Up And Away

1530 Words4 Pages

Animation legend Walt Disney once said, “Animation offers a medium of storytelling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.” This quote rings especially true with Disney-Pixar’s Up. Pete Docter, the director of Up, is able to use multiple tactics to display human emotions throughout the film including music and silence, lighting and colors, and 3-D filming. The efficacy of these tactics will be further analyzed to see if their use yields value to the production as a whole.

The melodious instrumentals that accompany Up have the ability to plunge the audience deeper into the fantastic animated environment. The composer of the soundtrack for Up, Michael Giacchino, does a spectacular job of complementing music with the feelings of characters. The first scene of the film takes place in the 1930s when Carl (Ed Asner) is a young boy admiring his daring hero Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer), adventurer of Paradise Falls, at the local theater. Giacchino accompanies this scene with a wonderfully nostalgic adventure theme that illuminates the raw feeling of excitement felt by Carl, which critic David Denby describes as a “gee-whiz appreciation of exotic adventure . . . .” After leaving the theater Carl meets childhood Ellie (Elie Docter); this is where the theme song to Up is introduced. This main theme serves as a base song that is manipulated throughout the movie. Giacchino says, “What I ended up doing was doing this very simple waltz that grows and twists and turns through the whole course of the film. As Carl goes on this adventure, everything just changes, [and] the music changes with him and his character as he develops and he grows.” Many scenes in...

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... of the greatest animated films of all time.

Works Cited

Dargis, Manohla. “The House That Soared." Rev. of Up, dir. Peter Docter. The New York Times 11 May 2009. NyTimes. Web. 30 Mar. 2011.

Denby, David. "The Wanderers." Rev. of Up, dir. Peter Docter, The New Yorker 8 June 2009. New Yorker. Web. 30 Mar. 2011.

Ebert, Roger. "Cannes #1: Up, up and Away, in My Beautiful, My Beautiful Balloon." Rev. of Up, dir. Peter Docter. Chicago Sun Times 11 May 2009. Chicago Sun Times. Web. 30 Mar. 2011.

"Stevens, Dana.”Time To Get High." Rev. of Up, dir. Peter Docter. Slate 28 May 2009. Web. 30 Mar. 2011.

Turan, Kenneth. "Up." Rev. of Up, dir. Peter Docter The Los Angeles Times 29 May 2009. Web. 29 Mar. 2011.

Up. Dir. Peter Docter. Disney-Pixar, 2008. DVD.

Zacharek, Stephanie. “Up.” Rev. of Up, dir. Peter Docter Salon May 2009. Web. 30 Mar. 2011.

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