Finding Dory: The Long Awaited Follow Up To Finding Nemo
The 2003 animated “classic” Finding Nemo is one of Pixar’s crowning achievements. It’s a critical darling, a commercial juggernaut, and an Oscar winner for Best Animated feature. The filmmakers and artists behind this project simply could not ask for more. Understandably, fans of the original have been clamoring for a sequel to the film since its initial release. And now, more then ten years later, we’re finally getting one! Finding Dory sees the return of Ellen DeGeneres as Dory, along with the majority of the original cast. Most notably, Albert Brooks will be reprising his role as Marlin along with actors Idris Elba, Kate McKinnon, Bill Hader, Dominic West, Diane Keaton, Kaitlin Olson, Eugene Levy and Andrew Stanton.
Finding Dory lives at the intersection of technological excellence and solid storytelling. Like its progenitor, the animated film is the brainchild of the Pixar’s trusted directors Andrew Stanton and Angus MacLane. The writing and development process is similar to every other Pixar film, conducted through what Pixar refers to as their “Story Room.” In this room, conceptual artists, writers, and the directors themselves, hammer away at what the movie could be, not what the movie is for an extended period of time. They develop possible scenes, possible characters, and create images that are meant to capture the mood of the film distilled down to a single point.
From there, the Pixar team constructs a script. They take all their jumbled ideas and sift through them picking only the best of which will make it into the script. Then the writing begins. They write and re-write the film until it’s loved by everyone on the team. From there they make the movie in Animatic. With this kind of moving storyboard, they’re able to time out every joke and emvison how the film will ultimately look and feel before they begin the very exhaustive, labor intensive work of animating every slide. From here, most movie animators would normally move on to begin the final animation. But Pixar is so bent on creating the perfect film every time around that they often re-write and re-do the writing and animatic steps multiple times, massaging and tweaking the film over and over again. This iterative process allows the Pixar filmmakers to fine tune the script and scenes, making the final work sing and live on in the minds’ of its viewers.
A tireless creative work ethic and commitment to excellent filmmaking is more than apparent in the new film. Finding Dory is the perfect mix of Pixar’s amazing story structure, keen character insight, and lush, wonderful CG animation. Over the past twenty years Pixar’s technical prowess has only gotten better. So much so that now, many of the techniques these trailblazers have developed in animation filmmaking are now being used in live action films!
Finding Dory was intially slated for release on June 17th, but the release date was moved up to the earlier date of June 8th, with the worldwide release happening on June 16, 2016. It promises to be a delightful film that we’ll be talking about for years to come. The film has a runtime of 140 minutes and a rating of PG.