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Q&A With Claudia Chung Sanii, Visual Effects Supervisor on Elio at D23 Screening
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Jun 20, 2025
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[Music]
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all right I am happy to introduce
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Claudia Chung Soni VFX supervisor on
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Disney and Pixar's Elio please welcome
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her
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thank you so much for being with here
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tonight and celebrating with some of
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Disney's biggest fans shout out to all
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of our D23 members here joining us
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tonight
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thank you so much for being here we are
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so excited to see the film thank you you
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guys are amazing coming out tonight
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now I'd love to start us off i'm sure I
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know myself and a lot of the fans in the
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audience are always curious about what
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it's like to work at Pixar can you tell
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us what your first film at Pixar was the
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first film I work on was Finding Nemo
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a long time ago um the first project I
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did on finding email let's see people
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who this might date us a little bit but
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the first project was back then uh we
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had these things called CRT TVs
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where where you know you watch the movie
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on the screen like this and it'd be like
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in 185 widescreen right and my job as an
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intern was to reframe it so that it was
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square in 133 you could also see that on
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an airplane but not anymore because now
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you you don't need that anymore but Uh
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that was my first job but it's cool it
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was a great way to watch the film over
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and over again and really appreciate
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what we were doing there that is so
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amazing i know that Finding Nemo is
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definitely a favorite among this group
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right
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now are there any certain Disney or
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Pixar films that have inspired your
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creative or career journey yeah um so
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the first film that inspired me was
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Beauty and the Beast
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i
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that's when I was in high school and
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back then um I didn't know what I wanted
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to do i knew I was into math and science
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but you know you can't really do that in
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films but Beauty and the Beast was the
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first one that used computers in the
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ballroom that that happened i would also
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say Terminator 2 happened as well around
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the same time so that was my like those
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are my two favorite films that launched
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me into this world and then my genesis
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story was Ratatouille that was the story
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where yay it was um so I did like
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science in college and but Ratatouille
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was the first one where I deep into the
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creative side so that's when I started
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tailoring and building costumes for the
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chefs i was horrible at it really bad i
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don't know how to tailor i actually had
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to ask my grandmother how to do it i
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never sewed in my life um and they they
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took my project fun they're like "Chlo
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this chef's costumes don't look very
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good we're gonna you're gonna we're
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going to put you in sewing class." And
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they did they did put me in night sewing
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class um and while you do that here's
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some tablecloths to make really
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complicated tablecloths
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i It was hard though it was It was a
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square over a circle
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but I I managed to go through the sewing
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class and that that was that was how I
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fell in love on the creative side
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so if you're looking to be a VFX
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supervisor it might not hurt to take
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some sewing lessons apparently
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now can you share I want to hear about
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this film we're about to see IO what
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were some of the visual inspirations and
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reference that you used while working on
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this film yeah so we when we were
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thinking about the universe we really
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wanted to build a space we've never seen
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before a lot of sci-fi out there are
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dark or scary and we wanted something
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that
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it would make sense that Alia would be
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amazed at by at what he um arrived at so
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we looked a lot at micro like
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microorganisms
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and deep sea creatures we want we wanted
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things that you would never see as a
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human but things that also feel
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relatable or recognizable so that you're
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not completely thrown off uh we also
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looked at the ISS like reference for
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like things where there's zero G that's
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important we really wanted this idea
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like if you went to space wouldn't you
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want to fly in like a serge like what
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does water look like without gravity so
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we wanted to think about all that stuff
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and we did a lot of research on search
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for extraterrestrial
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life uh we talked to Dr jill Tarter i
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don't know does anyone know who Dr jill
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Tarter is she was the inspiration for um
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Jodie Foster's character in contact and
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so that was that was pretty cool that is
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so awesome and we are going to seek
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communiverse a new place in this film
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how did you and your team approach
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creating the communiverse yeah so we
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wanted the communiverse to be diverse
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and kind of be this world that was all
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inspiring uh we wanted to represent
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every corner of the universe um that
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being said we've never seen every corner
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in the universe as far as I know i don't
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know if you guys have met aliens
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maybe Stitch I don't know but like so uh
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so we we actually had a bunch of artists
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come on board and just draw and design
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aliens and just make things up and my
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job is to figure out if I can get into
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the computer or not and so on LEO I
