Fall In Love with La Luna

Yes you will fall in love with La Luna. As all Pixar shorts entertain us and take us somewhere, La Luna took me on a quick but magical journey to the moon explaining how we get different cycles in the moon, from a full moon to a crescent moon, the trio of characters interact on an entertaining level. Well, that’s my interpretation you may just be mesmerized by the adorable little boy learning from his father and grandfather and how his imagination makes the world a much bigger adventure and he just ignores them as they seem to argue over everything.

After watching La Luna, we had the chance to sit down with the director (and Academy Award nominee) Enrico Casarosa. I’m always really interested in the evolution of animation including Pixar shorts and where the idea originated. Enrico said that overall the process is just like making a larger animated film, but there are fewer people involved.

Someone asked him where his idea came from he actually had a lot to say about that. The relationship of the three generations came from his own family.

the core of it is a personal experience of dealing with my dad and my grandfather growing up. When my grandmother passed, we lived with my grandfather. It was a small house and my dad and my grandfather weren’t getting along.  .

He used that relationship to show how a child can see something simple.

My direction for that was like I want this to be very mundane. Dad and Grandfather don’t care about these things. They don’t see them as the kid does. So they’re shuffling through them like if they were leaves or rocks. So that’s where that’s where we would give a good contrast and a little more magical with it toward the end.

I think his idea really worked because as I look at my own son I wonder what’s going on through his head. He always looks like he’s somewhere else and I feel like his mind is making the whole world into a magical land filled with unicorns and fire breathing dragons while I’m just trying to get him to put his shoes on.

He also said he just used things that inspired him.

the more fantastical side of all this story was something that I really just looked for what inspires me.

One is Saint-Exupery in the Little Prince, I always loved growing up. You’ve probably seen the illustration of, of this cute little prince and on this planet, it’s actually quite small. I always was fascinated by something you could just walk around in a minute. And, Hayao Miyazaki is a big influence on my work.. I study and love his work, he has this kind of wonderful, kind of surreal, fantastic with very real small details in his work.

Another one of his inspirations for the Pixar Short La Luna was Italo Calvino.

Italo Calvino is an Italian writer that I read growing up. At least in high school we kind of read them. It’s very surreal work and he had one story with a ladder to the moon. And in that story, specifically, they were getting milk from the moon and it’s got me thinking, wouldn’t it be fun to kind of come up with my own strange child-like myth?

La Luna speaks to the child in me. I always love seeing life through the eyes of one of my children and watching La Luna reminded me that children see things so differently and encouraging them to think big and outside the box is what parenting is all about. I really did like the creativity in La Luna.

Thanks to Disney Dreamworks for providing hotel and transportation for the press day for Brave.