The leadership crew of Turning Red , Pixar ‘s 25th animated feature, is the first to be exclusively women, with a female director, producer, visual-effects supervisor, production designer, and others on a long list of the film’s creative members.
The director recently recalled the all-female crew swapping period stories in the making of the coming-of-age movie.
From the sounds of it, we can expect Pixar’s 25th animated film, “Turning Red” to have an especially authentic touch to it.
The coming-of-age film, ran by an entirely female crew, swapped their personal period stories amid the making of the movie as a brainstorming method.
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During a press day for the film, director Domee Shi recalled the crew sharing coming-of-age tales with each other.
Turning Red , set to be released in March 2022, is a story about a pre-teen named Meilin who begins to turn into a red panda — a metaphor for puberty.
Domee explained that having so many women working on the film became very useful when piecing the story together.
“It’s useful that most of the leadership has experience being an awkward tween girl so that we could bring that experience and those personal stories to the table when it came to animating, designing, and coming up with gags and ideas for the characters in the movie,” she told Insider .
She then revealed that the mother-daughter storyline was inspired by the relationship she had with her own mom.
“I think we’ve all had super embarrassing period stories and that definitely added to — ‘OK. We have to have a scene like this in the movie,'” Domee continued .
She explained that embarrassing period stories are essentially a right of passage for most girls, so it was important that they included that in the movie.
“If we’re going to be doing a coming-of-age girl story, this is such a pivotal milestone in every girl’s life, to have an embarrassing period story,” she said.
“That was huge for us,” she added.
The film’s producer, Lindsey Collins, who also worked on Finding Dory and Wall-E chimed in, adding that it was “kind of awesome to be unapologetic” and brainstorm ideas without having to “worried about it internally.”
“There was something about the confidence of having so many women in leadership positions on the [film],” Lindsey added.
She explained that it liberated them and “let us be a little bit bolder with some of the choices we were making and not second guess it before we even got it through story or through editorial.”
Ultimately, because of their candid brainstorming method, “More of those choices ended up in the film,” Lindsey said.
She added that their authenticity got to shine through more because they didn’t have to dilute their ideas due to the presence of male colleagues.
“We didn’t kind of water it down, preemptively, because we allowed ourselves to be a little bit bolder,” she shared.
“This was the first time they were seeing all women up on stage. It was pretty special.”
Let us know what you think of the Turning Red crew swapping period stories for the upcoming Pixar, coming-of-age movie in the comments below.
h/t Insider
