The Good Dinosaur: Fascinating Facts From the Creators & Cast! #GoodDino

The Good Dinosaur: Fascinating Facts

By Erin

 *I attended a media event as a guest of Disney.*

THE GOOD DINOSAUR - Pictured (L-R): Momma, Poppa, Arlo, Buck, Libby. ©2015 Disney•Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

THE GOOD DINOSAUR – Pictured (L-R): Momma, Poppa, Arlo, Buck, Libby. ©2015 Disney•Pixar.

Have you ever thought what it would be like if Dinosaurs roamed the earth alongside us humans? Well, Disney/Pixar’s “The Good Dinosaur” asks this very question: What if the asteroid that forever changed life on Earth missed the planet completely and giant dinosaurs never became extinct? Pixar Animation Studios takes us on a wild epic journey, straight into the world of dinosaurs where an Apatosaurus named Arlo makes an unlikely human friend named Spot. While traveling through a harsh and mysterious landscape, Arlo learns the power of confronting his fears and discovers what he is truly capable of. “The Good Dinosaur” is very unique in many ways, it’s not like other Disney/Pixar films. Here to tell us some special facts about the film, we have the cast and creators to share with us how “The Good Dinosaur” came to life.

Sam Elliott, Director Peter Sohn, Anna Paquin, AJ Buckley, Producer Denise Ream, Jeffrey Wright and Raymond Ochoa attend the The Good Dinosaur Press Day in Los Angeles on November 15, 2015. Photo by Patrick Wymore. ©2015 Disney•Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

Sam Elliott, Director Peter Sohn, Anna Paquin, AJ Buckley, Producer Denise Ream, Jeffrey Wright and Raymond Ochoa attend the The Good Dinosaur Press Day in Los Angeles on November 15, 2015. Photo by Patrick Wymore. ©2015 Disney•Pixar

First we spoke with the very talented Peter Sohn, who directed the film and Denise Ream, who produced the film. They enlightened us with some very fascinating facts about the film.

Producer Denise Ream and Director Peter Sohn attend the The Good Dinosaur Press Day in Los Angeles on November 15, 2015. Photo by Patrick Wymore. ©2015 Disney•Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

Producer Denise Ream and Director Peter Sohn attend the The Good Dinosaur Press Day in Los Angeles on November 15, 2015. Photo by Patrick Wymore. ©2015 Disney•Pixar.

1)Rough Start

“The Good Dinosaur” had a very rough beginning. Originally the film had been in production with a different team for many years. It was shut down in October of 2013 because the story was not going in the direction that it needed to go. Then Peter Sohn came on board and helped to get the film moving in the right direction alongside Denise Ream in December 2013, begining with research. Peter Sohn suggested, “Let’s plan a trip. And Denise was like, “Let’s get lost out there, and let’s just do what we started with this project Let’s go out there.” The team then went to Wyoming, where they began to discover the beauty as well as the dangers of the region, and became inspired to write the story.

2)Easter Eggs

Pixar is known for planting numerous Easter Eggs in their films and “The Good Dinosaur” is no different. Peter Sohn told us that there are some Easter eggs such as the Pizza Planet Truck, A-113, and Dory. There are more, so keep a watchful eye out for them! 😉

Jeffrey Wright and Raymond Ochoa attend the The Good Dinosaur Press Day in Los Angeles on November 15, 2015. Photo by Patrick Wymore. ©2015 Disney•Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

Jeffrey Wright and Raymond Ochoa attend the The Good Dinosaur Press Day in Los Angeles on November 15, 2015. Photo by Patrick Wymore. ©2015 Disney•Pixar.

Next we met with Jeffrey Wright (voice of Poppa) & Raymond Ochoa (Voice of Arlo) who also had lots of fun information for us.

