It’s an understatement to say that Pixar films are beautiful. We’ve always appreciated how much work went into every Pixar film, but it wasn’t until now that we really understood how seriously the animation house takes its films’ backdrops. This new video, recently put out on the Disney•Pixar YouTube channel, gives us a little insight into the lengths the studio goes to in order to capture an environment as accurately as possible.
The real life settings don’t end with San Francisco for Inside Out or Paris for Ratatouille. The artists sought out inspiration for locales for other films that aren’t entirely, let’s say, rooted in reality. Pixar used the Monterey Bay Aquarium as a model for Finding Dory, the Venezuelan mountains for Paradise Falls in Up, Scotland’s Outer Hebrides for Brave, and even designed the setting of Cars with a nod to Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, TX.
But the most impressive thing we learned from this video is where they went for inspiration for 2015’s The Good Dinosaur. We’ve touched on Pixar’s knack for gorgeous environments before but it’s so much cooler than just how everything looks. The breathtaking vistas in the film come from filmmakers visiting Wyoming, Montana, and Oregon to capture the look of those areas. And those areas just happen to be where Apatosauruses lived in North America during the Late Jurassic period. Pixar’s attention to detail is so impressive that we wouldn’t be surprised if it came out they went to the future to do research for Wall-E.
What’s your favorite Pixar movie setting? Let’s discuss in the comments below!
Image: Disney/Pixar
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