How Being a Dad Inspired Filipino Storyteller Ronnie del Carmen's Role in Pixar's Elemental
In the world of animation, you’d be hard-pressed to find a veteran that Filipinos look up to more than Ronnie del Carmen. The Cavite-born UST graduate has made his mark on animation 10 times over. Most likely, his work shaped your childhood, and you never even knew it.
As a storyboard artist, Del Carmen worked on major feature films like The Prince of Egypt, Ratatouille, Wall-E, and Coco. He was also the story supervisor of Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Finding Nemo, and Up. His directorial debut was none other than Dug’s Special Mission, featuring the beloved pooch from Up, and he later became the co-director and writer of Inside Out, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2015.
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Suffice to say, del Carmen has been around the block. And it just so happens that Del Carmen and fellow animation artist and Elemental director Peter Sohn have been working together for decades on projects such as Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, Wall-E, and Up. So when his Sohn called him up about a new project he was working on, Del Carmen was automatically on board.
The latest film from Pixar Animation Studios, Elemental follows a headstrong young fire element in a city where fire, water, earth, and air residents live together. A rom-com at heart, Elemental is also a family story, with del Carmen lending his voice to Bernie Lumen, the father of the fiery Ember Lumen. In Element City, Bernie is the fantastical equivalent of an immigrant dad.
Just as Del Carmen’s experiences as a brother inspired his work in The Prince of Egypt and his experiences as a son inspired his work in Up, it was his life and insights as a father that informed how he approached his character in Elemental.
In an interview with Esquire Philippines, Ronnie Del Carmen had one thing to say when he was first introduced to his character in Elemental: “That’s me.”
“I felt very close to Bernie's journey—being an immigrant, being a father, being a son,” shared Del Carmen. But it was Bernie’s relationship with his daughter that struck home. “I could empathize with the journey of a dad with a very talented and headstrong daughter because my own daughter is like this. She works in film, and she's a go-getter. So I needed that as a way to understand how Bernie is challenged.”
In Elemental, Ember’s dad comes from the old country, and as an immigrant, he started a business similar to an Asian convenience store that injects the spirit of his homeland into Element City. Like any immigrant dad, Bernie wants his progeny to take over the store when he retires. Despite his love for his daughter, Bernie has his own generational and internal issues to deal with, which is all too relatable to dads everywhere.
In many ways, Bernie will be the lens through which the parents in the audience will appreciate the film, but for some, it’ll be through Ember, the child of a loving father with high expectations. It was Sohn's experiences that inspired the film, after all.
“I love the story that Peter Sohn fashioned because it was about him. And because I know Pete, [who’s] a good friend of mine, I empathize with the journey that he went through and his relationship with his parents and finding the love of his life,” shared Del Carmen.
With Bernie, Del Carmen got to flex his voice-acting skills and exercise his character’s complicated emotional state. The thing about storytelling, at least from his perspective, is that it should be as genuine as possible, especially if you're pulling from your own story.
“I get to channel my own journeys as a son and as a father and put them in Bernie’s story. That helps me exercise my story, which is how we make these movies anyway, in order for them to be authentic,” shared Del Carmen, who dropped a huge nugget of wisdom: “Your workshop and your laboratory is your own experience. You place yourself in there in order to give it weight and gravity and authenticity.”
With that mentality, it’s no surprise that animation storytellers are some of the best in the business.
Directed by Peter Sohn, who executive produced Luca and directed The Dinosaur, Elemental’s voice cast also features Leah Lewis as Ember Lumen and Mamoudou Athie as Wade Ripple.
Disney and Pixar’s new film Elemental is now in theaters nationwide.
