What if the asteroid that forever changed life on Earth, missed the planet completely and giant dinosaurs never became extinct?
The Good Dinosaur, Pixar's latest adventure, is going to answer that question for you. And we're going to answer questions about The Good Dinosaur.
My name is Tim and today on Channel Frederator, we're counting down 107 facts about The Good Dinosaur. Let's get started!
Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur will follow the tale of Arlo, a lost little dinosaur, as he finds his way home.
The film is set to be released on November
25, 2015. That’s the same day as Regular Show: The Movie. Different demographic, though.
I'm guessing The Good Dinosaur will not have as many Rush songs in the soundtrack.
The Good Dinosaur is the second Pixar film of 2015. Inside Out, released June 19, 2015, is the first.
It is the first time Pixar has released two films in the same year.
The Good Dinosaur was originally going to
be released on November 27, 2013. It was pushed back and Frozen took its place.
The film was then set for release on May 30, 2014, but it was pushed back again when the
original director had trouble with the third act.
Or maybe he was still jealous of Frozen, it's not clear.
The film’s original director, Bob Peterson, was replaced by Peter Sohn, and has since gone on to work on another Pixar film.
The film’s original producer, John Walker, was also replaced by Denise Ream.
Because The Good Dinosaur was pushed back,
so was Finding Dory. The sequel to the acclaimed film Finding Nemo was originally going to
be released on November 25, 2015, which is now The Good Dinosaur’s release date, but was moved to June 17, 2016.
Changes have been made to the story since
Sohn took over as director. One such change has making nature itself the primary antagonist.
Spoiler alert, that's what killed the dinosaurs.
The Good Dinosaur is Pixar Animation Studios’ sixteenth feature film.
The film has been in production for a whopping six years.
The Good Dinosaur isn’t just the second Pixar film of 2015. It’s also the second
dinosaur film, following the release of Jurassic World.
There's no Chris Pratt in this one though, I don't think...
After Bob Peterson was removed from the project, John Lasseter, Lee Unkrich, Mark Andrews,
and Peter Sohn temporarily stepped in to work on the film.
On top of story problems, production of The Good Dinosaur has been hindered by creative
differences. It was also a victim of a quality slump at Pixar that spanned from 2011’s Cars 2 to 2013’s Monsters University.
Pixar’s constant multitasking between its
various film projects also led to some production issues for The Good Dinosaur.
It's hard to keep track of a lot of projects.
Pixar actually had a version of The Good Dinosaur to show people in 2013, but Ream said, “it just wasn’t ready.”
The Good Dinosaur is Pixar’s first Thanksgiving release since 1999’s Toy Story 2.
The film is also Pixar’s first Thanksgiving release not directed by John Lasseter.
The first official trailer for The Good Dinosaur
featured the song Crystals by Of Monsters and Men.
According to Bob Peterson, his inspiration for the film came from a childhood trip to
the 1964 New York World’s Fair, where he was impressed by dinosaur animatronics.
Just a kid with dinosaurs on the brain, lots of kids are into dinosaurs.
The film’s original cast was going to include celebrities John Lithgow, Judy Greer, Bill
Hader, Neil Patrick Harris, and Lucas Neff. Following the changes to the film’s plot, they were all replaced.
Sadly, none of them were replaced by Dee Bradley Baker, who's my choice for every character in every movie ever.
John Lithgow was going to play the character
Poppa and remained on the cast longer than most before being replaced.
While Lithgow was still attached to the film he was privy to some of the changes to the
script and said that the film was “gonna be better than I ever imagined.”
The only original cast member to make it to the final version of the film was Frances McDormand.
Thomas Newman was originally going to serve
as the film’s composer, but scheduling issues and the film’s numerous delays led to his departure from the project.
Newman was replaced by Academy Award winning
composer Mychael Danna, who is best known for the soundtrack to the 2012 film Life of Pi.
It was later announced that Jeff Danna, would
be co-scoring the film alongside his brother, Mychael Danna.
The pair was recently nominated for an Emmy for their theme and pilot score for FX’s “Tyrant”.
The Good Dinosaur is the first Pixar film to be scored by two composers.
Arlo the dinosaur is an Apatosaurus, which is of the same genus as the Brontosaurus.
But apparently not as delicious because in The Flintstones it was always Brontosaurus burgers, NEVER Apatosaurus burgers.
In the film, Arlo will encounter a young human named Spot.
Director Peter Sohn drew inspiration from
his relationship with his mother for the relationship between Arlo and Spot. He and his Korean-speaking
mother often had difficulties understanding one another, but he’s said that the two universally understood the “Baby Mine” scene from Dumbo.
The film is a tapestry of numerous themes including death, loneliness, and misunderstanding.
Because even though Pixar movies like to leave you with the warm fuzzies, they play around when it comes to themes.
For Good Dinosaur, screenwriter Meg LeFauve and story supervisor Kelsey Mann employed
screenwriting techniques like cards, characters, and color coordination so they could track each character’s emotional journey.
Spot’s messy hair was modeled after director
Peter Sohn’s own daughter’s ever present bed head.
