Embrace the Panda: Making Turning Red (2022) - full transcript
Follows the making of the Pixar movie ''Turning Red''.
When I come up with ideas,
they'll just start from a very primal,
"I just want to see
this cute thing on screen,"
and then I'll find the meaning
and the metaphor and the themes
to justify why it should be that.
But really, it just came from a place
of "Oh, they're so cute,"
and "Wouldn't it be awesome
if they were gigantic?"
I'm excited.
-What's the panda's name again?
-RONA LIU: Tenzin.
And then the girl was
the older one, right?
Didn't realize they'd be so small.
Real red pandas are really cute.
And I think that's the main reason why
I was drawn to making a story about them.
It's got kind of a belly sometimes.
They're very tubular
and they have very long, fluffy tails,
more pointed snouts.
The tail's about 18 inches.
Oh.
They feel a little cat-like,
kind of raccoon, kind of bear.
Maybe a little splash
of monkey or something.
Look at it. Aw!
LINDSEY COLLINS: They're totally solitary.
They don't really communicate
with one another.
They're kind of like teenagers.
-I like the long...
-That one's like an old one.
SHI: I found a lot of parallels
between red pandas and Mei
and her story.
Like, red pandas
are very attached to their mom.
They sleep all day.
They eat bamboo, but they're not
supposed to eat bamboo,
bamboo doesn't give them
enough nutrients.
So I imagine
it's just like a lazy teenager,
just eating chips
and sleeping all day.
They're native to China.
And then also, it's like red and white.
It's like Chinese, but also like
the colors of the Canadian flag, too.
So it felt like the perfect animal
to tell this story about this
Chinese-Canadian teenage girl.
I'm Meilin Lee.
And ever since I turned 13,
I've been doing my own thing.
Making my own moves, 24/7, 365.
Turning Red is about Mei,
a Chinese-Canadian girl
living in Toronto in 2002.
It's very specific.
It's a mother-daughter story.
At its most base level,
this film is about growing up
and figuring out who you are
and embracing that.
MING: Mei-Mei...
MEI: Coming!
SHI: Everything changes for Mei
when she wakes up one morning
and discovers she's a giant,
eight-foot-tall furry red panda,
and she realizes
"Oh, I can control this transformation.
"If I just stay completely calm
and even for the rest of my life,
"I will stay human and it'll be A-okay."
Yes.
But that's not how life works.
Oh, crap.
(EXCLAIMING)
Mom!
So the red panda is basically
a metaphor for magical puberty.
Just seeing how this girl
who thought she had everything
under control,
suddenly big and hairy and smelly,
an emotional wreck. (LAUGHS)
4*TOWN forever?
COLLINS: This panda is incredibly cute.
It's also true to that time
in a girl's life.
In some ways, it's the worst time.
You're not a kid,
and you're not an adult.
This poor girl,
she's looking in a mirror
and seeing that
she's got hair everywhere and she stinks,
and she's big
and doesn't fit through the doorway.
FEINBERG: Panda Mei is only
half in control.
She's having a great time,
but then she's like "Auughhh."
And like, I don't know,
that feels very much like
what my teenager years were like.
Ah OOGa!
LIU: It's bodily, it's emotional.
It's all about, "Can I embrace this?
Can I grow into it?
"Can I still love who I am
"knowing that I've become someone
that I'm not used to?"
SHI: It's all going according to plan.
COLLINS: This is about right.
LIU: It's the first time in my career
where all of the key leadership
on the show are women,
and I feel like
that sets a very different vibe.
It's completely amazing
to have this all-women leadership team.
I have spent the entirety
of my career in meetings
where I was one of very few women.
Now sitting there and making plans
and it's all women in the room
has been this really crazy thing
and very different for me.
Everything's different
about this film.
I don't know how to answer that question
without starting with Domee.
-She's a good girl. Just like I was.
-(ALL LAUGHING)
I first heard of Domee
through seeing one of her
ten-second animation clips.
I was in college, and it was something
that she posted on her blog.
(UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING)
It was this dancing, twerking hamster
to a K-pop song.
"Who is this girl?
"She's probably going to be
a really funny director one day."
When I first started this movie,
I was really determined
to make something different.
We're going to be spending
four or five years of our life on this,
we've got to go big.
I'm Domee Shi,
the director of Red,
and ever since we started
making this movie,
we've been breaking convention
and making people laugh 24/7, 365.
Ah, legally, it's nine-to-five, 261.
Whoo!
SHI: On this show,
we wear what we want,
say what we want,
and we will not hesitate
to do spontaneous cartwheels
if we feel so moved.
Domee is a force of nature.
She is a first-time feature director.
It's been a while since I've worked
with a first-time director before,
and I'm loving it.
In conclusion, welcome to Red!
(ALL CHEERING)
SHI: Lights? Pitch.
Did that actually change anything?
Yes, it did.
-So, welcome, everyone.
-Just ignore the camera, everyone.
-It's not there.
-Don't look right here. (LAUGHS)
SHI: Making the film,
it's just been like a long marathon.
But in the first couple of years,
it was mostly me,
and Julia, our screenwriter,
head of story, Rosie Sullivan,
the story team,
and then Nick, our editor.
And we were just working
on the reels.
Yeah, it feels like
you're part of a pirate ship.
Because you're all kind of just working
and sweating for these drawings,
and you're all aiming to make
the director react or respond.
(ALL LAUGHING)
I started working with her,
and pretty quickly,
I felt like this woman
is really impressive.
Also, incredibly clear in her vision.
SHI: And then ta-da, and like,
imagine it to look
like a comic book background.
Thank you, Margaret.
Great work.
(ALL APPLAUDING)
She is so unique
in how she thinks about movies,
how she communicates her vision,
her humor, her tone.
I just thought I'd get this in front of
you to see if it lives within our world.
-Is that what we're looking for?
-Yes. Yes. Sorry.
(ALL LAUGHING)
I feel like I have to be more
of a director now for the camera.
The crew slowly grew bigger and bigger.
To give you a general sense
of the BG buildings.
This reminds me of Toronto a lot,
a lot of these old buildings.
And then last year,
it just exploded.
And that was during
the pandemic. (CHUCKLES)
It just so happens that
the busiest time on the show
was when we were all working from home.
FEINBERG: Hi, Frankie. Hi, bubba.
It may not be obvious, I don't know,
but making films is a huge team effort,
and so, the more you can collaborate
with the people around you,
the better the movie is going to be.
As we were leaving to walk out
the door for getting sent home,
Domee said, "Well, maybe I could do
like a coffee time or something
"just so we can keep
in touch with the crew.
And we all went, "Oh, what a great idea."
And in the beginning, it really was
kind of this awesome thing
of just being able to see
more than like three people in your life.
And also getting to hear from
the director weekly is pretty cool.
...Mei's struggle throughout act two...
Even if sometimes
it's just a little update,
it felt like some kind of connection.
We are starting with a couple of
nominations from our dailies team.
I've been really surprised
because we routinely get a hundred
and something people coming to it.
(SINGING A BAD RENDITION
OF HAPPY BIRTHDAY)
Oh! Thank you!
Exceptionally bad and so out of key.
But I really love it.
Here's to a better 2021.
FEINBERG: We're coming together in some of
the best way you can do during a pandemic
with a giant movie crew,
so it's been pretty cool.
(PLAYING FESTIVE MUSIC)
FEINBERG: My job is Visual Effects
Supervisor on the film.
First woman in 20 years at Pixar
to have that job.
For almost 15 years,
I was a lighting DP,
and so most of my career at Pixar
has been about lighting,
thinking about how to make
the most beautiful movie possible,
how to make a great experience
for the lighting team...
A little bit of this,
even though that would catch the light.
How to engage with the director,
how to coordinate with other departments,
how to do groundbreaking stuff.
And now I'm in this new role,
overseeing heavily tech
and some of the creative,
and I am now in the leadership group
of running the movie.
(BABY BABBLING)
And then at the same time,
I became a mother for the first time.
I have twins, a boy and a girl.
Ah!
I don't know that I ever thought
I was going to have kids.
You know, there's days where it feels
completely overwhelming, I would say.
CHILD: Yay!
FEINBERG: Yay!
But I also am now a year and a half
into being a mother.
And I'm two years into this position.
I love both things dearly, and it's hard
to imagine not having them now.
And I got married to my amazing wife.
-Hello.
-PAIGE: Hello.
You guys, it's Mommy!
Hi, guys.
FEINBERG: Paige is a battalion chief
for the Alameda County Fire Department.
She's the highest ranking woman
of that department,
which I'm neverendingly proud about.
She would not love that I'm bragging
about her, but I love to brag about her.
It's one of my favorite topics.
Are you gonna be able
to jump into the end credit?
