"Up," produced by Pixar Animation Studios and Disney is the latest computer animated motion picture. Released on May 29, 2009, the film stars a cranky old man and an overeager wilderness explorer who fly to South America in a floating house suspended in balloons. The part of Russell, the Asian American young scout is read by Jordan Nagai, a seven-year-old Japanese American. Jordan Nagai interview for up: Link
The character of Russell was modeled on an Asian American animator at Pixar, Peter Sohn. Below is an excerpt taken from an interview of the film's director. Pete Docter, talking about the character Russell. Link
"Pete Sohn is such an entertaining character that we thought, let’s just try to grab him and figure out what he was like as a kid, so that’s kind of where that came from and just trying to be specific and different than things we’d done in the past. We talked early on about making some story point about that but I think by not dealing with it it’s more color blind or accepting or whatever, you just cast that character and move forward.”
0 comments