In the film, Arlo speaks English and Spot speaks “dog.”
Oh I get it, "Spot"!
The age of the film’s protagonist was decreased after its story was reworked.
Watch out because The Good Dinosaur is a tearjerker. This is Pixar, that's not all that surprising.
The Good Dinosaur takes place in a universe
in which the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs missed Earth.
Due to the film’s numerous delays, Pixar was forced to lay off 67 of its 1,200 employees.
In reference to the layoffs, the studio’s general manager and executive vice president
of production, Jim Morris, has said that “For Pixar it was a dramatic event. It was tough
on the company. Most studios would have said, ‘The movie’s fine. It’s not bad.’
And it wasn’t bad; it just wasn’t great. We wanted to have a great movie.”
The film’s director, Peter Sohn, has said to “Learn to be vulnerable. Be scared - just
put it out there. Maybe they hate it, but it’s okay.”
Russell from the Pixar film Up is actually based on Peter Sohn.
Velociraptors in the film sport mullets and feathers. Jury's still out on whether they can open doors.
Arlo is trying to find his way back to the Clawed-Tooth Mountains.
The teaser trailer for The Good Dinosaur was released on June 2, 2015.
It’s first full trailer was released on July 21, 2015.
Every Pixar film is preceded by a short, and The Good Dinosaur is no different. It will
be accompanied in theaters by Sanjay’s Super Team, which is directed by Sanjay Patel.
The Good Dinosaur was originally going to be have the Monsters University short film
Party Central in front of it.
Hey everyone, we're taking a quick break from the facts because "Star Wars" is coming out in December
and you might not know this but we have a channel devoted to movies and television.
And we're going to be doing Star Wars month over there. It's called "Cinematica" and you can watch 107 facts about Back To The Future right now!
So if you're interested in that, you can go ahead and click there. And without further or do, BACK TO GOOD DINOSAUR FACTS!
Sanjay’s Super Team debuted at the Amnesty
International Animated Film Festival on June 15, 2015.
Sanjay’s Super Team was inspired by director Sanjay Patel’s childhood and his struggle
with the divide between the modern world he grew up in and the Hindu traditions of his parents.
Sanjay’s Super Team centers around a young Indian boy who imagines Hindu gods as superheroes.
I imagine Shiva could be really intense!
The setting of Sanjay’s Super Team was inspired
by the Lido Motel, an old Route 66 motel that Director Sanjay Patel’s parents have owned and operated since he was young.
Patel first pitched the idea of Sanjay’s
Super Team to Pixar executives in the summer of 2012. He wanted to “bring a young brown boy’s story to the pop culture zeitgeist.”
John Lasseter, the chief creative officer
of Pixar, was very open to Patel’s idea and celebrating “the personal side of the story.”
Arlo is voiced by child actor Raymond Ochoa.
Spot is voiced by Jack Bright, who also provided voices for Monsters University.
Ramsey, a fearless, whip-smart and no-nonsense Tyrannosaurus Rex rancher, is voiced by Anna Paquin.
Paquin has also done voiceover work on Steamboy,
one of the most expensive Japanese animated movies made to date.
If you’ve watched Inside Out, you may have spotted The Good Dinosaur Easter Egg that’s
hidden in the film. When Riley is speaking to her mother about her favorite part of their trip and it flashes back to
their car smashing into a dinosaur, the dinosaur “may or may not be a cemented version of some of our characters in the next movie."
Diehard fans are wondering how the famous Pizza Planet truck
will find its way into a movie that’s set in the past. (FYI, the Pizza Planet truck,
first seen in “Toy Story,” makes a cameo in all Pixar films.)
"YOU ARE CLEAR TO ENTER. WELCOME TO PIZZA PLANET"
When the film was announced at the D23 Expo on August 20, 2011, Bob Peterson and John
Walker jokingly titled it “The Untitled Pixar Movie About Dinosaurs.” They even created a logo.
The film’s actual title, The Good Dinosaur, was announced on April 24 the following year.
When Frozen took over The Good Dinosaur’s
original release date on Disney’s slate for upcoming films, many people assumed that
“The Untitled Pixar Movie About Dinosaurs” had been given the finalized title of Frozen.
Director Peter Sohn has said that the film’s title is “deceptively simple” and “has more meaning than it seems.”
The film’s original director, Bob Peterson,
may have been taken off the project, but Pixar has said that there are no hard feelings there.
Peter Sohn has said that “Arlo has a lot
of issues when he’s born. He’s fearful and he’s weak and he’s disconnected from
the family because of these issues and he feels like he’s not worthy and so he finds a way to become worthy.”
According to John Lasseter, the dinosaurs in the film are “kind of cartoony but they are dinosaurs.”
Look at a T-Rex and tell me that that doesn't look like something a little bit "looney". With those tiny arms...
The film focuses “on mostly the plant-eaters, not the carnivores.”
In The Good Dinosaur, filmmakers wanted to explore dinosaur stereotypes and how they’re represented in modern times.
According to Pixar’s general manager and
president, Jim Morris, the previous version of The Good Dinosaur “had some kind of fatal flaws in it that none of us really saw.”
