SOUL SEARCHING

PETE DOCTER SHARES HIS VISION FOR PIXAR’S UPCOMING FILM, SOUL

Now one of Pixar’s most hardened directors and storytellers, Pete Docter feels like his experiences making Inside Out prepared him for his next film, Soul. Inside Out took Pixar’s penchant for emotional stories to a new level. In the wake of its release in 2015, parents would write to the studio with stories of how the film transformed their ability to speak with their children about a range of issues.

Never one to rest on his laurels, Docter is taking things a step further with Soul, due out in November 2020. “It’s yet another order of magnitude more complex and challenging because it’s set in the world of souls,” he explains. The film’s concept is a lofty one, even by Pixar’s standards. “As kids are born they already have this personality that you can see from day one. Where did that come from?” he asks. “What if there’s a world that our souls were living in before we were born?” Figuring out how to portray a soul world on screen was no small task for the filmmakers involved. “If you read anything about souls, in any religion or tradition, it talks about vapour, the ethereal, and breath,” says Docter, “all these words that are like, how do we film that?”

Docter also wanted to ensure that the ordinary settings of Soul presented the audience with something fresh. “The fallback would’ve been what human characters look like in Toy Story, Finding Nemo, or Inside Out. They all have a similar look,” he continues, “but we really tried to push the human stuff in this film. There’s a great cartoonist named Ronald Searle who we were inspired by, nothing directly, just his sense of proportion, style, and detail. That informed us a lot. I’m very proud and excited to see what people think.”