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Director Mark Andrews Talks About the Integral Role Storytelling Plays in Disney/Pixar’sBrave

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We make the kind of movies we like to watch. I love to laugh. I love to be amazed by how beautiful it is. But I also love to be moved to tears. There’s lots of heart in our films – John Lasseter

After months of excitement and anticipation leading up to Disney/Pixar’s latest animated release, I finally sat down this evening to watch Brave in it’s entirety.  The film, which I’ll review in detail this week, was visually breathtaking, emotionally captivating, and authentically relatable. Even after watching the first 30 minutes of the film during my press day at Pixar Animation Studios, I could not have foreseen how the story would unfold.
Despite the sheer beauty of the film, it is the story that will draw audiences in, connecting with them on multiple levels.  As we sat down with Director Mark Andrews, he provided some insight on the origin of the story.  Writer, animation story artist and co-director “Brenda Chapman came up with the storyline and the characters, and it came out of her being a parent and her trials and tribulations with her daughter.”  Her desire was to create a film set in Scotland that focused on the mother-daughter relationship, and thus the idea for Brave was born.
Andrews has been “telling stories for 20 years,” and having worked on some of Pixar’s most ionic films (The Incredibles, Ratatouille), he understands the importance of a story that is universally relatable.  At the heart of Brave is a story about the relationship between a mother and her daughter. As I sat and watched the film, I found myself identifying with Merida as a daughter in my teens and twenties, and Elinor as a mother now in my 30’s.  And despite the fact that the focus is very much on the relationship between Merida and Elinor, parents and children will relate because we have all been a child or a parent (and in my case both).

According to Andrews, the story process is the most difficult and the key factor in determining whether or not a film is working.  Because it is so integral to the success of a film, I wanted to know how the team comes to decide that they’re on the right track.  “It’s alchemy,” Andrews stated.  “We can see it in our minds. When everybody is nodding, you’re done.”

I imagine a team of filmmakers sitting together, brainstorming…writing and re-writing the story of Merida and Elinor in the open-air lobby or one of the conference rooms at Pixar.  While Lasseter believes that “our films don’t get finished, they just get released,” I think that Director Mark Andrews and the team that worked on Brave created a film with a story that is compelling, authentic, believable, and relatable.

Brave opens in theaters nationwide this Friday, June 22nd, 2012.

Disclosure: Travel expenses associated with the event were provided by Disney.

Photos Disney/Pixar.

Caryn Bailey
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