Now coming to Disney+ this Christmas is Disney/Pixar’s latest film from director Pete Docter, Soul.

Soul centers around middle-school band teacher Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx) who has always aspired to play jazz with the greats, but whose life has turned out more like that of George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life–a tribute to self-sacrifice and delayed gratification.  Just when Joe appears to have a chance at the Big Time, one misstep removes him from this plane of existence and forces him to team up with a cynical, disembodied soul “22” (voiced by Tina Fey,) who is as reluctant to join the world of the living as Gardner is desperate to get back.

To give us a look at what went into the making of Soul, director Pete Docter, producer Dana Murray, and Co-Director/Writer Kemp Powers joined us on a virtual press day.

The genesis of the idea for Soul came from Docter’s musings about his own life.  Despite genuinely feeling as though making animated films is what he was meant to do, he still has moments of uncertainty:  “Is this really what I’m supposed to be doing with my limited time on Earth?…I wonder sometimes, is there any point to it?  If I had a choice, would I decide to be born and come live?”

That question is the core of Soul, as a soul who doesn’t want to live, meets a soul who doesn’t want to die.

Souls

One of the earliest challenges of the film was deciding on how to visualize a soul.  Research into various religions mostly described souls as formless and intangible, which proved difficult to draw.  After finally deciding on aerogel, the lightest solid material on Earth used by NASA, as a base, the artists began to conceptualize what a soul might look like.

After many iterations, they discovered a mix of color and line work proved to keep the souls looking ephemeral, but not ghost-like, and rendered them with clear facial expressions

Jazz

Because the crux of the film is Joe persuading 22 that life is worth living, he needed some kind of passion that would ground him and give him a strong drive to return to Earth.  They found his ultimate motivation in jazz after watching a video of Herbie Hancock talking about fellow jazz legend Miles Davis:

This philosophy of not judging what you’re given but simply turning whatever it is into something of value became the guiding metaphor for what the filmmakers wanted Soul to say about life.  To give the film its authentic jazz music, Jon Batiste, the pianist from The Colbert Show, worked with The Social Network composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for the soundtrack.

Authenticity

Once the decision had been made to tie Joe to jazz, i.e. Black improvisational music, screenwriter Kemp Powers came onto the project to help inform the character with his own experiences as a Black man.

To get a sense of the character and his background, the crew took research trips to Joe’s hometown of Queens, New York, and specifically to areas important to his community and work, such as barbershops, jazz clubs, and public schools.

Because the film needed to transcend any one person’s life, the filmmakers reached out to African-Americans both within Pixar and without to make up a cultural trust–a group of consultants which would make sure Soul was as authentic and as genuine a representation as possible.

More to come!

[This panel, from The Essence Festival earlier this year, references an earlier release date.  This has since been changed to December 25th, 2020 on Disney+.]

Soul begins streaming on Disney+ on December 25th, 2020.

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