We're moving it up to 2:30, I think.
This is Lindsey Collins.
She is the producer of Turning Red.
The producer is the one orchestrating
this giant circus.
-The ringmaster?
-She is the ringmaster.
When people are going "Auggghhh"
Lindsey is like, "Okay, let's make a plan.
"Let's figure out
how to make this happen."
So in the race to get this done,
we're probably just going to be working
on top of each other, which is great.
Lindsey is so smart, I think she's
always like a million steps ahead,
so that I can worry about
what's happening in the present.
I'm really good at working
within boxes and limitations
and she was really good about
drawing them out for me
to be crazy and push up against.
Just to draw the storyline together
maybe a little bit clearer...
I feel like I learned so much just by
watching her and working with her
and I see it as the partner
to the director.
So that includes being a creative partner,
but also managing the crew
and surrounding her
with all the right people.
LIU: You're in every meeting,
you always offer ways
to move story along
and you help production through,
not just by managing it,
but also just from an emotional,
creative side as well.
-You do.
-Thank you, Rona.
I kind of like it when...
COLLINS: This is Rona Liu.
She's the production designer
of Turning Red.
The production designer
is the first person brought on the show
after the producer and director.
You know, we're talking about the values
being super, super crunched.
COLLINS: And that's basically because
from the very beginning,
their job is to figure out
what the movie is going to look like.
And that is everything from characters
to sets to color to tone and style.
LIU: My role is to collaborate
closely with the director,
and make sure that her vision translates
throughout all of the department
and onto the screen.
EMMA ON COMPUTER: Welcome, everyone.
Today, we're going to kick it off
with Athena and the panda
costume shaping.
For her tail,
the lighter part
can take on some of that red.
I know I'm providing information that
other people need to get their work done.
Let's tone the two sides
where there is the star and the heart.
I feel like that's the most important
part of my job, is to just make sure
that everybody else feels good
about the work that they're doing.
Okay.
SHI: Good job, everyone. Thank you.
-Thank you. Bye.
-Thanks.
LIU: Being pregnant while we're
in the crunch of things
definitely made me have to just
trust my team a lot more.
It's the first time in my life
where I was comfortable
telling my manager, Sophia,
I need to take some time to nap.
So that does make sense.
Hey, Rona, where are we?
We're in the living room area.
This is the entrance to our house.
This is our kitty.
And this is my soon-to-be-husband.
-We're getting Zoom-married on Friday.
-Mmm-hmm.
We've been engaged for so long,
we figured now's a good time to do it.
-Yeah.
-(BOTH LAUGHING)
LIU: Being able to step away,
touch base with a loved one
and to say, "Hey, how's your day going?"
and just being really connected
in both of our lives for the first time,
that's been really comforting.
I'm an only child,
and my dad had to go away to work a lot.
So a lot of the time,
it was just me and my mom.
We'd go on Chinese bus tours.
Like she'd pick the locations.
And she would take us to Atlanta,
or Halifax,
Prince Edward Island.
Maybe not like, upfront,
the most exciting places,
but we would spend a good ton of time
just together on the bus talking.
It was good at first,
but like everybody,
you grow up and you change
and you want to have your own friends
and your own life,
and it's kind of just about
how that transition happens.
I love the lighting.
I love everything in this sequence.
Great work, you guys.
(SCHOOL BELL RINGS)
It's been a long time
since I was 13.
But I just remember it being
a lot of highs and lows.
It's such a turbulent time
in a person's life,
especially a girl's, I think.
Small things can feel
super, super important,
and you could love something
one day and hate it the other.
MEI: I didn't even like 4*TOWN last year,
but now they're literally
the greatest thing
that's ever happened to me.
This film is very personal
to me in that
it was very much inspired by my own life
growing up in Toronto
and being the only child
of my overprotective mom and dad. (LAUGHS)
We are about to hop onto
a Zoom call with my parents
and they are going to dig through
all of the artwork and things
that I've ever created in my life.
They've collected all of it.
Yeah, everything. Everything.
It's my parents!
Hi!
(SHI'S FATHER SPEAKING MANDARIN)
How's it going? Is it weird having
a whole camera crew in the house?
SHI: They live in Toronto, Canada.
Still in the same house
that I grew up in,
pretty much looks exactly the same
every time I go back.
Yeah. And then you replied as Santa Claus.
-Why would Santa Claus ever say that?
-(BOTH LAUGHING)
She wrote a table of contents,
a foreword.
Can you read some of your foreword?
So my dad would be like my art tutor,
but my mom would encourage
my writing.
(SHI'S FATHER SPEAKING)
Aw, the Wi-Fi sucks.
He's saying nice things about me,
and I can't hear it.
He's never this generous with his praise.
Come on!
(SHI'S MOTHER SPEAKING)
Yeah. Why is it... It's so big.
In the living room,
there's like an ever-growing shrine
dedicated to me.
It looks like they really love me
and that I'm dead or something. (CHUCKLES)
Yeah, I remember the judge.
I heard you guys collected
all of my sketchbooks.
Let's look through them together.
-Pokémon.
-Yeah, Pokémon.
That's middle school.
And then high school is when I started
drawing a lot of beautiful people.
It's boys. If there's boys,
then it's close to high school.
-(SHI'S MOTHER SPEAKING)
-Oh, my God. (LAUGHS)
This is so embarrassing.
There was this fan art contest
that I entered,
where it's like
draw Draco's children.
Okay, maybe we can look
at another sketchbook.
(LAUGHS)
Mmm. Devon.
Ugh! May I remind you
what real men look like?
4*TOWN!
SHI: There's just so much comedy
in female adolescence
that I don't see a lot of,
and I just can't wait to show people
just how weird girls can be,
because I was totally that as a teen
and a young adult and now. (LAUGHS)
I love how Mei is just a confident dork,
(LAUGHS) and she's unapologetic about it.
I feel like she was the girl
that I wanted to be.
There's so many elements of me in Mei.
Spunky, loud,
doesn't care what anyone thinks.
I accept and embrace all labels.
Even though I was a total nerd.
I was so oblivious to that,
and I think that helped me.
LIU: She herself
never questions who she is,
and I think she fights
what is expected of her.
But deep down,
she always knew who she was,
and she was always
so accepting of herself.
I remember being that at some point,
and then, you know, hitting that age
and then suddenly turning very, very shy
when I got acne. And then I was
very aware of my body and all that stuff,
and that's what I wanted to explore,
with Mei turning into a red panda.
She's this girl
that has her life together,
and then all of a sudden,
magical puberty hits.
It's going to be okay.
No, it's not! Will you just get out?
Excuse me?
Are you serious?
SHI: For Mei, I really wanted her
to sound unique.
I wanted her to feel like a real girl.
Oh, my gosh, that was the best thing ever.
SHI: And so we found Rosalie Chiang.
It's like you feel bad about
turning her down because she's your mom.
She just had this really great voice.
There was just like
a charming imperfection to it.
LIU: For Mei, it was important to
design her the way that we saw ourselves.
Her face is round, her ankles are thick.
We definitely embraced her chunky cute.
It's kind of our design aesthetic
for our characters and for our sets.
We were looking at each other's faces
and were like, "We got moles.
"She should have moles."
-Then you're like, "Rona, you have..."
-"You have funny lips."
"You have that dip in your lip.
Let's put that in.
BOTH: "Hey, Rona,
you have really patchy eyebrows."
When that part of myself gets celebrated
and the director's like,
"Hey, I like that.
Let's put it in our main character,"
you're like,
"Hey, why did I hate that for so long?"
Jin. Jin! It's happening!
What are you doing?
COLLINS: For me, this story is so much
my day-to-day life.
I hate to admit, I'm much more the mom
than the main character because I actually
have three kids who are teens.
I am surrounded by teenagers
and hormones and puberty at work.
And then I go home,
and I am equally, if not more,
surrounded by puberty
and hormones at home.
Are you guys going to walk the dog?
Will you take them together
or are you gonna take them separate?
Bye. Thank you.
They've been very well-behaved.
(LAUGHS) It does not normally
go that smoothly.
MEI: The number one rule in my family?
Honor your parents.
They're the supreme beings
who gave you life...
The least you can do in return is...
every single thing they ask.
I think both of us probably grew up
under a lot of pressure
-to, you know, make our parents proud.
-Yeah.
I had that pressure on myself.
Like, I was very high-strung.
I was really into good grades.
I was into the image of the perfect girl.
I never ask for anything.
My whole life I've been her perfect
little Mei-Mei. Temple duties, grades...
-Violin!
-Tap dancing.
Yeah. We've been so good.
If they don't trust us anyway,
then what's the point?
SHI: Mei's struggle in this film is
she's torn between being her mom's
good little daughter,
and embracing her wild inner beast.
