16 years ago, Pixar He launched WALL-E, a film piece that has become a benchmark in animated cinema. The film not only stood out for its moving story about a dystopian future where humans have been tamed by technology, but also for all the secrets behind its creative and challenging production.
What does the little robot have to do with disasters of the size of Chernobyl or with performances by cinema icons such as Charlie Chaplin? Below, several of the most striking curiosities of the feature film are compiled. disneyfrom the titanic work behind its creation to the continuations that expanded the universe of this endearing character.
To create the ruined world of WALL-E, Pixar artists found inspiration in Eastern Europe. In order to imagine and capture the decadent state of planet Earth seen in the film, those in charge of the drawing focused on Chernobyla place devastated by the famous nuclear catastrophe of 1986, and in the city of Sofiacapital of Bulgaria affected by the large accumulation of garbage.
This choice was greatly influenced by the art director, Anthony Christov, who is originally from Bulgaria and had a deep understanding of the difficulties his country faced in waste management. Likewise, the person in charge of production design, Ralph Egglestondecided to bleach the white colors on Earth to make WALL-E feel vulnerable and expose the vastness of the landscape.
The production stood out as one of Pixar’s most complex since Monsters Inc. due to the detailed world and intricate story they needed to convey. While most Pixar films require up to 75,000 storyboards, the film required a whopping 125,000.
Likewise, the designs of WALL-E and EVA in the film involved in-depth research. For WALL-E, director Andrew Stanton looked for a box-like shape and ended up basing it on garbage compactors and war tanks for the body; her eyes were inspired by binoculars; and its structure in a injection printer.
On the other hand, EVA was conceived as an advanced machine. Stanton enlisted the help of Jonathan Ivedesigner of iPod, to review the sketches. The robot’s eyes were based on the toy Lite-Britewith limited emotional expressions, and its design inspired comparisons with underwater creatures due to its floating way of moving.
Additionally, Auto, the robotic character who ends up being the main villain on the ship where WALL-E and EVA arrive, pays homage to the HAL 9000. The latter is the enigmatic and terrifying robot that appears in 2001: Space Odysseysand was designed to look menacing like “a spider hanging from the ceilings.”
Another important detail in the design was the choice and non-inclusion of certain colors. Eggleston tried to avoid using yellows and greens so that the small robot protagonist, who was painted yellow to emulate a tractor, would not blend in with Earth’s desert environment. This choice also helped highlight the plant EVA was looking for, making it more prominent amidst the abandoned landscape.
Eggleston wanted the lighting for the first act, set on Earth, to have a romantic tone, while the lighting for the second act, set on the Axiom ship, was cold and sterile. Then, during the third act, both lightings are combined to create a unique atmosphere.
When giving life to a character like WALL-E, the Pixar team faced an immense challenge: they had to make the audience empathize with the robot without making it talk. That involved learning to show the various emotions of the protagonist—joy, anger, sadness, etc.—only through the movements.
For this reason, the creators of the film dedicated a considerable amount of time to studying the work of two masters of gesticulation in cinema: Buster Keaton and Charles Chaplin. At lunchtime, everyone had to go to the projection room to see the classics of these legendary artists and learn the art of showing emotion without dialogue.
To animate their robots, the film’s story and animation team watched a Keaton film and a Chaplin film every day for almost a year, and occasionally they showed a film by Harold Lloyd. Through this exhaustive study, the filmmakers realized that all emotions could be transmitted silently.
Andrew Stanton, the director, mentioned how Keaton’s “big stone face” gave them the perseverance needed to animate a character whose expression didn’t change. That last characteristic is what WALL-E has printed on his eyes, which do not change except in position throughout the entire film.
Stanton, upon reviewing these films, came to the conclusion that filmmakers, since the advent of sound in cinema, had relied excessively on dialogue to convey information. This perspective profoundly influenced the production of WALL-Eallowing the film to stand on two things: a powerful visual narrative and detailed animation.
The team also took inspiration from other film classics to perfect their craft. The filmmakers watched movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), The Black Stallion (1979) and Never Cry Wolf (1983)as they also used sound effectively without relying heavily on dialogue.
The sound in WALL-E It represented another challenge during post-production, but it sparked a lot of creativity in the Foley room from all members of the sound team. For example, the cockroach noises came from the accelerated sounds of raccoons, and the insects’ contact with the ground was created with the closing of handcuffs.
Likewise, the film’s charm resided in its robotic and electronic sounds, created by the two-time Oscar winner for Best Sound Effects, Ben Burtt. Considered by many to be the father of modern sound design, he began his career in the ’70s with Star Wars.
Since one of the objectives of the creators of WALL-E was to pay tribute to R2-D2one of the most famous robots in film history, Burtt was the perfect choice to take on the role of creating the astromech droid’s sounds.
Despite technological advances in sound design, Burtt continues to employ traditional techniques. He likes to collect sounds from nature to use in his productions. In WALL-E, The Sound of Wind on Earth included recordings of Niagara Falls. According to Burtt, “When you use sounds collected from the outside world and introduce them into a science fiction film, you get the credibility of those sounds to sell the audience the reality of what is actually a fantastic world”.
In addition to natural sounds, real voices were also used for the film’s electronics. WALL-E’s voice in the original English version is that of Burtt, processed by computer. EVA, for its part, was doubled by Elissa Knighta Pixar employee, whose voice was also digitally processed.
Burtt’s work on “WALL-E” was monumental. He created 2,400 audio files for animation, far surpassing the amount of sounds created for other famous franchises such as the original trilogy of Star Wars or the first films of Indiana Jones. To give an idea of the magnitude of this project, just to Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope around 800 audio files were created.
WALL-E It’s definitely a Disney-Pixar classic. Despite its clear success —521 million dollars raised worldwide with a budget of 180 million—in 2016, the producer Jim Morris indicated that the studio had no plans for a sequel, as they considered the story to be complete and did not need a continuation. However, that doesn’t mean the adorable robot’s adventures have completely come to an end.
Following Pixar tradition, the film was released in theaters along with a short film titled Presto, but there is another short that also accompanied the film the same year it was released. Is about Burn-E, an 8-minute story featuring a welding robot created to maintain the Axiom ship’s systems. Unfortunately, WALL-E and EVA’s antics complicate his job and force him to take action.
The adventures of WALL-E do not stop there, since 11 years later, in 2019, Pixar released a series of shorts titled Pixar in Real Life, where WALL-E is the protagonist of several episodes. In these, citizens of New York are surprised by the appearance of Pixar characters or references. In the case of WALL-E, the robot explores the streets of one of the busiest cities in the world, causing various reactions.
All of these stories are available at Disney+ and although they are not an official sequel, they can be considered a kind of continuation to continue exploring the world of the original film.
