"So I place myself in that situation." Ronnie del Carmen on making a personal connection

In 2016 Robert Kondo and Dice Tsusumi, the founders of Tonko House, had Ronnie del Carmen as their guest for the first Tonkocast podcast. During their conversation Robert Kondo asks Ronnie about the way his sequences sometimes connect with the audience, especially Up's heartbreaking Married Life sequence. Below is a transcript of Ronnie's answer. The full podcast can be found on youtube. 

Tonkocast: Ronnie, I know you for always doing that sincere moment, that a film is built upon. Like the Married Life sequence in Up obviously is the one that immediately comes to my mind. And just the thought of it gets so many people emotional. I mean in my mind it’s like: oh, if you need a sequence that you’re gonna build a film upon, Ronnie del Carmen is the man.

But there is something about the personal connection that I think everyone feels. You’re kind of saying: I just did this thing, I don’t know how. But that personal connection, can you talk about that a little bit? In developing a sequence or telling a story, like your personal connection to the world?      

RdC: I think that is the right phrase for it: personal connection. 

Because a lot of times there’s a mission that you are given when you are [working on a sequence] in a big production. It’s kind of asking it to fit into this square. It has to do this and it has to do it here. 

And then, once we’ve organized it that way, it’s like: well obviously this is where the emotional load of the movie, or the emotional high level of it is. And then it becomes kind of like a project now. Because the first thing that you would do is kind of knee-jerk surface things, make it look and behave like what you said it was gonna look and behave like. And most people in the audience will recognize that, your first inclination; they will probably recognize what that is, but they will not feel it. They’ll see it and not feel it, or not feel that it’s authentic. 

The thing, at least that has helped me over the years, is to understand what would that character be going through and how would that moment happen, if they’re really going through this. And then, if I was that person who was gonna go through this, what would I be doing? 

And so I have one hat where I am the character and my other hat is that I’m also the director and the writer. I gotta choose how to make myself, if I was the director, present so that I could capture what’s going on. I’m almost going to feel like, if I was there as a live-action shoot and if— Let’s just say it’s Carl at the end of the [first*] act of Up. When we did that it was an outline that essentially said: this has to happen here, this has to be something that we’re gonna do. Bob [Peterson] gave me the outline and then I just kind of ran with it. 

So I placed myself in that situation, and I placed my father in that situation, who was not well during that time. And it just kind of flowed from that experience. Because my dad was very very ill and I kind of saw my father at that moment. Because we have family albums too, then I would visit him in the hospital and I would show him either my sketchbook or my sequences. And so I have something to start with. 

So the way I move in the sequence, as the behavior of my dad, and then also how I move there as the person who is shooting it -this is at least one way I did it- is that I would be very very careful not to disturb the process of the performer. So I’m gonna have to make sure I don’t cut, I’m gonna go and just roll this moment. Let it happen. And I want to prepare for it so that my other camera is pointed at Carl, with a longer lens. So that, whenever all of that is happening, I’m not gonna move the camera. Be very quiet and make sure there’s not many people around. 

So how I behave towards the subject shows up in how I present it. So that sequence behaves as if you’re gonna be there with Carl. You try not to intrude this moment, right? So you’re going to have to be careful where you put your camera. 

And there are high moments to it too. When he starts to recover and then finds this epiphany and you change your tone. And that’s just feeling it out. So all of those things, it is kind of like just desires on your part. You don’t know if it’s really gonna do that, if it is gonna mean anything to anybody else. 

So I try and make that real for me as if I was being with the person who’s going through it and then also being the person who was going through it. And hopefully it kind of connects to audiences.

*Note: this transcript has been edited. Since it’s taken from a spoken interview there were a lot of unfinished sentences, likes and kinda's . One other thing I changed is when Ronnie mentions the end of the first act in Up, in the podcast he actually says the end of the second act of Up, but I’m sure he is talking about the Married Life sequence, specifically the beat pictured on top of this post with the family album. It could also be that he means the second act of this specific sequence.