That is the universal struggle
that a lot of kids go through,
especially, I think, immigrant kids,
there's definitely more of this obligation
to carry on your family's legacy
and make sure that their sacrifices
in coming to a new country aren't in vain.
But also, you're in a new country,
you're experiencing all of this
crazy, awesome stuff
that maybe your parents
didn't get to grow up with.
You're caught between two worlds,
and that's kind of
what I wanted to explore in Mei
and also, like, literally caught between
being like a human girl and a panda.
LIU: I immigrated to the U.S.
when I was 10,
and my mom
is very much in her Eastern roots.
And when I came here, you know,
I was the good little Chinese girl
that I knew how to be,
and then as I get more and more exposed
to the Western culture
and what it means
to be an American teenager,
my mom and I started to butt heads.
I had to discover
how to bridge the gap
between being a dutiful daughter,
faithful to myself, and a good friend.
In eighth grade,
I met my best friend, Aya Alaadel.
She really taught me
-that girls can burp the alphabet.
-(BURPING)
Girls can want to play video games.
If you trip and you fall on your face,
you can learn to laugh at yourself.
You don't have to be embarrassed
for your decisions,
for your mistakes, for who you are.
She really opened my eyes to all of that.
This is Bao.
-This is...
-Your first baby.
-Our first baby.
-Our first.
Our first baby.
Rona designed
this cute little nose for him.
Used our own noses.
-You look like your mother.
-(LAUGHS)
SHI: I had this short film
that I was developing, that became Bao,
and Rona was one of the first people
that I roped into the story.
I was like, "Dang, she can really paint
and she has really good taste
"and she seems really cool."
"I really need an art person
to like take this to the next level."
To be honest, I will follow you
to the ends of the Earth.
I think Domee is just
a brilliant, brilliant mind.
I just feel like we click
and we can be so open
in communicating with each other.
We're different enough
in certain areas of our tastes
that we can collaborate and create
something even better together
than if we worked on something separately.
Hey, Bart. Hey, Lisa.
LIU: In the movie, Mei and her family
own and take care of a family temple.
We took several trips
to different historic temples
around California
that were built by early Chinese settlers
just to get a feeling
of what these grassroots temples are like.
SHI: I also spent time living behind
a temple with my grandma in China,
and I just remember
it being just a really lovely memory.
I'd make candles, and we would sell them
to visitors of the temples.
And I'd learned how to pray properly
with my grandma.
When we got to building the set
of the temple and dressing it,
it was really cool seeing those details
that we saw at the temples
kind of pop up in the background.
Like, there's just a bottle
of vegetable oil.
Like, cleaning supplies
tucked away in the corner.
They've been around
since the Gold Rush era.
All these immigrants
who came with so little
were able to cobble together
a little piece of home.
That kind of felt like
the immigrant spirit.
That kind of felt like me and Rona,
and how we, in our art,
we are inspired
by Eastern and Western stuff.
Should we try to match their face shapes?
You know, like a bell shape?
I remember you saying,
"Rona, this is not a Chinese film.
"This is a coming of age film,
"but it just happens to be
about a Chinese girl."
We need to really tap into the mind
of a 13-year-old growing up in 2002,
growing up in Toronto.
-What did we like when we were 13.
-Yeah.
And we liked Sailor Moon.
We liked anime.
The fandoms are what got me
really into anime.
I was drawing fan art passionately.
I had a secret sketchbook.
You join an online community,
you draw fan art,
and other people
would comment on it,
and that would encourage you
to draw more, produce more.
And that's kind of just what
encouraged me to keep drawing.
I think, as a kid,
it was such an escape.
I know I'm Asian,
but I'm in a very white school.
It kind of was nice to be connected
to that Asian side of myself.
I didn't have a boyfriend,
so then it's nice to read
about boyfriends.
Yeah, and a lot of them are drawn
and written by women too.
There was a lot of stories told
from a girl's point of view,
and they're the heroes,
they save the day
or they change the hearts of all the boys
-and make them fall for her.
-(BOTH LAUGH)
This is my house.
This is my boyfriend, Darren.
My many game consoles.
I've been using these
to de-stress over quarantine.
This is this awesome
Miyazaki art book I got
about the Ghibli Museum.
I got this rug over quarantine.
Diane really likes this rug.
Where's Diane? Diane?
Don't be scared, don't be scared.
Don't be scared. Come over here.
I got you!
She'll come out, she's shy.
I think I'm craving even more speed
as she poofs into a panda
and shoots forward.
We're paying homage to anime
throughout the entire movie.
You can see it in the expressions
and the acting,
the starry eyes in Mei
when she sees a boy
that she really, really loves.
Uh, Mei?
Why are you staring
at Carter Murphy-Mayhew?
We definitely have a lot of expertise
on the movie
about being 13-year-old girls,
for sure.
There is definitely
a lived experience there
that we get to bring
to the movie-making,
maybe in a different way
than I would have been able to,
say on a movie like WALL•E. (LAUGHS)
That scene with Mei
going under the bed,
and all of a sudden
she's sort of gripped by things,
and she's drawing these sexy pictures
and the conflict there
and "Why did I draw those things?"
I mean, I wasn't
under my bed drawing things,
but when I was 11,
I had a little wooden clothes pin,
and I had this mad crush on this woman
that was older than me,
but I did not know
that I was gay at the time.
And I remember drawing her name
on the clothes pin
and then flipping it over.
And she played a sport
so I put her number down,
and that sat on my desk
and I would look at it sometimes.
You know, these things,
these silly things you do.
I definitely get what Mei is doing.
(LAUGHS)
From the side, would it look like this?
Did you know that I was like,
"Oh, my God, am I ready?"
-To be a production designer?
-Yeah. "Will I be good?"
We both did it on a short.
But you're a first time feature...
I will be a first-time
feature production designer.
I figured because I was nervous
about directing for the first time
that you would be nervous
about production designing,
but I naively thought,
"How much harder could it be
directing a feature?"
I was really scared, honestly,
at the beginning.
I mean, you know,
Domee was intimidating, right?
I mean, she's... Seriously, you were,
like, super talented and...
I'm gonna be a diva.
-No, I was never worried about that.
-(LAUGHS)
It was good, too,
because you also made me,
kind of having done this for a while,
you questioned things
that I hadn't questioned in a while.
So I started in May of '97
at Pixar on A Bug's Life.
I had worked in traditional animation,
but at the time, CG animation
was a completely different ball game.
I just remember I would have this notepad
and I would just write down questions.
I was like, "Is the render farm a zoo?
"What's a cookie?
Can I have a cookie?"
They're like, "No. You cannot."
A cookie is not a cookie.
It was kind of like,
"Here we go, welcome to my questions."
Danielle was definitely
somebody that I sought out,
as she would not judge you and give you
a nice, clear and concise answer.
When we export act three,
is there a way to do one
that just has music...
One of the things
I love most about Pixar
is that I'm still asking questions
with the same amount of freedom and safety
as I did on the first day I got here.
It's just a philosophy that I've kept.
It's something I encourage other people
to do as they're starting on something.
If you don't know,
you're probably not the only one
in the room who doesn't know, so ask.
We basically started these this morning.
So be gentle.
A little bit before I was asked
to be the DP on WALL•E,
I thought, "I don't know
if I could ever be a DP,
"maybe like in 10 or 15 years."
MAN: Wow, that's great.
This one we lit in five minutes. (LAUGHS)
And then Andrew Stanton
asked me to be the DP on WALL•E,
and I was terrified because I didn't think
I knew how to do that at all.
COLLINS: I think we both
credit Andrew to a big degree, frankly.
We both had this encouragement
neither one of us would have asked for
until he kind of said,
"No, I want you to come do this."
It was an amazing experience.
It was also, half the time, terrifying
of just trying to figure out
how to hang on to who I was
and make it through,
even though a lot of times I felt like
I didn't know what I was doing.
But what we then decided to do
is some look stuff that's sort of like,
"How do we get out of the Pixar look?
How do we get into some new thing?"
We were trying to push
the boundaries of style
in both storytelling, in the camera,
the look of things,
using some hand-drawn elements,
but then you sprinkle in
Asian art influences.
It's been so interesting
to take those pieces
and figure out how you can apply them
to a 3D computer-animated film.
For me, I really wanted to be
a VFX supervisor
that was making sure
that people had the room
to bring their very best.
Not telling people what to do
but making space for them to shine.
And I have to say, honestly,
a lot of that has started with Rona
because she is the most
collaborative production designer
I have ever worked with, far and away.
I think it's made
a huge difference to the movie
and to people's enjoyment
of making the movie.
And this is the trust
and the confidence I gain.
(BOTH LAUGH)
This isn't just our first concert.
