just became this fascination."
The creation of Lava began simply. "I did a little napkin drawing," he says, “with a volcano head on it with a face and it said 'I lava you.' And that was like, okay, there's a song there." Further research and another visit for his sister’s wedding beefed up his idea. "Volcanoes are universal, because the entire world has been created by volcanoes. And what really fascinated me is the underwater volcanoes that you don't really know exist. I learned that there's one called Lōʻihi just off the coast of the big island [in Hawaii]. That just blew my mind, it's going to be the sixth volcano on this giant island. It's going to take 10,000 to 100,000 years to get there. And when my sister was getting married at the age of 43, and that became an epiphany -- I thought, what if she was a volcano? And what if volcanoes spend their entire life searching for love? I thought I could really have fun with this, and make it happy and wonderful."
Murphy learnt to play the ukulele and began writing a song, inspired by Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s serene version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow, and pitched it to Pixar head John Lasseter -- musically."I was terrified, but I just went in and let rip," he says. "You’ve got to just throw yourself into it." Lasseter loved the pitch and green lit the project.
It was then that Murphy began to properly research volcanoes: he and producer Andrea Warren went to Hawaii to get the lay of the land, spending two days at a local music festival to find the right singers. Warren was as inspired as Murphy. "When you land in Kona Airport it's like the Moon, but black," she says. "And as you drive away it looks like there's frosting everywhere, then it kind of turns into soil, and then grass. I love living in a city, but you're so far away from how it all started, and to me there's such a feeling in Hawaii that you're on the Earth, and you're so connected to where it came from."
It took a year and a half to make the short. Much research went into finessing the glow and colour of the lava, but the main challenge, says Murphy, was to design volcano faces that looked like a result of natural evolution, while having them move and emote in recognisable ways. The team ended up creating vertical sliding plates for eyebrows and mouths. Lasseter also pushed them to heighten the sense of scale. "We're so bad about doing scale in our medium," explains Murphy. "And to move a camera on a set-piece that has a lot of modelled vegetation can really choke down the computer. It really forces us to come up with clever ways to give you the illusion that there's that many trees. We did it in a really efficient way."
The work paid off: Lava is a home run. The camera swoops and floats around the two volcanoes as they attempt to connect, and we in turn connect with them. "Volcanoes are misunderstood for being destructive -- and they are, I don't want to disrespect that," he says. "But so much of what we sit on, the land that we love and all of our cultures, is because of volcanoes."
And he says, there’s a universal lesson in the short, and its creation: "Pursue the stuff you love, and great things happen."
Inside Out is out on July 24
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