3) A lot of Research

Raymond Ochoa did a lot of research for his role as Arlo. He credits his parents for all of their help. “I have great parents and they are so helpful in everything I do, so when I knew that I was an apatosaurus, they helped me on what it actually was.  They helped me Google stuff.  They helped me Google facts and good things about what it actually looked like, because I had no idea what it looked like.  I didn’t know what an apatosaurus was at the time, and I looked it up.  I was like, “Wow, okay.” I saw a picture of it, and I was like, “This dinosaur doesn’t look that mean.”  But, you know, it doesn’t look kid-friendly at the same time either. If you saw that thing walking around, you’d be scared of it. I think that was what really helped me get the part was because I did go in with the understanding of what it actually was, rather than an average person who just says lines in front of a thing and being like, “okay, let’s send it over.” 

4) A Love for Pixar

Jeffery Wright and his family have a deep love for Pixar. “I live vicariously through these things with my children, it was intensely exciting for me because it was so for them. It was beyond the popularity of the movies and, the prominence that they have for kids my kids’ age and Raymond’s age now, they are really good stories.  It’s really become, seriously well-considered storytelling. The themes of this one, which are so universal and fairly obvious around parenthood and family and love and responsibility and nurturing, all of these things are so resonant, so that’s really very gratifying to be a part of.  On top of that, it makes me — you know, Hunger Games went a long way in this regard, but now a Pixar movie makes me even that much cooler with the kids, my kids, and their friends at school, so that’s always advantageous. 

Sam Elliott, Anna Paquin and AJ Buckley attend the The Good Dinosaur Press Day in Los Angeles on November 15, 2015. Photo by Patrick Wymore. ©2015 Disney•Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

Sam Elliott, Anna Paquin and AJ Buckley attend the The Good Dinosaur Press Day in Los Angeles on November 15, 2015. Photo by Patrick Wymore. ©2015 Disney•Pixar.

Last for “The Good Dinosaur we got to chat with Sam Elliott (voice of “Butch”), Anna Paquin (voice of “Ramsey”) & AJ Buckley (voice of “Nash”)

5) They Didn’t Work Together

We found out that they didn’t rehearse together. At all. They had not all gotten to meet in person until that day at the press junket! AJ Buckley told us, “That’s the crazy part, none of us actually , worked together. Until this morning, it was the first time we’d met. I was the last person cast.  I didn’t hear their voices in the scene.  Just heard sort of where — you know, a scene here and a scene there, and it wasn’t mixed yet.  That’s how Peter, how he took — he was very, very specific, if it wasn’t for Peter and his ability to walk us into a room with an empty canvas and tell us exactly what it was going to look like,  that and more. That’s an enormous compliment to the entire process. 

6)Landing a Kid Friendly Role

Anna Paquin usually does not have kid friendly roles, so she was overjoyed to learn that Pixar wanted to work with her. The coolness factor? “I won’t know till the movie comes out, ’cause then the real cool points will start racking up.  I mean, aside from the fact that I’d always loved Pixar, and had been sort of trying to figure out how to get ’em to want to hire me, and then it kind of just happened, I was like, “That’s really cool and awesome, and sort of spooky.” It definitely gives me good street cred as a mom, you know? Just like, “My mom’s a T-Rex.  What’s your mom’s superpower?”

7) Character Similarities

You might notice that some of the characters in the film have the features of those voicing them.  You will see that Sam Elliott’s character, “Butch” who is a T-Rex with an overbite that looks like his moustache and other prominent  facial features.

THE GOOD DINOSAUR - Pictured: Arlo. ©2015 Disney•Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

THE GOOD DINOSAUR – Pictured: Arlo. ©2015 Disney•Pixar.

Be sure to see the The Good Dinosaur in Theaters, November 25th!