This is our first step into womanhood.
And we have to do it together.
SHI: Mei's friends are
Miriam, Abby, and Priya.
And they're her dork squad.
They accept her no matter what.
Red panda or no panda.
I always saw that as a metaphor
for when I found my squad.
4*TOWN, here we come!
I love that Mei
has these key friendships.
I very much am that person myself.
I always was the kid who had
two or three best friends.
Those kind of quirky, dorky people
who made you laugh,
equally insecure
about what was going on.
And in high school,
we'd get invited to the party
and we'd be like, "Okay, cool."
And then we drive over to the party
and we'd sit outside for a minute,
and then we were like,
"Let's go get a cake."
Then we'd eat a cake, like a whole cake,
in the car, and then go home.
It was about friends
that listen to that moment
when you were like,
"I'm not comfortable going in.
"I'm not confident enough
to do this,
"and all I really want to do
is go hang out with you guys."
SHI: Hi. Sorry I'm late.
Figuring out
how to be comfortable in the room
and finding my voice took a while.
When I first started,
I was definitely more nervous.
I was one of the few women
in the story department.
What helped a lot for me
was a female story artists support group
called the Story Artistas,
led by Mary Coleman,
and Nicole Grindle.
They were like,
"I want you guys to get comfortable,"
like, stating out loud
what your goals are.
And I think there was one lunch
where I meekly said out loud,
"I want to be a director." Oh!
Cool. Yeah, really feeling that anger.
She's like launching herself up,
"Sorry, I'm not..."
You could play Ming
a little bit more in slo-mo as well.
-Yeah.
-Otherwise it's looking good.
Anyone else have thoughts? Notes?
Mei-Mei, there you are.
-Hey, Mom...
-You're ten minutes late.
What happened? Are you hurt?
Are you hungry?
-Um...
-Ming is a force to be reckoned with.
She's just a sweet innocent child.
How dare you take advantage of her!
When Sandra Oh became the voice of Ming,
it just felt like her character
was starting to flesh out.
I knew you were trouble.
SHI: Sandra's so funny,
but she also has so much range.
She added that missing piece
to the puzzle of Ming.
I have a double-jointed elbow!
Look! I can make a perfect circle!
That was great.
I think in terms of design,
you wanted her to have
the really powerful shoulders
with these thin eyebrows,
kind of like Chinese ladies
from like the '60s,
-with the qipao and stuff.
-I wanted traditional Chinese
-mixed with Working Girl.
-LIU: Yeah.
We definitely couldn't have written Ming
without input from Lindsey
and other moms on the show.
I came at it purely from the point of view
of the oppressed teenage daughter.
So it was really helpful
hearing that other side.
You don't know everything,
you're making it up as you go along.
What I love about Ming is that she's not
one sided, cookie cutter character
and certainly not as a mom.
And as a mom myself,
I can appreciate those moments.
Hey, Sloane?
So will you remind me before we sit down
to dinner to RSVP for your...
-Fall festival?
-COLLINS: Yeah.
You're having conversations
that you are like,
"Is this even the right conversation
to be having?
"Am I supposed to be playing
more of a mom role?
"I don't even know what that is."
You're talking about heartbreak and dating
and insecurity and body image.
I know how I feel about all those things,
yet I don't know what I'm supposed
to say about any of them.
I don't know if I'm supposed
to pretend I don't have those issues
or if I'm supposed to say
I had all of them.
We always joke that your poor oldest kid
is like the first pancake.
You're like "Oof.
"Sorry, dude, I'm pretty sure
we're messing this up."
The third one we should be good.
She's gonna have
nothing to complain about
You guys...
The RSVP thing is closed.
Mom!
-Okay.
-BOY: Is it too late?
Yeah, apparently. But that's okay.
BOY: Ready?
GIRL: Yeah.
In a way, parenting overwhelms me
much more than my job does.
And I think it's just because I feel like
the stakes are so much higher.
(GIRL SINGING INDISTINCTLY)
Every choice you make as a parent
has equal chances
of being this great memory
and a success
in your relationship with them,
or alternatively, this huge disaster
that they will talk about
for the rest of their lives
as the most embarrassing thing
that ever happened to them.
(SINGING CONTINUES)
FEINBERG: Okay. Who wants to get dressed?
GIRL: Me!
(EXCLAIMING)
FEINBERG: We both have worked
very hard at our careers,
and we are late mommies.
And so I think both of us
have a huge amount of regard
for how important our work and career is,
and so we try to protect
that for one another.
On Fridays, Paige is here with the kids.
We don't have the nanny.
And, you know, I sort of have this like,
any spare moment I have
I should be running out to help,
and she has zero expectation of that.
That's made it so much more doable
to be able to balance the two things.
Not that it's always easy or something
but it, that makes a huge difference.
Boy, you guys really destroyed
the house this morning.
You know, it's really amazing
those kids right now,
they're almost 17 months.
Maybe you can hear Jack
crying in the other room.
That's a little heartbreaking
because I want to go run and help.
It is a massive luxury
to be able to see my kids
as much as I have
during this last year-plus.
I never ever would have
been able to see them as much.
I would have been racing home from work
just to catch them going to bed.
Sometimes I get to catch them for dinner.
I always get to put them to bed.
You know, it's not like
you can ever get that time back.
Yeah, I think it's working really well.
-MAN: Okay.
-Final!
(ALL CLAPPING)
SHI: I think it took until screening six
for us to finally have an ending.
And that, I think, was because
it took a long time for me
to process my own relationship
with my mother,
and just trying to figure out
how to be a good daughter for them.
I also don't know
what the solution is in real life.
Is it about being true to yourself,
or is it about honoring your parents?
I don't know.
It's some messy mix of both.
There's no clear answer.
LIU: Before I was a mom,
it just didn't occur to me
how hard it would be.
I don't know how people do it, and I don't
even know how I'm doing it right now.
My mom has been such a huge supporter
of what I want to do,
and she just always believed
that I know what's best.
That gave me so much freedom
to be the artist that I am today.
WOMAN: Happy baby.
LIU: Growing up, my parents separated,
and striving for perfection
came from this feeling of like,
I just want to be good enough
to keep my dad and my mom.
And maybe...
Maybe if I was a perfect little girl,
my parents would be together.
Yeah.
And... Hmm!
It worked out
in the best possible way for me.
I feel like it made me ambitious.
Ever since I had a baby, my worth,
who I am, is no longer
so much tied to others.
I just feel like I am a whole being
and I'm solid.
FEINBERG: I think anyone being able
to tell kids as they're
growing up and going through
this sort of chaos,
of emotion or feeling out of control
or "Do my parents love me?"
or "Can I be who I want to be
and they'll still love me?"
or "Who am I and what do the other kids
want me to be?"
We need art in general,
especially things that go on a screen
that kids can see
that tell them that it is okay.
And I think it's also for parents,
it's okay to see all of that craziness,
and that's a natural part of life
you've got to wade through
to form who you really are.
Meilin says she's not like her mom,
and that's okay.
And then she realizes,
"I am my own person.
"I want to embrace this thing
"that every other member of my family
has tried to lock away."
COLLINS: When she becomes this red panda,
it at first glance, represents everything
she doesn't want to be,
her being different and standing out
and feeling like she can't control herself
or the situation
the way she used to be able to.
You can't go through life and become the
amazing person you're supposed to become
if things don't conspire to rock
that sense of stability.
When you say to embrace the red panda,
I think that represents
being okay with that part of yourself.
It's okay not to be
in control all the time.
It's okay to be messy.
It's okay to be loud.
It's okay to be noticed.
If you don't accept it, it's a curse.
And then if you embrace it,
then it's a gift that keeps on giving.
I mean, for Mei, once she embraced it,
her whole life opened up to her.
FEINBERG: The last year-plus
with the pandemic
has been unlike anything
any of us have experienced.
It's been incredibly difficult,
it's been very stressful,
and for me, this is the funniest movie
I've ever worked on,
and so, if even at just that level
people get to have some laughs,
I think that would be amazing.
But it also has this much deeper thing
of really being able to reach out
and say, "It's okay."
If you're confused and feeling crazy
and you don't know who you are
and you might let your parents
or yourself down,
that's a natural part of growing up.
And if that could be what we provide for,
I think even one kid out there,
that would be really amazing.
-(BABY COOS)
-(LAUGHS)
SHI: Come on. Good Cornflake.
Darren made a quiche yesterday.
Look, your quiche is on camera.
So cool. I like how you guys designed it.
-In there?
-WOMAN: Yes.
COLLINS: When these dogs come in here
and start snoring so loudly,
to the point where they're like...
(SNORES)
WOMAN: Do you, Rona, take Dylan
to be your lawfully wedded spouse?
I do.
Congratulations, you may kiss.
