David Tanaka talks about the creation of the “Pixar in Concert” project

Leo N. Holzer

12 years ago

The following is an email interview that I recently had with
David Tanaka, the creative editor of “Pixar in Concert.” I’d like to
thank David for his detailed answers and Chris Wiggum at Pixar for arranging
the interview.

Q: Please tell me about the process. What prompted the Pixar
in Concert idea? How easy was it to get everyone on board and how long did it
take from idea to this past weekend’s event?

Tanaka: The entire process for “Pixar in Concert”
actually took around two-plus years, starting in 2010. Show producers Brice
Parker and Laurel Ladevich, and myself were in constant communication with Pete
Docter, Jonas Rivera and John Lasseter over that period of time, as we
sharpened the conceptual approach to the concert, reached out to all the Pixar
directors, producers and music composers, and refined the evolving edited
musical suites for each of the Pixar movies to be featured in the performance.

It really all started with a simple, “What if we did a
concert on the music of Pixar?” from Brice Parker to Pete Docter. Pete,
whose mother is a music instructor and has a strong musical background himself,
loved the idea. Based on his interest in the proposal, I started editing a few
“sample cuts” on some of the Pixar films in accordance with the base
idea. I believe the first few edits included “UP,” “Finding
Nemo” and the first two “Toy Story” movies.

After review with Pete and Jonas Rivera, the results were
then shown to Disney Music Publishing’s Chris Montan and Tom MacDougall. They
in turn embraced the idea and encouraged us to continue to pursue the project.

A few edited iterations and additions later and we had a
formal presentation to show to John Lasseter in one of Pixar’s screening review
rooms. John also loved the idea and agreed that the concert should really be
only about the music – no dialogue at all from the Pixar movies to interrupt
the audience’s pleasure listening to the musical scores, very limited sound
effects only to enhance the point of the music if need be, and imagery directly
from the movies themselves with no additional “bonus material” such
as behind-the-scenes conceptual artwork or crew photos.

This would instead be “all about the music,” as it relates
to what the audience members themselves experienced when they first enjoyed the
Pixar movies through the years.

With this set of parameters understood and agreed upon, a
constant stream of editing was produced and sent to Pete and John as our
creative executives over the coming months. Given both individuals’ busy
schedules and other company commitments, this often resulted in a lot of
QuickTime movie files generated and many “iPad” reviews. They in turn
would give Brice Parker, Laurel Ladevich and myself cut content feedback via
email or voicemail, with occasional formal review get-togethers wherever
possible.

We would also arrange for individuals such as music composer
Michael Giacchino to stop by my Avid Media Composer edit suite from time to
time to review certain cuts (specifically “The Incredibles,”
“Ratatouille” and “UP” in Michael’s case). Michael in
particular was very gracious with his time, offering great suggestions not only
with musical selections, but also pointers on how, for example, to rhythmically
transition from low melodies to extremely fast paced scores and vice-versa in
certain cases.

Q: What was your role as creative editor?

Tanaka: My role as Creative Editor entailed performing all
edits for the entire set of Pixar musical concert suites, from the first
rough-cut conceptual passes to final online polishing. The process involved
collaborating with all of the Pixar directors, producers and music composers to
ensure that my personal selection of music and related animated imagery jibed
with their expectations for each of the 13 Pixar animated features to date.

Q: Tell me more about the selection and order of clips to
support the underlying music.

Tanaka: I was pretty much left to my own accord regarding
how to initially approach musical selection and accompanying Pixar picture
content. With the amount of creative control I was given, I thought it best to
approach the editing process by simply asking myself as a moviegoer, “What
are my fondest memories from each of the Pixar movies?” For that reason
picture and music were often cut together, directly from each Pixar movie as
they were synced for original feature film release, as a starting point.

(But) we had two major challenges throughout the editorial
process regarding edited content:

1 – Core Narrative Theme Per Film:

Since this concert project is to celebrate the music of
Pixar, we don’t necessarily want to re-tell the entire story of each movie,
from start to finish, in some kind of condensed cut version. We knew we could
pretty much assume that persons paying for tickets to experience this concert
had seen most of the Pixar movies, if not all of them. Therefore, from an
editorial standpoint, the challenge became how to craft one’s favorite moments
from the films into some central narrative core theme or message per movie.

In the case of “Ratatouille,” for example, it was
Remy’s “joy of cooking” over, say, Linguini’s romance story with
Collette or his butting heads with Sous Chef Skinner. For “Finding
Nemo,” it was the father/son relationship between Marlon and Nemo despite
how entertaining the banter between Marlon and Dory was to watch. For
“UP,” it was no question (it was) all about Carl Fredrickson’s love
for his best friend and wife Ellie, despite his newfound relationships with
Russell, Kevin the bird and talking dog, Dug, in the movie.

In making these clear cut decisions to focus on specific
narrative themes, it helped shape the direction of my edits further away from
just being “best of” or “highlights” montage reels. Adhering to this approach of conveying narrative themes as
best as possible, however, sometimes meant breaking with the actual
chronological unfolding of events as originally presented in the movies.

