TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER

HOW PIXAR'S GREATEST MINDS CAME TOGETHER TO CREATE ELIO—A STORY THAT'S SIMPLY OUT OF THIS WORLD

- WORDS: CLARISSE LOUGHREY

IN ELIO, A KID ACHIEVES HIS LIFELONG DREAM of being abducted by aliens. They drop him off somewhere called the Communiverse — essentially the United Nations for extraterrestrials. Here, emissaries from across the galaxy congregate in order to share their knowledge so that everyone might thrive as one.

It sounds a lot like Pixar, then, with its central campus in Emeryville, California, where every day, artists of all disciplines dream together of new ways to blend artistry and technology. SFX floats the comparison past Mary Alice Drumm, the film’s producer. She’d never considered it before. She smiles. “I’m gonna totally steal that from you now?” she teases.

If there’s one thing Pixar can be counted on, it’s its ability to solve even the most unpredictable of problems. There’s the infamous tale of how an employee accidentally deleted the entirety of Toy Story 2, only for it to be salvaged from the supervising technical director’s personal computer, since she happened to be working from home caring for a new baby.

On Drumm’s first gig, as associate producer on Brave, the team were trying to work with a newly developed animation system, eventually named Presto, but they repeatedly ran into issues. Drumm’s job was to figure out the schedule budget. She started to panic a little. Tom Porter, one of the studio's founding employees, took her aside. “Look around,” he said. “If you need help, every person in this building will drop what they're doing and come to you. You have so many resources.” Says Drumm, “That’s always been something I keep in the back of my mind. If a movie is in trouble, everyone will come help.”

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