Good boy. Got it?
Great job.
(SINGING) Final!
they'll just start from a very primal,
"I just want to see
this cute thing on screen,"
and then I'll find the meaning
and the metaphor and the themes
to justify why it should be that.
But really, it just came from a place
of "Oh, they're so cute,"
and "Wouldn't it be awesome
if they were gigantic?"
I'm excited.
-What's the panda's name again?
-RONA LIU: Tenzin.
And then the girl was
the older one, right?
Didn't realize they'd be so small.
Real red pandas are really cute.
And I think that's the main reason why
I was drawn to making a story about them.
It's got kind of a belly sometimes.
They're very tubular
and they have very long, fluffy tails,
more pointed snouts.
The tail's about 18 inches.
Oh.
They feel a little cat-like,
kind of raccoon, kind of bear.
Maybe a little splash
of monkey or something.
Look at it. Aw!
LINDSEY COLLINS: They're totally solitary.
They don't really communicate
with one another.
They're kind of like teenagers.
-I like the long...
-That one's like an old one.
SHI: I found a lot of parallels
between red pandas and Mei
and her story.
Like, red pandas
are very attached to their mom.
They sleep all day.
They eat bamboo, but they're not
supposed to eat bamboo,
bamboo doesn't give them
enough nutrients.
So I imagine
it's just like a lazy teenager,
just eating chips
and sleeping all day.
They're native to China.
And then also, it's like red and white.
It's like Chinese, but also like
the colors of the Canadian flag, too.
So it felt like the perfect animal
to tell this story about this
Chinese-Canadian teenage girl.
I'm Meilin Lee.
And ever since I turned 13,
I've been doing my own thing.
Making my own moves, 24/7, 365.
Turning Red is about Mei,
a Chinese-Canadian girl
living in Toronto in 2002.
It's very specific.
It's a mother-daughter story.
At its most base level,
this film is about growing up
and figuring out who you are
and embracing that.
MING: Mei-Mei...
MEI: Coming!
SHI: Everything changes for Mei
when she wakes up one morning
and discovers she's a giant,
eight-foot-tall furry red panda,
and she realizes
"Oh, I can control this transformation.
"If I just stay completely calm
and even for the rest of my life,
"I will stay human and it'll be A-okay."
Yes.
But that's not how life works.
Oh, crap.
(EXCLAIMING)
Mom!
So the red panda is basically
a metaphor for magical puberty.
Just seeing how this girl
who thought she had everything
under control,
suddenly big and hairy and smelly,
an emotional wreck. (LAUGHS)
4*TOWN forever?
COLLINS: This panda is incredibly cute.
It's also true to that time
in a girl's life.
In some ways, it's the worst time.
You're not a kid,
and you're not an adult.
This poor girl,
she's looking in a mirror
and seeing that
she's got hair everywhere and she stinks,
and she's big
and doesn't fit through the doorway.
FEINBERG: Panda Mei is only
half in control.
She's having a great time,
but then she's like "Auughhh."
And like, I don't know,
that feels very much like
what my teenager years were like.
Ah OOGa!
LIU: It's bodily, it's emotional.
It's all about, "Can I embrace this?
Can I grow into it?
"Can I still love who I am
"knowing that I've become someone
that I'm not used to?"
SHI: It's all going according to plan.
COLLINS: This is about right.
LIU: It's the first time in my career
where all of the key leadership
on the show are women,
and I feel like
that sets a very different vibe.
It's completely amazing
to have this all-women leadership team.
I have spent the entirety
of my career in meetings
where I was one of very few women.
Now sitting there and making plans
and it's all women in the room
has been this really crazy thing
and very different for me.
Everything's different
about this film.
I don't know how to answer that question
without starting with Domee.
-She's a good girl. Just like I was.
-(ALL LAUGHING)
I first heard of Domee
through seeing one of her
ten-second animation clips.
I was in college, and it was something
that she posted on her blog.
(UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING)
It was this dancing, twerking hamster
to a K-pop song.
"Who is this girl?
"She's probably going to be
a really funny director one day."
When I first started this movie,
I was really determined
to make something different.
We're going to be spending
four or five years of our life on this,
we've got to go big.
I'm Domee Shi,
the director of Red,
and ever since we started
making this movie,
we've been breaking convention
and making people laugh 24/7, 365.
Ah, legally, it's nine-to-five, 261.
Whoo!
SHI: On this show,
we wear what we want,
say what we want,
and we will not hesitate
to do spontaneous cartwheels
if we feel so moved.
Domee is a force of nature.
She is a first-time feature director.
It's been a while since I've worked
with a first-time director before,
and I'm loving it.
In conclusion, welcome to Red!
(ALL CHEERING)
SHI: Lights? Pitch.
Did that actually change anything?
Yes, it did.
-So, welcome, everyone.
-Just ignore the camera, everyone.
-It's not there.
-Don't look right here. (LAUGHS)
SHI: Making the film,
it's just been like a long marathon.
But in the first couple of years,
it was mostly me,
and Julia, our screenwriter,
head of story, Rosie Sullivan,
the story team,
and then Nick, our editor.
And we were just working
on the reels.
Yeah, it feels like
you're part of a pirate ship.
Because you're all kind of just working
and sweating for these drawings,
and you're all aiming to make
the director react or respond.
(ALL LAUGHING)
I started working with her,
and pretty quickly,
I felt like this woman
is really impressive.
Also, incredibly clear in her vision.
SHI: And then ta-da, and like,
imagine it to look
like a comic book background.
Thank you, Margaret.
Great work.
(ALL APPLAUDING)
She is so unique
in how she thinks about movies,
how she communicates her vision,
her humor, her tone.
I just thought I'd get this in front of
you to see if it lives within our world.
-Is that what we're looking for?
-Yes. Yes. Sorry.
(ALL LAUGHING)
I feel like I have to be more
of a director now for the camera.
The crew slowly grew bigger and bigger.
To give you a general sense
of the BG buildings.
This reminds me of Toronto a lot,
a lot of these old buildings.
And then last year,
it just exploded.
And that was during
the pandemic. (CHUCKLES)
It just so happens that
the busiest time on the show
was when we were all working from home.
FEINBERG: Hi, Frankie. Hi, bubba.
It may not be obvious, I don't know,
but making films is a huge team effort,
and so, the more you can collaborate
with the people around you,
the better the movie is going to be.
As we were leaving to walk out
the door for getting sent home,
Domee said, "Well, maybe I could do
like a coffee time or something
"just so we can keep
in touch with the crew.
And we all went, "Oh, what a great idea."
And in the beginning, it really was
kind of this awesome thing
of just being able to see
more than like three people in your life.
And also getting to hear from
the director weekly is pretty cool.
...Mei's struggle throughout act two...
Even if sometimes
it's just a little update,
it felt like some kind of connection.
We are starting with a couple of
nominations from our dailies team.
I've been really surprised
because we routinely get a hundred
and something people coming to it.
(SINGING A BAD RENDITION
OF HAPPY BIRTHDAY)
Oh! Thank you!
Exceptionally bad and so out of key.
But I really love it.
Here's to a better 2021.
FEINBERG: We're coming together in some of
the best way you can do during a pandemic
with a giant movie crew,
so it's been pretty cool.
(PLAYING FESTIVE MUSIC)
FEINBERG: My job is Visual Effects
Supervisor on the film.
First woman in 20 years at Pixar
to have that job.
For almost 15 years,
I was a lighting DP,
and so most of my career at Pixar
has been about lighting,
thinking about how to make
the most beautiful movie possible,
how to make a great experience
for the lighting team...
A little bit of this,
even though that would catch the light.
How to engage with the director,
how to coordinate with other departments,
how to do groundbreaking stuff.
And now I'm in this new role,
overseeing heavily tech
and some of the creative,
and I am now in the leadership group
of running the movie.
(BABY BABBLING)
And then at the same time,
I became a mother for the first time.
I have twins, a boy and a girl.
Ah!
I don't know that I ever thought
I was going to have kids.
You know, there's days where it feels
completely overwhelming, I would say.
CHILD: Yay!
FEINBERG: Yay!
But I also am now a year and a half
into being a mother.
And I'm two years into this position.
I love both things dearly, and it's hard
to imagine not having them now.
And I got married to my amazing wife.
-Hello.
-PAIGE: Hello.
You guys, it's Mommy!
Hi, guys.
FEINBERG: Paige is a battalion chief
for the Alameda County Fire Department.
She's the highest ranking woman
of that department,
which I'm neverendingly proud about.
She would not love that I'm bragging
about her, but I love to brag about her.
It's one of my favorite topics.
Are you gonna be able
to jump into the end credit?
We're moving it up to 2:30, I think.
This is Lindsey Collins.
