That sound
Despite being a huge Pixar fan, I still haven’t seen Wall•E. That’s mostly due to my belief that a typical cinema is not necessarily the best viewing environment for any movie, but particularly for one that you want to get really engrossed in …unless the cinema is empty of humans.
I’m not sure if I can hold out much longer though, especially after reading this wonderful story about how the people at Pixar responded to one blogger’s reaction to seeing the first trailer for the movie last year. Eda Cherry describes herself as having a strong fondness for robots
so Wall•E is already pushing all the right buttons. The moment when he says his own name is the moment that pushes her over the edge — it makes her cry every time. Partly it’s the robot’s droopy eyes as he looks up into space but also:
It’s the voice modulation.
That would be Ben Burtt Jr. I remember as a child receiving the quarterly Star Wars fan club newsletter, Bantha Tracks, and reading about the amazing amount of found sounds that went into the soundscape of that galaxy far, far away: animal noises, broken TV sets, tuning forks tapped against high-tension wires. And of course R2D2, voiced by Ben Burtt himself.
Now, with Wall•E, he’s voicing another lovable robot, one capable of moving humans to tears. His involvement is no coincidence. In the initial brainstorming for the project, John Lasseter repeatedly described it as R2D2: The Movie
.
The journey involved in turning that initial idea into a finished film is a long one. For a closer look at the process at Pixar, be sure to read Peter Merholz’s chat with Michael B. Johnson. Their storyboarding process sounds a lot like wireframing:
We’d much rather fail with a bunch of sketches that we did (relatively) quickly and cheaply, than once we’ve modeled, rigged, shaded, animated, and lit the film.
Fail fast,that’s the mantra.