Ronnie del Carmen (Photo from Walt Disney Studios)
Ronnie del Carmen has a lot of fond memories growing up in Cavite City, just outside Sangley Point. A Filipino storyboard animator, story supervisor, designer and director in Disney/Pixar Animation Studios, which he joined in 2000, his journey has stretched farther and wider than he ever anticipated. Even then, sometimes the sweetest memories are the simplest.
In a casual interview during his recent vacation in the country, he tells Bulletin Entertainment, “I have a lot childhood memories of typhoons.”
The smile that crossed his face was priceless as he reminisced about things kids no longer experience today, his voice soothing and perfect for a bit of storytelling.
“Sometimes the power would go out. For a kid, that (means) somebody is going to bring out the candles and tomorrow we may not (have) school,” he says, laughing. “Then you go outside with your friends, into the floods, and you try and catch fish, frogs or tadpoles. And risk being electrocuted by the people who were actually fishing with electricity, you remember those?”
Of course we know awful storms in this country well enough. “They’re fascinating but very lethal, as we know,” he concurs. “We do fundraisers for typhoon ‘Haiyan’ and we have to impress people that these things are very dangerous; they destroyed lives and everything. But I never tell them that, to me, when I was a kid, typhoons were like, ‘Oh my god, I’m gonna go outside!’”
That’s the thing about Ronnie. Given more time with him, the tales he could tell would surely have been more engaging.
The ‘yes’ man
Ronnie at work in the studio (Photo from Walt Disney Studios)
Anywhere he goes, Ronnie says he carries his sketchbooks with him, as if they were his journal. “I cannot not draw. I’m kind of like (a shark), I have to keep swimming or else I’ll die,” and while here, “I drew a tricycle because I was fascinated with those things.”
He used to draw on the walls and the back of his notebooks as a young boy. “My dad (used to get) upset with me, ‘He’s not doing his homework,’” he recalls with a smile. “I can almost imagine him shaking his head, turning to my mom, ‘Where did I go wrong?’”
All these would lead to working with Disney/Pixar, but Ronnie certainly took the long way to get there. “I’m an accidental animator,” he says, and he isn’t kidding. “I’ve had a very strange path getting into animation because I didn’t want to do animation,” he reveals.
He was only 11 years old when his middle-class family had “the bottom fall off from under (us)” after his father, Rogelio Del Carmen, lost everything in a failed business venture with some friends. The patriarch immigrated to the US “on a long shot… kind of like a Hail Mary pass” with the hope of giving his family a better life. He was 17 when his father left. “I would not see him until I was 29,” he shares.
A Fine Arts graduate from UST, Ronnie worked in the advertising industry. After what seemed like a “glacial” petition process, his family was reunited in the US by 1989. Portfolio in hand, he initially tried to jump start his advertising career there but he was hampered by his lack of contacts and knowledge of the area. Then he answered an ad to do storyboards for a production company.
In a series of what seemed like catching lightning in a bottle, animation further beckoned when he was offered a job as assistant to the art director for a TV show, learning the ropes within the two-month job. Thinking it must have been a fluke, he tried for another animation job after a vacation in the Philippines and, again, he was hired – by no less than Warner Bros., as storyboard artist for “Batman, The Animated Series.”
“I’ve never done that job before either. So most people give me jobs that I’ve never done, that I don’t wanna do, that I know that I was gonna be bad at. But that’s kinda have been my career in animation,” he says, smiling.
His not knowing things got him in DreamWorks Studios, too: First, as story artist for the feature animation “Prince of Egypt” (1998), then story supervisor for “El Dorado” (2000). In Pixar, director Andrew Stanton pretty much dumped the story supervisor job on his lap and he ended up working on the hits “Finding Nemo” (2003), and later, “Up” (2009).
The lesson he’s learned is you always say yes; just learn the ropes later and try not to disappoint. He certainly hasn’t.
Up, up and away
‘Inside Out’ characters: the five emotions in the Headquarters inside Riley’s mind (Photo from Walt Disney Studios)
Ronnie loved working closely with director Pete Docter and writer/co-director Bob Peterson in “Up.” He would learn so much from them and the relationship with Pete would also translate to a new collaboration: Pete’s upcoming animated feature “Inside Out,” for which Ronnie is now co-director.
Ronnie recalls an emotional time working on “Up” with his father falling ill. “Then he could not speak anymore. But I would visit him in the hospital and I would show him sequences that I’m working on. I would sit with him in bed and I would pitch like I would pitch (in the studio), and I said, ‘Dad, you looked exactly like Carl’ (the old man in the movie).”
His father died in 2005, way before the film was done. Still, Ronnie says, “My dad kind of lives in the movie because my dad is very stubborn. He was very, very courageous, he provides for his family but he’s had a spate of bad luck.”
Ronnie got to work on the sequence of a younger Carl and his wife Ellie, as well the last part where an older Carl has fulfilled his promise to the long-gone love of his life. That both didn’t have dialogue resonated with him, calling to mind his dad before he died. Ronnie also recalled moments when he, Pete and Bob would not be able to speak after watching some emotional sequences.
Ronnie has done amazing things in his career so far, “But the most emotional thing that I’ve ever done has been to show an old man go through these emotions realizing what his life amounted to. I don’t think I’ll ever get that chance again,” he says.
His story certainly doesn’t end here and there would be so much more to tell. In August, “Inside Out” will premiere in the Philippines and they get to tell a tale where each character represents an emotion living inside the mind of a little girl.
As Ronnie’s journey goes further, the one lesson he has to impart from this all is that, “I would love for everybody to tell their stories.” So what’s yours?
Thunderstorms and lightning in bottlesSource: Mb.com.ph (January 31, 2015 at 04:30PM)
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