She is the producer of Turning Red.
The producer is the one orchestrating
this giant circus.
-The ringmaster?
-She is the ringmaster.
When people are going "Auggghhh"
Lindsey is like, "Okay, let's make a plan.
"Let's figure out
how to make this happen."
So in the race to get this done,
we're probably just going to be working
on top of each other, which is great.
Lindsey is so smart, I think she's
always like a million steps ahead,
so that I can worry about
what's happening in the present.
I'm really good at working
within boxes and limitations
and she was really good about
drawing them out for me
to be crazy and push up against.
Just to draw the storyline together
maybe a little bit clearer...
I feel like I learned so much just by
watching her and working with her
and I see it as the partner
to the director.
So that includes being a creative partner,
but also managing the crew
and surrounding her
with all the right people.
LIU: You're in every meeting,
you always offer ways
to move story along
and you help production through,
not just by managing it,
but also just from an emotional,
creative side as well.
-You do.
-Thank you, Rona.
I kind of like it when...
COLLINS: This is Rona Liu.
She's the production designer
of Turning Red.
The production designer
is the first person brought on the show
after the producer and director.
You know, we're talking about the values
being super, super crunched.
COLLINS: And that's basically because
from the very beginning,
their job is to figure out
what the movie is going to look like.
And that is everything from characters
to sets to color to tone and style.
LIU: My role is to collaborate
closely with the director,
and make sure that her vision translates
throughout all of the department
and onto the screen.
EMMA ON COMPUTER: Welcome, everyone.
Today, we're going to kick it off
with Athena and the panda
costume shaping.
For her tail,
the lighter part
can take on some of that red.
I know I'm providing information that
other people need to get their work done.
Let's tone the two sides
where there is the star and the heart.
I feel like that's the most important
part of my job, is to just make sure
that everybody else feels good
about the work that they're doing.
Okay.
SHI: Good job, everyone. Thank you.
-Thank you. Bye.
-Thanks.
LIU: Being pregnant while we're
in the crunch of things
definitely made me have to just
trust my team a lot more.
It's the first time in my life
where I was comfortable
telling my manager, Sophia,
I need to take some time to nap.
So that does make sense.
Hey, Rona, where are we?
We're in the living room area.
This is the entrance to our house.
This is our kitty.
And this is my soon-to-be-husband.
-We're getting Zoom-married on Friday.
-Mmm-hmm.
We've been engaged for so long,
we figured now's a good time to do it.
-Yeah.
-(BOTH LAUGHING)
LIU: Being able to step away,
touch base with a loved one
and to say, "Hey, how's your day going?"
and just being really connected
in both of our lives for the first time,
that's been really comforting.
I'm an only child,
and my dad had to go away to work a lot.
So a lot of the time,
it was just me and my mom.
We'd go on Chinese bus tours.
Like she'd pick the locations.
And she would take us to Atlanta,
or Halifax,
Prince Edward Island.
Maybe not like, upfront,
the most exciting places,
but we would spend a good ton of time
just together on the bus talking.
It was good at first,
but like everybody,
you grow up and you change
and you want to have your own friends
and your own life,
and it's kind of just about
how that transition happens.
I love the lighting.
I love everything in this sequence.
Great work, you guys.
(SCHOOL BELL RINGS)
It's been a long time
since I was 13.
But I just remember it being
a lot of highs and lows.
It's such a turbulent time
in a person's life,
especially a girl's, I think.
Small things can feel
super, super important,
and you could love something
one day and hate it the other.
MEI: I didn't even like 4*TOWN last year,
but now they're literally
the greatest thing
that's ever happened to me.
This film is very personal
to me in that
it was very much inspired by my own life
growing up in Toronto
and being the only child
of my overprotective mom and dad. (LAUGHS)
We are about to hop onto
a Zoom call with my parents
and they are going to dig through
all of the artwork and things
that I've ever created in my life.
They've collected all of it.
Yeah, everything. Everything.
It's my parents!
Hi!
(SHI'S FATHER SPEAKING MANDARIN)
How's it going? Is it weird having
a whole camera crew in the house?
SHI: They live in Toronto, Canada.
Still in the same house
that I grew up in,
pretty much looks exactly the same
every time I go back.
Yeah. And then you replied as Santa Claus.
-Why would Santa Claus ever say that?
-(BOTH LAUGHING)
She wrote a table of contents,
a foreword.
Can you read some of your foreword?
So my dad would be like my art tutor,
but my mom would encourage
my writing.
(SHI'S FATHER SPEAKING)
Aw, the Wi-Fi sucks.
He's saying nice things about me,
and I can't hear it.
He's never this generous with his praise.
Come on!
(SHI'S MOTHER SPEAKING)
Yeah. Why is it... It's so big.
In the living room,
there's like an ever-growing shrine
dedicated to me.
It looks like they really love me
and that I'm dead or something. (CHUCKLES)
Yeah, I remember the judge.
I heard you guys collected
all of my sketchbooks.
Let's look through them together.
-Pokémon.
-Yeah, Pokémon.
That's middle school.
And then high school is when I started
drawing a lot of beautiful people.
It's boys. If there's boys,
then it's close to high school.
-(SHI'S MOTHER SPEAKING)
-Oh, my God. (LAUGHS)
This is so embarrassing.
There was this fan art contest
that I entered,
where it's like
draw Draco's children.
Okay, maybe we can look
at another sketchbook.
(LAUGHS)
Mmm. Devon.
Ugh! May I remind you
what real men look like?
4*TOWN!
SHI: There's just so much comedy
in female adolescence
that I don't see a lot of,
and I just can't wait to show people
just how weird girls can be,
because I was totally that as a teen
and a young adult and now. (LAUGHS)
I love how Mei is just a confident dork,
(LAUGHS) and she's unapologetic about it.
I feel like she was the girl
that I wanted to be.
There's so many elements of me in Mei.
Spunky, loud,
doesn't care what anyone thinks.
I accept and embrace all labels.
Even though I was a total nerd.
I was so oblivious to that,
and I think that helped me.
LIU: She herself
never questions who she is,
and I think she fights
what is expected of her.
But deep down,
she always knew who she was,
and she was always
so accepting of herself.
I remember being that at some point,
and then, you know, hitting that age
and then suddenly turning very, very shy
when I got acne. And then I was
very aware of my body and all that stuff,
and that's what I wanted to explore,
with Mei turning into a red panda.
She's this girl
that has her life together,
and then all of a sudden,
magical puberty hits.
It's going to be okay.
No, it's not! Will you just get out?
Excuse me?
Are you serious?
SHI: For Mei, I really wanted her
to sound unique.
I wanted her to feel like a real girl.
Oh, my gosh, that was the best thing ever.
SHI: And so we found Rosalie Chiang.
It's like you feel bad about
turning her down because she's your mom.
She just had this really great voice.
There was just like
a charming imperfection to it.
LIU: For Mei, it was important to
design her the way that we saw ourselves.
Her face is round, her ankles are thick.
We definitely embraced her chunky cute.
It's kind of our design aesthetic
for our characters and for our sets.
We were looking at each other's faces
and were like, "We got moles.
"She should have moles."
-Then you're like, "Rona, you have..."
-"You have funny lips."
"You have that dip in your lip.
Let's put that in.
BOTH: "Hey, Rona,
you have really patchy eyebrows."
When that part of myself gets celebrated
and the director's like,
"Hey, I like that.
Let's put it in our main character,"
you're like,
"Hey, why did I hate that for so long?"
Jin. Jin! It's happening!
What are you doing?
COLLINS: For me, this story is so much
my day-to-day life.
I hate to admit, I'm much more the mom
than the main character because I actually
have three kids who are teens.
I am surrounded by teenagers
and hormones and puberty at work.
And then I go home,
and I am equally, if not more,
surrounded by puberty
and hormones at home.
Are you guys going to walk the dog?
Will you take them together
or are you gonna take them separate?
Bye. Thank you.
They've been very well-behaved.
(LAUGHS) It does not normally
go that smoothly.
MEI: The number one rule in my family?
Honor your parents.
They're the supreme beings
who gave you life...
The least you can do in return is...
every single thing they ask.
I think both of us probably grew up
under a lot of pressure
-to, you know, make our parents proud.
-Yeah.
I had that pressure on myself.
Like, I was very high-strung.
I was really into good grades.
I was into the image of the perfect girl.
I never ask for anything.
My whole life I've been her perfect
little Mei-Mei. Temple duties, grades...
-Violin!
-Tap dancing.
Yeah. We've been so good.
If they don't trust us anyway,
then what's the point?
SHI: Mei's struggle in this film is
she's torn between being her mom's
good little daughter,
and embracing her wild inner beast.
