Soul Senior Editor Kevin Nolting broke the rules for “22 vs Earth,” the Pixar short that became his directorial debut. As he explained to CBR and other press during an interview, there is one unofficial rule to follow when directing your first project: don’t work with children or animals. Nevertheless, he assembled a cast of five children to play new souls for “22 vs Earth” — and it went pretty well, regardless.
“The first lesson anyone will give you as far as directing as your first time out: you shouldn’t direct children or animals. But having worked at Pixar so long, I have a lot of experience editing children’s voices and certainly being at the recording sessions,” Nolting explained. “We have this great team up in Vancouver… and they were just so much fun to work with.”
“Then we have the advantage with animation, is you cut the voices separate from the picture before they’re animated,” he continued. “So you can be a little freer with cutting up dialogue and finding the performances because you don’t have to worry about visual sync. So we definitely had an advantage there. But the kids were so much fun, and it’s always fun to see what they accidentally come up with.”
Asked if the young cast managed to surprise him in any way, he added, “There was no big surprises, in that they said anything that I recall. It’s just how they are so innocent and pure when they’re recording. It’s just great material to work with, really.”
An eight-minute short, “22 vs Earth” takes place before the events of Soul. In it, Tina Fey reprises her role as a soul referred to only as 22. As in the film that inspired the short, 22 wants nothing to do with Earth — but she finds herself increasingly lonely as all her friends leave her behind. So, in an effort to stop losing friends, she recruits a team of five new souls to work with her. However, things don’t go exactly according to her plan.
Starring Tina Fey as 22, Alice Braga as Counselor Jerry and Richard Ayoade as Counselor Jerry, Soul short “22 vs. Earth” is now available to stream on Disney+.
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