Adrian Warren Talks UP Doc: 'Adventure is Out There'

One of the bonus features on the UP DVD and Blu-ray, which street today from Walt Disney Home Entertainment, is the fascinating documentary, "Adventure is Out There," which details the research trip Pete Docter and his fellow Pixar animators made to Venezuela with award-winning biologist/wild life photographer Adrian Warren.

They visited Angel Falls, one of the few natural discoveries of the 20th century and can only be arrived at via foot, and the hike to get there takes three days. Warren told AWN about the experience:

"About four years ago, Pete Docter said he wanted that kind of magical place on earth to set his new film, so he asked me to come to [Pixar] to tell the team more about it. So it was great to meet them all and I gave them a presentation with pictures and film clips and then a few months later Pete invited me to take them all to Venezuela on a research trip. And it was a terrific experience for me because I don't do guiding trips; I do expeditions and filming trips. So it was a very, very new experience and it was a real treat to go to a remote place and watch them do their sketches and becoming completely absorbed by this world that they never imagined existed and never seen before. For many of them, it was far more remote than they ever had been in their lives.

"But you know it really paid off because in the final film there are so many aspects, so many facets that they never could've captured without going there and having first-hand experience. They got the dimensions right, they got the textures right, they got the moods right -- the changing weather and the effects of the mist, especially on all those rock shapes, where they change and appear to be faces and recognizable shapes."

Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.