That is the universal struggle
that a lot of kids go through,
especially, I think, immigrant kids,
there's definitely more of this obligation
to carry on your family's legacy
and make sure that their sacrifices
in coming to a new country aren't in vain.
But also, you're in a new country,
you're experiencing all of this
crazy, awesome stuff
that maybe your parents
didn't get to grow up with.
You're caught between two worlds,
and that's kind of
what I wanted to explore in Mei
and also, like, literally caught between
being like a human girl and a panda.
LIU: I immigrated to the U.S.
when I was 10,
and my mom
is very much in her Eastern roots.
And when I came here, you know,
I was the good little Chinese girl
that I knew how to be,
and then as I get more and more exposed
to the Western culture
and what it means
to be an American teenager,
my mom and I started to butt heads.
I had to discover
how to bridge the gap
between being a dutiful daughter,
faithful to myself, and a good friend.
In eighth grade,
I met my best friend, Aya Alaadel.
She really taught me
-that girls can burp the alphabet.
-(BURPING)
Girls can want to play video games.
If you trip and you fall on your face,
you can learn to laugh at yourself.
You don't have to be embarrassed
for your decisions,
for your mistakes, for who you are.
She really opened my eyes to all of that.
This is Bao.
-This is...
-Your first baby.
-Our first baby.
-Our first.
Our first baby.
Rona designed
this cute little nose for him.
Used our own noses.
-You look like your mother.
-(LAUGHS)
SHI: I had this short film
that I was developing, that became Bao,
and Rona was one of the first people
that I roped into the story.
I was like, "Dang, she can really paint
and she has really good taste
"and she seems really cool."
"I really need an art person
to like take this to the next level."
To be honest, I will follow you
to the ends of the Earth.
I think Domee is just
a brilliant, brilliant mind.
I just feel like we click
and we can be so open
in communicating with each other.
We're different enough
in certain areas of our tastes
that we can collaborate and create
something even better together
than if we worked on something separately.
Hey, Bart. Hey, Lisa.
LIU: In the movie, Mei and her family
own and take care of a family temple.
We took several trips
to different historic temples
around California
that were built by early Chinese settlers
just to get a feeling
of what these grassroots temples are like.
SHI: I also spent time living behind
a temple with my grandma in China,
and I just remember
it being just a really lovely memory.
I'd make candles, and we would sell them
to visitors of the temples.
And I'd learned how to pray properly
with my grandma.
When we got to building the set
of the temple and dressing it,
it was really cool seeing those details
that we saw at the temples
kind of pop up in the background.
Like, there's just a bottle
of vegetable oil.
Like, cleaning supplies
tucked away in the corner.
They've been around
since the Gold Rush era.
All these immigrants
who came with so little
were able to cobble together
a little piece of home.
That kind of felt like
the immigrant spirit.
That kind of felt like me and Rona,
and how we, in our art,
we are inspired
by Eastern and Western stuff.
Should we try to match their face shapes?
You know, like a bell shape?
I remember you saying,
"Rona, this is not a Chinese film.
"This is a coming of age film,
"but it just happens to be
about a Chinese girl."
We need to really tap into the mind
of a 13-year-old growing up in 2002,
growing up in Toronto.
-What did we like when we were 13.
-Yeah.
And we liked Sailor Moon.
We liked anime.
The fandoms are what got me
really into anime.
I was drawing fan art passionately.
I had a secret sketchbook.
You join an online community,
you draw fan art,
and other people
would comment on it,
and that would encourage you
to draw more, produce more.
And that's kind of just what
encouraged me to keep drawing.
I think, as a kid,
it was such an escape.
I know I'm Asian,
but I'm in a very white school.
It kind of was nice to be connected
to that Asian side of myself.
I didn't have a boyfriend,
so then it's nice to read
about boyfriends.
Yeah, and a lot of them are drawn
and written by women too.
There was a lot of stories told
from a girl's point of view,
and they're the heroes,
they save the day
or they change the hearts of all the boys
-and make them fall for her.
-(BOTH LAUGH)
This is my house.
This is my boyfriend, Darren.
My many game consoles.
I've been using these
to de-stress over quarantine.
This is this awesome
Miyazaki art book I got
about the Ghibli Museum.
I got this rug over quarantine.
Diane really likes this rug.
Where's Diane? Diane?
Don't be scared, don't be scared.
Don't be scared. Come over here.
I got you!
She'll come out, she's shy.
I think I'm craving even more speed
as she poofs into a panda
and shoots forward.
We're paying homage to anime
throughout the entire movie.
You can see it in the expressions
and the acting,
the starry eyes in Mei
when she sees a boy
that she really, really loves.
Uh, Mei?
Why are you staring
at Carter Murphy-Mayhew?
We definitely have a lot of expertise
on the movie
about being 13-year-old girls,
for sure.
There is definitely
a lived experience there
that we get to bring
to the movie-making,
maybe in a different way
than I would have been able to,
say on a movie like WALL•E. (LAUGHS)
That scene with Mei
going under the bed,
and all of a sudden
she's sort of gripped by things,
and she's drawing these sexy pictures
and the conflict there
and "Why did I draw those things?"
I mean, I wasn't
under my bed drawing things,
but when I was 11,
I had a little wooden clothes pin,
and I had this mad crush on this woman
that was older than me,
but I did not know
that I was gay at the time.
And I remember drawing her name
on the clothes pin
and then flipping it over.
And she played a sport
so I put her number down,
and that sat on my desk
and I would look at it sometimes.
You know, these things,
these silly things you do.
I definitely get what Mei is doing.
(LAUGHS)
From the side, would it look like this?
Did you know that I was like,
"Oh, my God, am I ready?"
-To be a production designer?
-Yeah. "Will I be good?"
We both did it on a short.
But you're a first time feature...
I will be a first-time
feature production designer.
I figured because I was nervous
about directing for the first time
that you would be nervous
about production designing,
but I naively thought,
"How much harder could it be
directing a feature?"
I was really scared, honestly,
at the beginning.
I mean, you know,
Domee was intimidating, right?
I mean, she's... Seriously, you were,
like, super talented and...
I'm gonna be a diva.
-No, I was never worried about that.
-(LAUGHS)
It was good, too,
because you also made me,
kind of having done this for a while,
you questioned things
that I hadn't questioned in a while.
So I started in May of '97
at Pixar on A Bug's Life.
I had worked in traditional animation,
but at the time, CG animation
was a completely different ball game.
I just remember I would have this notepad
and I would just write down questions.
I was like, "Is the render farm a zoo?
"What's a cookie?
Can I have a cookie?"
They're like, "No. You cannot."
A cookie is not a cookie.
It was kind of like,
"Here we go, welcome to my questions."
Danielle was definitely
somebody that I sought out,
as she would not judge you and give you
a nice, clear and concise answer.
When we export act three,
is there a way to do one
that just has music...
One of the things
I love most about Pixar
is that I'm still asking questions
with the same amount of freedom and safety
as I did on the first day I got here.
It's just a philosophy that I've kept.
It's something I encourage other people
to do as they're starting on something.
If you don't know,
you're probably not the only one
in the room who doesn't know, so ask.
We basically started these this morning.
So be gentle.
A little bit before I was asked
to be the DP on WALL•E,
I thought, "I don't know
if I could ever be a DP,
"maybe like in 10 or 15 years."
MAN: Wow, that's great.
This one we lit in five minutes. (LAUGHS)
And then Andrew Stanton
asked me to be the DP on WALL•E,
and I was terrified because I didn't think
I knew how to do that at all.
COLLINS: I think we both
credit Andrew to a big degree, frankly.
We both had this encouragement
neither one of us would have asked for
until he kind of said,
"No, I want you to come do this."
It was an amazing experience.
It was also, half the time, terrifying
of just trying to figure out
how to hang on to who I was
and make it through,
even though a lot of times I felt like
I didn't know what I was doing.
But what we then decided to do
is some look stuff that's sort of like,
"How do we get out of the Pixar look?
How do we get into some new thing?"
We were trying to push
the boundaries of style
in both storytelling, in the camera,
the look of things,
using some hand-drawn elements,
but then you sprinkle in
Asian art influences.
It's been so interesting
to take those pieces
and figure out how you can apply them
to a 3D computer-animated film.
For me, I really wanted to be
a VFX supervisor
that was making sure
that people had the room
to bring their very best.
Not telling people what to do
but making space for them to shine.
And I have to say, honestly,
a lot of that has started with Rona
because she is the most
collaborative production designer
I have ever worked with, far and away.
I think it's made
a huge difference to the movie
and to people's enjoyment
of making the movie.
And this is the trust
and the confidence I gain.
(BOTH LAUGH)
This isn't just our first concert.
This is our first step into womanhood.
And we have to do it together.