Kyle MacLachlan as Dad in Inside Out #InsideOutEvent

Kyle MacLachlan as Dad in Inside Out

By Erin

*I attended a special interview with Kyle MacLachlan as a guest of Disney as part of the #InsideOutEvent! All thoughts and opinions remain my own*

Kyle MacLachlan plays the voice of “Dad” in the new major emotion picture Inside Out. You might remember him from beloved shows such as Sex and the City , where he played Trey, Charlotte’s first husband or from How I Met Your Mother, where he played The Captain. The other week during all of the Inside Out festivities we were able to get inside his head and what he thinks of the film. Disney Pixar’s Inside Out was the perfect film to open this past Father’s Day weekend don’t you think? All of the frustrations and challenges a parent faces while their child grows up in front of their eyes is summed up pretty well. It is sure to be an emotional roller coaster for a lot of families as well as the perfect opportunity to bond and bring up some emotional topics about feelings.

Inside-Out-Dad

Onto our conversation with Kyle! We jumped right into the good stuff and asked him, What identities would control you?

Kyle replied with, “What would they be, controlling me?  It would be, Wino would be one.  He controls me after 6.  I don’t know if Pete Doctor and Jonas and those guys thought of that one, and it maybe not appropriate for Riley, for that maybe.  Coffee would be another one.They’re pretty much the same.  Don’t you think? I would put underneath that Silliness, just because that’s just kind of my nature. The rest of them would be secondary.”

Next he told us about being a Dad and how much of the character he was able to bring on-screen because this was kind of normal character departure from what he normally plays. “It was fun to do this guy, being a Dad myself, I was able to bring a little bit of my relationship with my son in and it was encouraged actually by Pete and Jonas and Ronnie, they wanted my personality so I was happy to try different things.  Some worked, most didn’t but it’s always good to throw them out there just as ideas. But the process is strange because you’re sitting with a Microphone and you don’t have anything visually to work off  of and Pete would feed me all the information of what was happening in the scene and I would read it and go into my head and play it out in my head so it was like I was shooting my own little Movie as I was saying the words; walking into the room, sitting down on the edge of the bed and saying things got a little hand, you start asking questions like, would I say that from the doorway or would I knock? You begin to put it together in your brain; let me try it this way and then let me try it starting it here.” He found the process rather fascinating.

“Most people I think would be bored to tears but I love just how to interpret those words, in the most interesting way, hopefully that’s the difference between doing it in front of the camera where you’re actually just walking through it and you can feel it yourself to just playing it out in your head as you go.”

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Kyle’s son will be 7 next month, has he seen the movie yet?

He’s seen the trailers on it like the Dinner scene. “He loved the Dinner Scene.  He says, the foot is down, the foot.  He loves that part. He’s seen a couple moments but, I’ll take him to see it at some point this summer.” This was followed by asking if he feels like he can see the emotions in his son’s head?  

“I totally see it in him. He’s coming up on 7 so they’re still trying to figure out how they all work together.  Joy is the dominant one for him as well but he can bring in some disgust with attitude, which I’m sure he’s picked up at school.  He definitely, has this silly gene from me. That comes from my Grandmother in fact. You begin to see and recognize, not only in him but in other people as well. I was doing an interview earlier where the Writer said, why don’t you take your hand off the Anger button to his son. I was like OK, so maybe this will enter our consciousness in a whole different way.”

WHAT ARE THEY THINKING? -- Pixar Animation Studios takes audiences inside the mind of 11-year-old Riley, who is uprooted from her Midwest life when her father starts a new job in San Francisco. Guided by her five Emotions - Joy (voice of Amy Poehler), Sadness (voice of Phyllis Smith), Fear (voice of Bill Hader), Disgust (voice of Mindy Kaling) and Anger (voice of Lewis Black) - Riley struggles to adjust, and when Fear, Disgust and Anger are left in control, even a simple family dinner takes an unexpected turn. Also featuring the voices of Diane Lane as Mom, Kaitlyn Dias as Riley and Kyle MacLachlan as Dad, Disney•Pixar's "Inside Out" opens in theaters nationwide June 19, 2015. ©2014 Disney•Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

Photo Credit: Disney/Pixar

We a were all very curious to find out what the difference between Voice Acting and Standard Acting was like?  Could you relax in Voice Acting?

