“Elio” (opening theatrically June 20), Pixar‘s first intergalactic buddy comedy, takes an animated leap into space with imaginative design and visual splendor, utilizing a mixture of old and new techniques. The footage screened at Pixar was funny and, in one tender scene, very moving.
It’s about 11-year-old orphan Elio (Yonas Kibreab), who’s obsessed with getting abducted by aliens and finally gets his wish when he’s mistaken for Earth’s leader. Elio beams up to the candy-colored interplanetary space station of peace and security called the Communiverse, where he bonds with worm-like alien Glordon (Remy Edgerly), who’s just as lost and friendless. That is, until Elio’s found out and sent back home to the Air Force base where he lives with his stressed-out aunt Olga (Oscar winner Zoe Saldaña).
“Elio” is very much a post-Covid film about loneliness and the search for belonging that afflicts many children. Still grieving the loss of his parents, Elio has trouble fitting in socially with the other kids on the Air Force base, while his aunt has difficulty coping with her new role as an adoptive parent. The film was the brainchild of Adrian Molina (co-director of “Coco”), who conceived it as a personal coming-of-age story about youthful alienation. He grew up on a military base and didn’t find “his people” until studying animation at CalArts.
But Molina’s first solo opportunity ran into some speed bumps, and he was taken off “Elio” by chief creative officer Pete Docter and reassigned to “Coco 2” as co-director with director Lee Unkrich. Madeline Sharafian (the “Burrow” short) and Domee Shi (“Turning Red”) jumped aboard as the new directors. Sharafian, who contributed storyboards to “Elio,” previously served in that capacity on both “Coco” and “Turning Red.”
“We were really trying to infuse that feeling of loneliness into ‘Elio’ and his wanting to belong somewhere, his deep desire to connect but not really knowing how,” Sharafian told IndieWire. “I think a lot of young people just want to make friends, they want to find their people. But they think if I’m in the perfect place where everyone thinks like me, acts like me, then I can belong. That will be the solution to all my problems.”
“But really that solution comes from within,” Shi told IndieWire. “It’s about making that first step — reaching out to someone. It’s more than that typical ‘I want to go into space and explore.’ It’s much deeper.”
Here’s what we learned about “Elio”:
Creating the Communiverse as a “College Project”
For his last Pixar film before retiring, veteran production designer Harley Jessup (“Coco,” “Ratatouille,” “Monsters, Inc.”) devised an experimental process to find the look of Communiverse in collaboration with visual effects supervisor Claudia Chung Sanii (“Zootopia,” “Brave”). He called it the “College Project” in the spirit of exploration. They utilized VR and macro photography in water tanks similar to his early work on ILM’s “Inner Space.” One test shot was actually recorded sideways in a drinking glass at a Pixar party. Another took oil and water in a glass bowl set on top of a sheet of sequins and glitter.
“I was able to bring some of that back into research on tiny, microscopic plants and animals,” Jessup told IndieWire. “And how alien they look is still part of the natural world that the audience would recognize and feel believable. And everybody just picked up on that and ran with those ideas. Tests from every corner that were just astounding: oceanic characters that are outside of the ocean that are in our space, swimming through the atmosphere rather than water because their gravity is different.”
The goal was to create a unique, dazzling version of space that hasn’t been seen on film before, made of luminescent and translucent materials with gravity that is very fluid to accommodate the different species. The result was a space station housing 16 member planets that live in four different ecosystems that are represented on a series of rotating discs. There’s a volcanic hot disc, an icy cold disc, an aquatic disc, and a verdant blush disc.
The rotating discs are often shown backlit like colorful stained glass. The embassies are situated on the disc that most closely matches the climate of the delegation’s home planet. The basic construction of the four parabolic discs starts with topographic layering similar to 3D computer-generated relief maps. This precise sculptural quality adds a sense of technology to all the universe sets.
How New Interactive Lighting Called Luna Changed Everything
On “Elio,” Pixar brought lighting and camera together at the same time, thanks to a new interactive lighting toolset called Luna. This enabled them to crack the aesthetic much earlier to guide our eyes and tell the story.
”When we first started seeing artwork from Harley and his team, we really sought out to build this space we’ve never seen before, and, to me, the only way to do that was to bring everybody on the crew together into one room,” Chung Sanii told IndieWire. “And we quickly realized lighting happens last in CG, which is strange because, in live action, lighting and camera happen at the same time.
“So Pixar was developing Luna, which bring lighting to all interactive workflows,” she continued. “We got that pre-alpha of a look at that, and that’s when we discovered this universe could really work: all the luminance and the translucency that Harley was putting in there. Although the tool wasn’t ready for prime time, I think future movies are using it even more. It forced us to have our lighting DP, Jordan Rempel, start at the same time as Derek Williams, our layout DP. So they were always designing and planning and working on shots together. It made such a huge difference to be able to have that time to create with the lighting team and the layout team to see the potential, and we would change things on the set to plus what they had roughed out.”
Making BFF Glordon
The worm-like Glordon from the volcanic planet was one of Pixar’s favorite aliens. Like Elio, he’s lonely and doesn’t fit in with his culture, where he’s expected to don military armor and become a fierce warrior, like his father, Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett). Gordon’s design was influenced by Pixar’s studies of larval insects and microbiotic creatures such as the tardigrade. Finding the right balance of disturbing and adorable was a big challenge. Another was finding expression in a creature without eyes.
“ I think part of what was special for me comes out in the first moments that you meet [Glordon],” animation supervisor Jude Brownbill told IndieWire. “He’s sort of mysterious, creepy, off-putting, a work with a bunch of teeth.” But then one of the creepiest-looking characters becomes the one who puts the biggest smile on our face. “ Elio and Glordon develop into this really charming, heartfelt, empathetic friendship,” he added
Making OOOOO, the Liquid Supercomputer
Then there’s OOOOO (Shirley Henderson), the liquid, shapeshifting supercomputer. Because of the dynamic effects involved, she marked an unprecedented technical and artistic challenge. Indeed, OOOOO is described as a Swiss Army knife made of droplets moving in space with moving circuitry inside her. The fluidity and charm came as a result of 2D testing.
“She’s so flexible as a character,” animation supervisor Travis Hathaway told IndieWire. “ She can become a screen, she can become a vinyl player, she can become a projector, she can manifest as a pen for Elio to write with. We leveraged some facial rigging and animation techniques that we learned on ‘Win or Lose.’ You can use different forms and have them come together at render time.”
From Mother Olga to Aunt Olga
Directors Sharafian and Shi wanted to deepen Elio’s motivation for wanting to be abducted by aliens. This meant raising the emotional stakes for his loneliness and making him more empathetic. A part of this was turning him into an orphan, shifting Olga from mother to aunt.
“ Knowing that Elio was going to have to decide where he wanted to be, it felt like a relationship with a mother and son was a bit too much,” Sharafian said. “Maybe they have an argument and they storm off, but, at the end of the day, you still kind of believe in your heart as an audience member that they’re gonna come back together. But an aunt and a nephew [relationship] is a lot more tenuous. There’s a chance that they’d split off and lose that connection forever. And that tension for the audience watching these two characters who are missing connections, you’re really rooting for them, that added a lot of juice.”
“ And I feel like I identified more with Olga as an aunt,” added Shi, “who suddenly has to like be saddled with this huge responsibility, and she’s trying her best, but she wasn’t prepared for it. And she’s trying to navigate it day by day. It just felt really compelling. And she’s lost too.”
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