http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiz-j-hbCQw
While I wouldn’t count Up among my favourite Pixar films, I did love it quite a bit, and that’s in no small part because of the terrific voice work. Rather than relying heavily on celebrity voices, the geniuses at Pixar just went with what sounded like, casting one of the writers as the voice of Dug the talking dog, and an actual kid as the voice of Russell instead of getting someone like Nancy Cartwright to just imitate a kid’s voice. In this excerpt from the Blu-Ray of Up, we can get a glimpse behind the scenes at the casting of Russell and how the folks at Pixar got an authentic performance out of him. I hear that similar tricks were used to get Dash’s voice (from The Incredibles) just right – Brad Bird apparently made the voice actor Spencer Fox run laps around the building to make him sound out of breath in the recording booth.