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really firmly was always telling the
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team let's just do it even though it's
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very hard we have to do it because it
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has to be otherworldly like you'll see
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characters with feathers with these
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faces that don't even make sense like
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they're like kind of like ink blotss um
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there's like digital like aliens but we
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wanted to do it all we wanted to do it
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all and we wanted everyone in the
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audience to kind of have their favorite
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or the one that they're like that's mine
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or that that looks like me and that was
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really important to us now we have an
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activity while we watch the film think
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about which alien is your favorite
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exactly come tell us when you pick up
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your Gordon popcorn cupcake
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now was there a scene that felt
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particularly without spoilers
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challenging to pull off um or a location
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that was challenging to pull off and how
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did you and the team managed to bring
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that scene to reality yeah so um like I
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said before I my whole attitude in LA
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was always like "Let's just do it we'll
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figure it out." But the one that was
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very difficult one it was because it was
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difficult but two because we only had
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three weeks was the bathroom scene and
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you all should know it because it's in
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the trailer it's this huge vista of
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waterfalls and these characters flying
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through it and um what what you don't
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know is it was only in the movie like
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three weeks before we had to have the
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trailer done which means um they were in
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boards it was just a drawing and of
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course when we had cut the trailer
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everyone wanted that seat and I remember
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talking to the effect supervisor who's
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in charge of doing water and I said "How
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long do you need?" And he's like "Six
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months."
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And he's like "Do you remember that
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scene in Elemental with the wave and all
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the water that that took six months."
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And I'm like "You have two weeks."
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Um so that was pretty exciting for us
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that is incredible well now we have a
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newfound appreciation for that scene
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that is an amazing story
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how did you decide what kind of visual
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effects to implement in Elio yeah so I
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think we're at a place in CG and
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computer animation where anything's
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possible when I was on Finding Nemo we
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didn't know how to do water where we
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elemental we didn't know how to make
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characters out of fire um I was on I was
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actually at Disney Animation for a
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little bit and we had a huge cast of
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talking animals wearing clothes on
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Zootopia that was hard um so coming on
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to Elio it was like we can kind of do
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anything we can build a world people
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haven't seen before and that's what we
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wanted to do we can change physics we
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can change the way light bends in the
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and how you see it we can change the way
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a character moves how a cape might
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behave and so that was it just embracing
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all of that so when you see Elio in the
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universe like you want to be there as
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well you want to experience that
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and what scene or moment made you and
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the team go as you were working on it oh
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my gosh this is amazing yeah that's an
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easy one so there's this character
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behind me Gordon we already love him by
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the way yeah so when we first saw
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designs for him we weren't quite sure if
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it was going to work he uh is based off
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a tardigrade how many of you guys know
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what a tardigrade is pretty gross weird
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looking creatures
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they're not very huggable
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um and that's what the designers wanted
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us to like explore um we they also were
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saying to us well maybe he doesn't have
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eyes and we're like that's not cute like
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in animation it's all about the eyes and
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that's where you emote and so there's
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this one test after many design
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iterations where this this animator Ben
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Rash showed
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Gordon dancing and he was jiggling and
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he was bouncing at that time because it
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was probably like two or three years ago
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um Jiggle Jiggle was very popular
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so we cut it to that song and it was it
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was amazing it was like that sporting
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and everyone's going to fall in love
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with it it was beautiful
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i can picture that song with this
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character that's amazing
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i love that and are you I have one more
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question are you excited to get to watch
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Elio again with our D23 members i'm so
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excited awesome let's give one more big
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hand for Claudia Chung Sonni BFX
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supervisor on Disney Pixar Elio so much
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everyone thank you so much for joining
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us enjoy the movie yes thank you oh my
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gosh well that was so amazing to hear
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about everything we really appreciate it
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and just a quick reminder before we get
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started um just one more time want to
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mention you can get your Gordon popcorn
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buckets maybe make a tick tock with him
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to the jingle jiggle song afterwards um
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as you exit the theater it's going to be
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right across from Theater 15 you'll see
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it as you exit on the lower level and
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since this is an early screening we just
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ask no photos or videos and please keep
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your phones tucked away until the end of
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the credits please keep them tucked away
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till the end of the credits but with
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that we are ready to get started who's
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excited to see Disney and Pixar's helio
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