Pixar’s “The Good Dinosaur” hasn’t had the easiest production. Development started in 2009 and the film was originally set to be released in May 2014, but was postponed to Thanksgiving 2015. Ed Catmull, president of Pixar, said to the Los Angeles Times, “Nobody ever remembers the fact that you slipped a film, but they will remember a bad film.” People began to worry if Pixar might have its first critical and commercial misfire on its hands.

On Thursday, however, first-time director Peter Sohn and producer and UC Berkeley alumna Denise Ream brought a special on-campus presentation of “The Good Dinosaur” to an eager handful of UC Berkeley students, and it’s safe to say the film is looking to be another gem for the studio.

In their presentation, which included four previously unseen sequences and a 30-minute Q&A session with the public, Sohn and Ream unveiled their beautifully animated creation and how they managed what Ream called the “truncated schedule” of the film.

In 2014, the brain trust at Pixar decided to scrap the original storyline for the film and start anew with a new director and producer team. This is where Sohn and Ream came in. Sohn talked to the audience about this process. When he took over the director’s chair, he consciously wanted to “simplify” the story, “to tell a boy and dog story,” but with a twist. The boy is a lost 11-year-old apatosaurus named Arlo. The dog is a 6-year-old cave boy named Spot.

Sohn took over as director because the story had “too many elements going on” and “was hard to finish off.” Sohn said, “The boy and dog thing, it’s really an archetypal story, it’s a very classic story. You guys all know it. But trying to find a way to give us that simplicity of story and then allow the world the characters inhabit to allow breathing room to create a survival story… was what (we) had to refocus.”

Sohn’s story focuses on Arlo’s journey after a storm has killed his father and forced him downstream away from his agrarian family. He must survive the mountainous and dangerous terrain in order to return home.

Along the way Arlo meets a multitude of interesting characters including tyrannosauruses that gallop like horses, and scientifically accurate, feathered raptors, featured in another clip. But instead of villainizing any of the species, Sohn said “nature is the main antagonist of the film.”

Sohn and Ream praised each other and the collaborative Pixar team on helping them finish the film with such a short production time. Sohn referenced the director under whom he first worked, Brad Bird (Pixar’s “Ratatouille”), on “The Iron Giant.” Sohn remembered that Bird said, “I don’t care what your position title is, when you’re doing your job, as long as you’re making it better, that’s all that we ask.” Sohn applied this philosophy at Pixar. Ream then added that Sohn always “could really articulate what he wants, what his vision was, and that helps people work clearly, and efficiently. It sounds simple, but it’s difficult often to articulate that.”

While each clip lasted no longer than a few minutes, there was no longer a lingering sense of the behind-the-scenes chaos. The film seems to be that perfect balance between comedy and tragedy — between the kid-friendly and the adult — that we’ve come to expect from Pixar.

In one brief sequence, after Arlo’s father has died and Arlo has been separated from his family, he tries to ask Spot if he has any family. There is a language barrier between Arlo and Spot, so Arlo uses twigs to represent his family. He puts three smaller ones on the ground, representing himself and his two siblings. Then he places two bigger ones to represent his parents. After a few moments of Spot not responding, Arlo begins to cry and pushes one twig over, representing his father. Spot then responds by putting one small twig and two big ones in the ground. The boy then knocks over the two larger ones and begins to cry. Through this heartbreaking, nearly wordless sequence in “The Good Dinosaur,” Sohn, Ream and the rest of the Pixar team show that the simplicity and clarity that they wanted has been achieved.



Ream said to The Daily Californian, “It’s the goal of the studio … to produce something that can function on multiple levels, and obviously appealing to young children and adults, to the general audience. It’s thrilling but it’s hard.” Once again, Pixar’s hard work has paid off and it will surely have another hit on its hands this Thanksgiving.

Contact Levi Hill at [email protected].