Pixar takes a nuanced approach to 3-D but wisely pushes the depth in Up to coincide with the high points. All images © Disney/Pixar.

Today's release of Up marks Pixar's first stereoscopic 3-D feature, so we chatted with Josh Hollander (director of stereoscopic production) and Bob Whitehill (stereoscopic supervisor) to learn about the studio's philosophy behind the digital revitalization of the format that's taking animation by storm, including a sneak peek at Toy Story, Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3 in Disney Digital 3-D. The first two landmark Pixar films will play on a double-bill for two weeks beginning Oct. 2, while Toy Story 3 bows June 18, 2010.

Bill Desowitz: It's clear in viewing Up in 3-D that Pixar's approach is dynamic but unobtrusive.

Josh Hollander: Yes, the most gratifying thing is that we put a lot of time and energy and thought in our approach to 3-D and we never really knew if people would get it. To see some of the online reviews coming out of Cannes, it seems that people really got our nuanced, subtle approach. We want to pull people into the movie and not push them away from it with a lot of gimmicky stuff coming at ya.

We wanted to really understand this new tool before we integrated it. We did a lot of tests with WALL•E material, Ratatouille material; working on the Toy Story re-releases. We started with Up as soon as images were available. With that variety of imagery, we started pushing the limits of what's comfortable and what's not in all aspects, including cutting from shot to shot, continuity, far away in z-space forcing your eyes to go more wall eyed, vs. objects coming out into the audience in z- space, forcing you to become more cross-eyed. We had a core group of people on this: John Lasseter, Pete Docter, [Up Producer] Jonas Rivera and [Up Layout Supervisor] Patrick Lin. We looked at all this material and viewed the latest films in 3-D and put it all into the overall Pixar aesthetic.

BD: And how would you describe that aesthetic?

JH: We came up with our general approach, which sees 3-D as just another tool in a filmmaker's toolbox to help tell the story. So we believe we've found an approach that works. In calm moments, in sad moments, when Carl is alone, we really compress that 3-D depth to make you feel closed in and small. And, of course, with all the topography of the Tepui as the movie progresses, and the high notes and big emotions and action, we push that depth out to support those story points. To use the metaphor, you want to bring people into your story, so if you apply a literal approach, you want to bring people into the movie screen. We don't want them walking out saying that it's great 3-D.

BD: What were some of the early lessons you learned from the test footage?

JH: What was really interesting was, not knowing how 3-D was going to work with editing and with composition, how good camera and staging play really nicely in 3-D. And this turned into a motto for us. We did about eight minutes of Ratatouille as a test and it was really stunning. We selected moments from across the movie with foreground and objects far away and fast cuts and slow cuts and pans and vertically and horizontally dark and light shots. With that said if you have an extreme foreground object but the focal point of the shot is farther back, it can be jarring, so we keep that in mind. We learned how to use the floating windows and other aspects of 3-D.

In calm or sad moments, when Carl is alone, Pixar compresses the 3-D depth to make you feel closed in and small.

BD: You implement your 3-D planning as early as possible?

JH: Yes, we start in layout and figure out how to work 3-D into that. There's a chart to map out the story arc of the film and how the layout composition works and what Bob did was work with Pete and Patrick and mirrored a 3-D depth chart with their chart. We move the stuff over into 3-D layout, work out the shots and send it off to review. With each project, we might find subtle differences in how we want to use 3-D. The obvious anomaly is Toy Story and Toy Story 2, where we don't have the luxury of planning our use of 3-D.

Bob Whitehill: We were fortunate to fall into Up where the lens palette is mainly normal so we don't have to battle long lenses. Those will collapse the characters and draw the background in. And we don't have a lot of abnormally wide lenses, which can exaggerate the depth of field and double up what you need to do in 3-D. In Up, we have these wonderful vistas and a zeppelin fight that lend themselves so well to 3-D. We uncovered a gem for our first one out of the gate. Up required little manipulation.

One of my favorite moments is when Carl is looking at the Adventure book and [learns the movie's great lesson about life]. The general idea is that when Carl's life is flat and contained, the 3-D would be the same. And that when he is with Ellie, the experiences become more dimensional and deeper, so what I did over those shots in the book, was take each one a little bit deeper as we cut back to Carl, so that by the end, he looks more fully rounded and more dimensional -- more human, if you will, by reacting to what he sees in the book.

BD: So you've come up with a 3-D playbook?

BW: We established a trade template where we wound up putting the point of interest where your eyes are drawn at the screen depth, and then pulling the foreground forward and the background back around that point. Once we found our creative footing on that front, then pipeline wise, we were able to dive into our proprietary tools and set up a system that is pretty straight forward to add in the right-eye camera and to use the existing camera as the left eye.