Last week I was in New York on my way to see a show. We passed through Times Square and right there on the big screens above Toys R Us was an enormous image from the new Disney Pixar animated feature film, BRAVE. I’m so excited to see this new movie so of course I had to take a picture and share.
The big question,
“If you had the chance to change your fate, would you?”.
This question inspires a whole slew of ideas and what ifs. Would you? Would you change your fate if you could?
From what I’ve seen and heard so far, this movie is about going against the old to discover the new and the obstacles and consequences that result from such a decision. Merida, the main character, goes against the tradition discovers she needs to pull from all her resources and find true bravery to make things right. I’m excited to see what new amazing adventure this movie takes us all!
FUN FACTS from BRAVE
I got a hold of a big pile of fun facts about BRAVE and Pixar films. I didn’t want to post them all just yet – we still have 2 weeks before the film hits theaters, but I did pick out some facts I thought were really fun…
- All of Pixar’s films feature some hidden gems. There’s also a tribute to longtime Pixar story whiz Joe Ranft in the same location.
- Visible somewhere in every Pixar film to date, A113 is the classroom at CalArts that has been “home” to John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Pete Docter and Andrew Stanton.
- Each Pixar film pays homage to “Toy Story” by featuring the infamous Pizza Planet Truck.
- Pixar films always tease a character from the next Pixar release.
- As per tradition, you’ll hear the voice of John Ratzenberger. He plays one of the castle guards at the entrance to the great hall in BRAVE.
- Merida has more than 1500 individually sculpted, curly red strands that generate about 111,700 total hairs.
- Pixar artists divied up the Lords’ by their hairier characteristics:
- Lord Dingwall has chest hair, arm hair, back hair and ear hair.
- Lord Macintosh and Fergus are the only characters with fur on their boots.
- Lord Macintosh is the only character with fur on his sporran.
- For each clan there is a unique tartan design. The DunBroch tartan pattern is physically impossible to make with traditional tartan weaving methods.
- No Pixar film before “Brave” has had a castle in it, so everything from the architecture of the structure itself to the tapestries in the hall and the moss on the stone walls was designed and built as 3D models.
- To develop the desired look for Queen Elinor’s emerald dress, actual matte silk fabric samples were painted with metallic colors.
- The “Brave” production team took two research trips to Scotland. On one of the research trips there were eight men on the research team during this trip, and all eight were assigned to lodge in the hotel’s “Wee Bunk House,” a tiny room separate from the main hotel building that had six beds and one bathroom. Lodging in these cozy quarters proved a memorable experience: the production team’s key meeting room at Pixar is named in honor of the Wee Bunk House.
- In Scotland, there is a natural phenomenon of swamp and bog gasses that seep up through the earth, and are blue in color like the flame of a pilot light. Scottish lore says that some people would follow these lights, thinking they were little fairies. The production team took this myth and created the “will o’ the wisps” in “Brave.” The will o’ the wisps light a path and beckon Merida into the forest, leading her to change her fate.
- In creating “Brave,” 111,394 storyboards were drawn, 84,421 of which were delivered to Pixar’s editorial team to create story reels of the work-in-progress film.
- The “Brave” character team consumed more than 60 packages of double-stuff Oreos in 2011.
I think that says it all. BRAVE is bound to be an outstanding movie if OREOs, John Ratzenberger and hair are key points of production.