SHI: Mei's friends are
Miriam, Abby, and Priya.
And they're her dork squad.
They accept her no matter what.
Red panda or no panda.
I always saw that as a metaphor
for when I found my squad.
4*TOWN, here we come!
I love that Mei
has these key friendships.
I very much am that person myself.
I always was the kid who had
two or three best friends.
Those kind of quirky, dorky people
who made you laugh,
equally insecure
about what was going on.
And in high school,
we'd get invited to the party
and we'd be like, "Okay, cool."
And then we drive over to the party
and we'd sit outside for a minute,
and then we were like,
"Let's go get a cake."
Then we'd eat a cake, like a whole cake,
in the car, and then go home.
It was about friends
that listen to that moment
when you were like,
"I'm not comfortable going in.
"I'm not confident enough
to do this,
"and all I really want to do
is go hang out with you guys."
SHI: Hi. Sorry I'm late.
Figuring out
how to be comfortable in the room
and finding my voice took a while.
When I first started,
I was definitely more nervous.
I was one of the few women
in the story department.
What helped a lot for me
was a female story artists support group
called the Story Artistas,
led by Mary Coleman,
and Nicole Grindle.
They were like,
"I want you guys to get comfortable,"
like, stating out loud
what your goals are.
And I think there was one lunch
where I meekly said out loud,
"I want to be a director." Oh!
Cool. Yeah, really feeling that anger.
She's like launching herself up,
"Sorry, I'm not..."
You could play Ming
a little bit more in slo-mo as well.
-Yeah.
-Otherwise it's looking good.
Anyone else have thoughts? Notes?
Mei-Mei, there you are.
-Hey, Mom...
-You're ten minutes late.
What happened? Are you hurt?
Are you hungry?
-Um...
-Ming is a force to be reckoned with.
She's just a sweet innocent child.
How dare you take advantage of her!
When Sandra Oh became the voice of Ming,
it just felt like her character
was starting to flesh out.
I knew you were trouble.
SHI: Sandra's so funny,
but she also has so much range.
She added that missing piece
to the puzzle of Ming.
I have a double-jointed elbow!
Look! I can make a perfect circle!
That was great.
I think in terms of design,
you wanted her to have
the really powerful shoulders
with these thin eyebrows,
kind of like Chinese ladies
from like the '60s,
-with the qipao and stuff.
-I wanted traditional Chinese
-mixed with Working Girl.
-LIU: Yeah.
We definitely couldn't have written Ming
without input from Lindsey
and other moms on the show.
I came at it purely from the point of view
of the oppressed teenage daughter.
So it was really helpful
hearing that other side.
You don't know everything,
you're making it up as you go along.
What I love about Ming is that she's not
one sided, cookie cutter character
and certainly not as a mom.
And as a mom myself,
I can appreciate those moments.
Hey, Sloane?
So will you remind me before we sit down
to dinner to RSVP for your...
-Fall festival?
-COLLINS: Yeah.
You're having conversations
that you are like,
"Is this even the right conversation
to be having?
"Am I supposed to be playing
more of a mom role?
"I don't even know what that is."
You're talking about heartbreak and dating
and insecurity and body image.
I know how I feel about all those things,
yet I don't know what I'm supposed
to say about any of them.
I don't know if I'm supposed
to pretend I don't have those issues
or if I'm supposed to say
I had all of them.
We always joke that your poor oldest kid
is like the first pancake.
You're like "Oof.
"Sorry, dude, I'm pretty sure
we're messing this up."
The third one we should be good.
She's gonna have
nothing to complain about
You guys...
The RSVP thing is closed.
Mom!
-Okay.
-BOY: Is it too late?
Yeah, apparently. But that's okay.
BOY: Ready?
GIRL: Yeah.
In a way, parenting overwhelms me
much more than my job does.
And I think it's just because I feel like
the stakes are so much higher.
(GIRL SINGING INDISTINCTLY)
Every choice you make as a parent
has equal chances
of being this great memory
and a success
in your relationship with them,
or alternatively, this huge disaster
that they will talk about
for the rest of their lives
as the most embarrassing thing
that ever happened to them.
(SINGING CONTINUES)
FEINBERG: Okay. Who wants to get dressed?
GIRL: Me!
(EXCLAIMING)
FEINBERG: We both have worked
very hard at our careers,
and we are late mommies.
And so I think both of us
have a huge amount of regard
for how important our work and career is,
and so we try to protect
that for one another.
On Fridays, Paige is here with the kids.
We don't have the nanny.
And, you know, I sort of have this like,
any spare moment I have
I should be running out to help,
and she has zero expectation of that.
That's made it so much more doable
to be able to balance the two things.
Not that it's always easy or something
but it, that makes a huge difference.
Boy, you guys really destroyed
the house this morning.
You know, it's really amazing
those kids right now,
they're almost 17 months.
Maybe you can hear Jack
crying in the other room.
That's a little heartbreaking
because I want to go run and help.
It is a massive luxury
to be able to see my kids
as much as I have
during this last year-plus.
I never ever would have
been able to see them as much.
I would have been racing home from work
just to catch them going to bed.
Sometimes I get to catch them for dinner.
I always get to put them to bed.
You know, it's not like
you can ever get that time back.
Yeah, I think it's working really well.
-MAN: Okay.
-Final!
(ALL CLAPPING)
SHI: I think it took until screening six
for us to finally have an ending.
And that, I think, was because
it took a long time for me
to process my own relationship
with my mother,
and just trying to figure out
how to be a good daughter for them.
I also don't know
what the solution is in real life.
Is it about being true to yourself,
or is it about honoring your parents?
I don't know.
It's some messy mix of both.
There's no clear answer.
LIU: Before I was a mom,
it just didn't occur to me
how hard it would be.
I don't know how people do it, and I don't
even know how I'm doing it right now.
My mom has been such a huge supporter
of what I want to do,
and she just always believed
that I know what's best.
That gave me so much freedom
to be the artist that I am today.
WOMAN: Happy baby.
LIU: Growing up, my parents separated,
and striving for perfection
came from this feeling of like,
I just want to be good enough
to keep my dad and my mom.
And maybe...
Maybe if I was a perfect little girl,
my parents would be together.
Yeah.
And... Hmm!
It worked out
in the best possible way for me.
I feel like it made me ambitious.
Ever since I had a baby, my worth,
who I am, is no longer
so much tied to others.
I just feel like I am a whole being
and I'm solid.
FEINBERG: I think anyone being able
to tell kids as they're
growing up and going through
this sort of chaos,
of emotion or feeling out of control
or "Do my parents love me?"
or "Can I be who I want to be
and they'll still love me?"
or "Who am I and what do the other kids
want me to be?"
We need art in general,
especially things that go on a screen
that kids can see
that tell them that it is okay.
And I think it's also for parents,
it's okay to see all of that craziness,
and that's a natural part of life
you've got to wade through
to form who you really are.
Meilin says she's not like her mom,
and that's okay.
And then she realizes,
"I am my own person.
"I want to embrace this thing
"that every other member of my family
has tried to lock away."
COLLINS: When she becomes this red panda,
it at first glance, represents everything
she doesn't want to be,
her being different and standing out
and feeling like she can't control herself
or the situation
the way she used to be able to.
You can't go through life and become the
amazing person you're supposed to become
if things don't conspire to rock
that sense of stability.
When you say to embrace the red panda,
I think that represents
being okay with that part of yourself.
It's okay not to be
in control all the time.
It's okay to be messy.
It's okay to be loud.
It's okay to be noticed.
If you don't accept it, it's a curse.
And then if you embrace it,
then it's a gift that keeps on giving.
I mean, for Mei, once she embraced it,
her whole life opened up to her.
FEINBERG: The last year-plus
with the pandemic
has been unlike anything
any of us have experienced.
It's been incredibly difficult,
it's been very stressful,
and for me, this is the funniest movie
I've ever worked on,
and so, if even at just that level
people get to have some laughs,
I think that would be amazing.
But it also has this much deeper thing
of really being able to reach out
and say, "It's okay."
If you're confused and feeling crazy
and you don't know who you are
and you might let your parents
or yourself down,
that's a natural part of growing up.
And if that could be what we provide for,
I think even one kid out there,
that would be really amazing.
-(BABY COOS)
-(LAUGHS)
SHI: Come on. Good Cornflake.
Darren made a quiche yesterday.
Look, your quiche is on camera.
So cool. I like how you guys designed it.
-In there?
-WOMAN: Yes.
COLLINS: When these dogs come in here
and start snoring so loudly,
to the point where they're like...
(SNORES)
WOMAN: Do you, Rona, take Dylan
to be your lawfully wedded spouse?
I do.
Congratulations, you may kiss.
Good boy. Got it?
Great job.
(SINGING) Final!