“I got to thank my parents”: ‘Elemental’ director Peter Sohn after receiving Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature

Los Angeles [US] : ‘Elemental’ director Peter Sohn credited his team after receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature, reported Deadline. 

Peter appreciated his entire team, saying, “I think about all the work and passion and love that they put into the film, and it fills me up in a way that is very emotional.” 

‘Elemental’ brings out the love story between two opposing elemental beings, Ember and Wade, but there is an underlying theme of honouring parents and the sacrifices they made for their children. 

“When I first pitched, it was seven years ago,” said Sohn. “It was just this anecdote about going to this venue where I got to thank my parents in front of a large crowd, and it was a very emotional moment for me… Getting to this point with the kind of recognition, I just think of my parents looking down and hoping that they’re proud. 

To bring these elemental beings to life, the animation approach for Elemental required numerous advances in addition to the tale. 

“It was an amazing process to build a road where there wasn’t one here at Pixar, to make characters that were all effects. Creating characters like fire and water where they didn’t have any skin or a skeleton to hold them up… Some of my favourite parts of this journey was seeing them come to life through a collaboration of hundreds of really amazing artists.” 

As Sohn speaks about the nomination, he thinks back to a moment during production when the COVID restrictions lifted enough to allow the crew to sit in a theatre together. “In the darkness of that theatre, it was the first time the artist put up Ember, our main fire woman,” he says. “Seeing her flames going and blinking for the first time, and coming to life brought the magic of what’s so amazing about animation. She came from nothing and these artists had put her up on the big screen and it was a pretty momentous moment,” reported Deadline.