For “Monsters, Inc.,” for example, to tell the
story of Sully’s caring for Boo we needed to first explain how the factory
“scare floor” actually worked, with its access to children’s multiple
bedrooms. To show how sad it was for Sully to leave Boo behind before he
reopens her bedroom door at the end of the movie, however, I decided to
introduce the characters’ sad parting scene in “flashback,” right
before Sully opens the door. Such an arrangement deviated from the feature film,
but gave the best emotional payoff possible for the concert audience while at
the same time complementing Randy Newman’s underlying score.

Another example is “WALL•E” in which it was
decided early on that we would focus on the romance between the little trash
compacting robot and E.V.E, as opposed to the story of “humans in
space.” Such scenes struck an emotional chord with moviegoers and also
offered some of the most beautiful scores Thomas Newman created for the film.
In order to center on the romance theme, however, we felt we needed to remind
audiences of WALL•E’s personality first – his humor and sense of awe. Again
breaking from original feature film release narrative order, I decided to first
showcase scenes in which WALL•E comically sifts through trash in his “day
job,” as well as when he takes in the wonders of the universe upon leaving
Earth. Although WALL•E first meets E.V.E. before leaving his home planet,
presenting concert audiences with his tour of the universe first made for a better
understanding as to why WALLE•e is so awe-inspired by E.V.E.’s ability to fly (when she was introduced on Earth) and how
easy it was to immediately fall in love with her.

2 – Concert Performance Time Constraints

The other challenge to editing this concert was purely
logistical: time. Working closely with
San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall, we determined that a concert event of
this type should run approximately 90 minutes in total length, with a 20-minute
intermission included. With thirteen Pixar feature animated motion pictures to
account for, that roughly determined that each of my edited suites should run
for as short as four minutes to as long as seven or eight minutes, but no
longer. Given the adherence to highlighting particular narrative themes per movie
and the ability to shift scenes out of sequence, I could cut in accordance to
such time constraints, and as a whole deliver edited concert material within
the requested 70-minute total running time.

In the final stages of production, my job as Creative Editor
also entailed final video projection quality checks with Brice Parker and
Laurel Ladevich prior to the actual live performances at San Francisco’s Davies
Symphony Hall, connecting with Disney Music Publishing’s team of Jonathan Heely
and Ed Kainins to go over technical concerns regarding smooth video projection
playback rates and cross-comparing conductor versus audience synced video
footage, and also communicating with Music Arranger Mark Watters, regarding
any last (minute) questions or suggestions during rehearsals with Conductor
Sarah Hicks and the Davies Symphony Orchestra.

Q: I found it interesting that the music wasn’t shown in
chronological order starting with “Toy Story” and ending with
“Brave.” Knowing Pixar, I knew there was some thought given to the
program arrangement. Can you tell me more about the decision-making?

Tanaka: It was such an interesting selection process to go
through regarding concert program arrangement, for we definitely had several
key points of criteria to consider. Right from the start, however, the one fact
that we knew didn’t make any sense to adhere to was the chronological order in
which the Pixar movies were originally released. “So what,” right? As
personal fans of cinema ourselves, our love of movies really has no bearing on
compartmentalizing feature films to what specific year they were shown to the
public for the very first time (we just love them!).

Beyond starting the concert with Pixar’s first film
“Toy Story” as sort of an homage to “the little film company that
could,” the program arrangement of the other movies came down to other factors.
Those factors included:

who the Pixar director and music composer were for each
production
if that particular production was a Pixar sequel
and, the resulting overall tone of the piece I ended up
editing to represent each movie.

We really felt that the specific movies per each of our five
Pixar directors (Andrews, Bird, Docter, Lasseter and Stanton) should be equally
spread across the program as opposed to being clumped together since there may
be aesthetic similarities if we group one filmmaker’s body of work one after
another. Why not instead spread them out?

Similarly, we felt that our four Pixar music composers
(Doyle, Giacchino, R. Newman and T. Newman) should also be separated across the
entire concert so their composing styles could be best appreciated played in
contrast to one another, as opposed to being performed one after another.

In addition, it only made sense that Pixar sequels (such as
sequels for the “Toy Story” and “Cars” sagas) should be
separated from one another in the program so they could be appreciated on their
own merits,and not unfairly condensed down as if to imply that they together
represent just one story and individually nothing more.

Lastly, the final edited suite I created for each Pixar
movie was then assessed for its content and the resulting overall tone that was
created. For example, “The
Incredibles” and “Cars 2” suites I cut really celebrated the
action adventure spirit contained in each of those films, therefore they should
perhaps not be placed next to each other in order to give the audience variety
spread across the entire concert.

On the other end of the spectrum, “Finding Nemo”
and “UP” evolved into offering two of our most dramatic and emotional
suites for the evening, therefore they should intentionally be set apart from
each other for optimum audience appreciation.

David Tanaka then volunteered some “closing
thoughts” :

As mentioned, the entire process lasted for (more than) two
years, with much collaboration and back and forth communication from all
involved. It was truly a fun process for myself and everyone involved, all in
the name of our love of musical scores.

In addition to the satisfaction of representing our Pixar
movies, directors, music composers and movie soundtracks as best as possible,
having audience members experience and enjoy Pixar’s 13 movies through music
and just in the span of a mere 90-minute concert performance was an extremely
rewarding experience for me as the project’s Creative Editor, and hopefully for
the audience as well!