The Taste of Ratatouille

Brad Bird talks with SCI FI WIRE about his new film and coming up with a creative way to deliver a sense of taste and smell for the food in the fim.

According to director Brad Bird in a recent interview he said; "We actually have some interesting notions there. In fact, at ... a couple of points in the film, we actually have a character close his eyes and the background kind of goes dark around the character, and we have music and abstract imagery to kind of show what a certain taste is like. That was one of the challenges of the film."

Ratatouille takes place in Paris where a a rat named Remy (Patton Oswalt) wants to be a chef.

"We have characters talking about food," Bird said. "I think there has been an extraordinary amount of effort here to make the food look good, or if it's supposed to be bad, to make it look bad. ... There's a certain amount of light [that] penetrates the surface of the food and hits things under the food that then glow back through the food."

Brad worked very hard to get the details right. "We had consultants who are gourmet cooks give an overview of ... not only how food looks, which we studied the heck out of it, but also: 'How are things plated?' and 'How is it set up in the kitchen?'" Bird said. He added: "There was a lot of effort put into even how food looks when you're preparing it. How do you get sauces to curl around when people are stirring it? All that stuff is [computer-generated]."

Ratatouille is set to June 29 for a summer release.

Cathie Horlick
4/27/2007
Source: Sci Fi Wire