He told us, “Going to work as an Actor, they sort of tell you what time, they pick you up sometimes, they feed you, they tell you what to wear.  They tell you what to say.  They tell you where to stand.  They tell you when to stop, they tell you when to go.  They tell you where to sit and you’re waiting.  They tell you where to eat lunch.  So it’s pretty nice not to have to do a whole lot. Voice Acting is nice because, there’s not a Camera that you have to be aware of necessarily. Although they did film all of the stuff that I was doing just to capture the physical gestures and mannerisms and a little bit to incorporate I think in the role or in the drawings. But it’s different, challenging, because as I said earlier, I run the scene in my head so I’m recreating, cause I don’t see all the stuff.  It’s sort of described, he’s at the door, he’s at the bed.  I’m like, when does he get there?  How does that work and when is his line when you reach out and touch your hair, would you like pat our hand?  All that is running in my head as I’m doing it, trying to recreate it up here.  And that takes–  You get exhausted doing that actually.  But there’s only 2 hour sessions so that was OK, yeah.”

INSIDE OUT - Pictured (L-R): Riley's Mom, Riley Andersen, Riley's Dad. ©2015 Disney•Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

Photo Credit: Disney/Pixar

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An Insiders Look Into Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out! #InsideOutEvent

An Insiders Look Into Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out!

By Erin

The big day has finally arrived! Inside Out is here to enter the minds and hearts of all who see it. I just cannot say enough good things about this film; it’s the feel good movie of the summer, and it’s still technically a couple of days until summer is officially here. But it’s just that good, so I’m going to pretend it’s summertime already. Adorably inventive, gorgeously animated, and powerfully moving, Inside Out is another  jewel to add to the Pixar library.

Inside Out

Centered around 11-year-old Riley, the movie follows this spirited and goofy young girl, as her dad’s new job in San Francisco uproots the family from the Midwest (Minnesota). To help her navigate through this change are her emotions: Joy (Amy Poehler), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), and Sadness (Phyllis Smith).

INSIDE OUT

The control center inside 11-year-old Riley’s mind, is called Headquarters and it is where five Emotions are hard at work, led by lighthearted optimist Joy, whose mission is to make sure Riley stays happy. Fear heads up safety, Anger ensures all is fair and Disgust prevents Riley from getting poisoned, both physically and socially. Sadness isn’t sure really what her role is, and frankly, neither is anyone else. “The Emotions are kind of like the voices in our heads,” says director Pete Docter. “Everybody has a default temperament. We all go through periods of being happy or sad, but certain people are just happy or angry or what have you. Riley is one of those happy kids. So Joy had to be the first Emotion to show up, and she has a very special bond with Riley.” But when Joy and Sadness are accidentally swept into the far reaches of Riley’s mind, taking some of her core memories with them; Fear, Anger and Disgust are left in charge, and all sorts of crazy things start happening.

D

Joy and Sadness venture along through Long Term Memory, Imagination Land, Abstract Thought and Dream Productions all in a dire effort to get back to Headquarters before it’s too late. On this adventure you will meet many colorful characters, including the Forgetters, who are Mind Workers in charge of sorting Riley’s memories, to Riley’s forgotten imaginary friend named Bing Bong, (whom I just adored, and I am sure you will too! Bing-Bong! Bing-Bong! Bing-Bong!) is part cat, part elephant, but mostly cotton candy. He’s desperately trying to find a way to make Riley remember him. Filled with lovable and memorable characters, making it a fun movie for all.

You will learn a lot about Riley’s Islands of Personality in the film. They are powered by core memories, which are all of the really important and significant times in Riley’s life. Core Memories are those things that you’ll think about or remember until your last days. It’s those big moments that have led us to be who we are. Each Island defines a different aspect of Riley’s personality: Hockey Island, Friendship Island, Family Island, Goofball Island, and Honesty Island.

Of course I don’t want to ruin it for you and give away the ending or all of the little details that make this such a wonderful and enjoyable film, so I will leave you with a few fun facts about Inside Out.

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