Animation Pitstop: UP (2009 animation)

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Up is a 2009 computer animated adventure film for all ages. The film is produced by Pixar Animation Studios. This animated film was awarded with two Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature file and Best Original Score in 2010 .

Up was directed by Pete Docter`s and features the voices of Edward, Christopher Plummer, Bob Peterson and many more.

About the animated film
The film centres around an elderly widower named Carl Fredricksen and a young, overage r, wilderness explorer named Russell, who fly to South America in a floating house suspended from helium balloons. I wont tell you more about the movie GO SEE IT FOR UR SELF :)

Production

The main character Carl Fredricksen is partially based on Spencer Tracy.

The fantasy of a flying house was born out from director Pete Docter's thoughts about escaping from life when it becomes too irritating, which he explained stemmed from his difficulty with social situations growing up. Writing began in 2004. Actor and writer Thomas McCarthy aided Docter and Bob Peterson in shaping the story for about three months. Docter selected an old man for the main character after drawing a picture of a grumpy old man with smiling balloons.

The filmmakers' first story outline had Carl just wanting to join his wife up in the sky," Docter said. "It was almost a kind of strange suicide mission or something. And obviously that's a problem. Once he gets airborne, then what? So we had to have some goal for him to achieve that he had not yet gotten."Russell was added to the story at a later date than Dug and Kevin; his presence, as well as the construction workers, helped to make the story feel less episodic.

The character Charles Muntz, who resembles Kirk Douglas, comes actually from Howard Hughes and Errol Flynn. An inspiration for the name of this character was cartoon producer Charles B. Mintz, who stole Walt Disney's hit character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, forcing Disney to create replacement character Mickey Mouse. Mintz, like Muntz, did get his comeuppance in real life.

Docter wanted to push a stylized feel, particularly the way Carl's head is proportioned: he has a squarish appearance to symbolize his containment within his house, while Russell is rounded like a balloon.The challenge on Up was making these stylized characters feel natural,Toy Story, who suffered from the " although Docter remarked the effect came across better than animating the realistic humans from uncanny valley". Cartoonists Al Hirschfeld, Hank Ketcham and George Booth influenced the human designs. Simulating realistic cloth on caricatured humans was harder than creating the 10,000 balloons flying the house. New programs were made to simulate the cloth and for Kevin's iridescent feathers. To animate old people, Pixar animators would study their own parents or grandparents and also watched footage of the Senior Olympics.

A technical director worked out that in order to make Carl's house fly, he would require 23 million balloons, but Docter realized that number made the balloons look like small dots. Instead, the balloons created were made to be twice Carl's size.^[39] There are 10,927 balloons for shots of the house just flying, 20,622 balloons for the lift-off sequence, and it varies in other scenes

Music

When Carl meets Muntz, a romantic version of "Muntz's Theme" expresses Carl's joy in finally meeting his hero.
When Muntz lifts his lamp and shows "the wall", "Muntz's Theme" plays in a minor key with a lot of dissonance to express his twisted nature.
At the end of the film, during the climactic battle between Carl and Muntz, the orchestra plays "Ellie's Theme vs. Muntz's Theme."

Awards & nominations

Up won the Best Original Score, won the Best Animated Feature Film at the 67th Golden Globe Awards. It was also nominated for 9 Annie Awards in 8 categories, winning two awards for Best Animated Feature and for Directing in a Feature Production. Up also received the Golden Tomato from Rotten Tomatoes for highest rating feature in 2009, and best reviewed animated film. Also, won "Choice Summer Movie Comedy" at the 2009 Teen Choice Awards. In addition it won two Critic's Choice Awards for Best Animated Film and Best Original Score. It was also nominated for three Grammys at 52nd Grammy Awards, winning two.

Together with Avatar, the two are the first 3D films ever nominated for Best Picture. It is the second fully animated film to have ever been nominated for Best Picture, the other being Beauty and the Beast and is also the first animated movie to be nominated in the category since the creation of the Best Animated Feature award.

What i felt about the movie