But what was the previous version like? According
to Jim Morris, “It was kind of a Billy Elliot story. It was a very different kind of movie."
In the final version of the film, Lucas Neff was replaced by Raymond Ochoa.
John Lithgow was replaced by Jeffrey Wright.
Arlo was originally going to have three siblings,
voiced by Neil Patrick Harris, Bill Hader, and Judy Greer.
Arlo’s three brothers were cut and replaced by just a sister named Libby voiced by Maleah Padilla
and a brother named Buck voiced by Marcus Scribner.
Peter Sohn has said that the recasting “was all about finding a younger Arlo.”
Dinosaurs in the film will operate in an agrarian
sort of society. Basically, they’re dinosaur farmers.
In fact, the starring dinosaur, Arlo, lives on a farm with his family.
According to Bob Peterson, it was “time to do a movie where you get to know the dinosaur."
The Good Dinosaur has some amazing pre-historic landscapes that actually drew inspiration
from Arlo’s emotional ups and downs in the film.
Peter Sohn has said that when Arlo is in front of the aforementioned natural backgrounds,
“it’s important that he feels outside of that.”
According to Peter Sohn, Arlo’s issue “is that he’s afraid of everything, and he isn’t capable.”
The Good Dinosaur has a running time of 1 hour and 40 minutes.
Spot’s name is actually given to him by Arlo.
In order to get the film’s landscapes just right, The Good Dinosaur team made research
trips to Wyoming and Montana to learn more about the wilderness of the old West.
While whitewater rafting in the Snake River on one of their research trips, the crew lost
their GoPro in the water. When they retrieved it later, it contained footage of its watery
journey that proved immeasurably useful for a certain scene in the film.
On their trip, Sohn and the film’s crew learned more about the people who actually
lived in the old West, which moved their characterizations away from stereotypes. They became much more complex.
According to David Munier, the film’s sets supervisor, director Peter Sohn is a lover
of nature cinematography. Which would explain why the film has a lot of...nature cinematography.
Pixar films typically have just one big “establishing shot” that shows an overscope of the landscape.
The Good Dinosaur doesn’t have just one, though. Because the environment
of the film is basically a character itself, Sohn wanted a lot of big landscape shots.
Because designing and rendering all the landscape shots in The Good Dinosaur would be an impossible
feat with Pixar’s traditional process, David Munier and his team had to find another way
to make it happen. They found they could download the U.S. Geological Survey’s topographic
data, put it into their computers, and then use that to render existing landscapes in the United States.
Munier has said that the team downloaded over
65,000 square miles of data, which gives a sense of scope for Arlo’s journey.
The vegetation in the film can be used as a reference for Arlo’s height. The dinosaur is 18 feet tall.
On his research trips to Wyoming, Sohn fell
in love with the Jackson Valley, which serves as a major inspiration for the film’s setting.
And Wyoming loves Pixar back. The Wyoming Office of Tourism inked a deal with Pixar
to promote 'The Good Dinosaur’ and has become the official destination partner of the film.
If you want to reenact scenes from The Good Dinosaur, you should head to the base of the
Grand Tetons, which is where the film basically takes place with the addition of a fictional landmark called the Clawtooth Mountains.
The Clawtooth Mountains were added because
the film needed an easily recognizable landmark for Arlo to try and get back to.
The Good Dinosaur utilizes a new method of inserting realistic clouds. Instead of painting
them in, the team used volumetric effects software typically utilized for storm create
to generate 3D clouds. This allowed the film’s lighting division to have complete control over them.
The Good Dinosaur utilized 300 terabytes of
server space, which is ten times more than Monsters University needed.
Sharon Calahan, the film’s Director of Photography, has said that the film is more painterly realism than photorealism.
A full-sized model of Arlo’s head was created
to help the crew get a better grasp of his scale. Then Peter Sohn asked if they could go further and model the rest of him.
There are 900 effects shots in The Good Dinosaur, which is two times more than any other Pixar film!
It's starting to become clear why there were a lot of delays...
Harley Jessup, the film’s production designer,
has said that “Spot was one of the hardest characters to do.” Early sketches of the
character were very much like literal puppies, but slowly the boy was brought out of those images.
Spot originally had a bunch of leaves and
twigs in his hair, but after the crew tried this with a wig to see how it actually would work, it was quickly scrapped.
Animators on the film went to the zoo and
observed the movement of elephants to help better understand how to make the dinosaurs look believable.
John Ratzenberger has been in every single
Pixar movie to date — The Good Dinosaur included. However, his role has been underwraps.
Thank you for watching ToonedUp's 107s where we cover everything you've ever wanted to know about your favorite cartoons.
If you like this video, you might also like 107 Facts about Inside Out or 107 Facts about Frozen.
Also, to let you guys what's coming up next week, we will 107 Facts about Regular Show which we are so excited to get to because
you guys have requested it a lot! Also we will doing 107 MORE Facts about The Simpsons because that also gets requested a lot even though we already did it!
So we're doubling up, we're going to 214 facts! So look forward to that next week, and remember Frederator loves you!