The filmmakers behind two upcoming animated epics, Bolt and UP, present footage. Highlights:

• Bolt looks like a resolutely family-oriented film about a celebrity dog who thinks he’s at war with cats. Cute!
• UP looks like a Pixar-meets-Miyazaki art film version of About Schmidt. It made fanboys run for the exits.

Full transcript after the jump.

3:29 - Q: “I’ve know that a lot of you are Hayao Miyazaki fans, and the footage you showed us looked like it had a lot of his influences.”

A: “Wow, thank you for that. It’s true, a lot of us love Hayao Miyazaki. I had a chance to work on the English translation of that film, and I just love his attention to detail. There’s a shot in his film Totoro where the character is waiting for a bus, and they cut to a shot of a drop of water falling, and a frog… that sort of detail is just something I love.”

3:28 - Q: “So what is the message that Pixar is trying to get across in this movie?

A: “Well, it’s all about drug trafficking, and….okay, no it’s not. We’re just trying to tell a good story with a heart, and that’s what we’re focusing on.”

3:27 - A guy is asking a question, and literally filming himself asking the question, and is staring at the video camera screen, and not looking at Pete Docter…. it’s just a bit too weird and meta and I’m sure the footage will appear on LaughingPlace.com, the guy’s website. He wants to know, “What is this movie about, other than a guy tying balloons to his house?”

Pete: “Well, it’s a Pixar movie!” *cheers* — and boy, that guy just got zilch for his video.

3:22 - Q: “Have you all thought about making a Monsters, Inc. sequel?”

A: “We’ve thought about it… if we find a story worth telling, we’ll do it. Otherwise, we won’t. We want sequels that are story driven.”

3:21 - There’s a lot of in jokes and references to other Pixar films hidden through the film.

Now a… rather large man dressed like Mr. Incredible is asking “What sort of classes should someone who wants to work in 3D movies take?”

Pete: “Well, you don’t need a degree to work at Pixar. You only need to have a great movie.”

3:20 - Based on the clips we saw, UP doesn’t have the fast-paced cutting and the lightning speed of something like The Incredibles. But, it looks very sweet, and almost melancholy at times. In fact, it felt like a foreign animated short during the house-flight sequence.

3:19 - Now they’re opening up the floor for questions…and people are streaming out the exits. Poor Pete Docter.

3:18 - UP comes out next year, and that’s about all we know about it. They have elevators scattered throughout the Gaslamp district that are “skinned” with the UP environment inside. “Try and find ‘em!”

3:17 - Michael Giacchino of Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Lost, and the new Star Trek fame is doing the music. And the UP website launches today.

3:14 - Now, it’s Clip Time again. Russell is the weight-challenged boy scout. Ed Asner plays the voice of Carl, which should pretty much seal him in the role of curmudgeon for the rest of his life.

3:12 - Okay, so Carl had always promised his wife that he’d take her to see these mountains, but she died before they could go. Carl’s about to get taken to a nursing home, when he unleashes a mass of helium-filled balloons into the sky, and his house takes off with Carl inside, bound for Venezuela.

Carl charts a course south, then settles into his easy chair. As the house floats along serently at 10,000 feet, there’s a knock on the front door. Carl has a stowaway. A young, chubby boy scout.
3:09 - And now… a never-before seen look at the film.

3:07 - Director Pete Docter takes the stage to talk about the movie, and introduces the action adventure star of the movie…Carl Fredrickson. He’s a geriatric grumpy old man who carries a cane replete with four tennis balls topping its claw-like bottom. Carl lives in a big city, where he’s refused to sell his house, which is surrounded by massive development. He’s made a promise to his wife to go on a grand adventure, and this is his last chance.

3:06 - They took a research trip to Venezuela, where they explored these mountains called “Tapuis” that “Jut a mile up into the sky, and they’re flat on top.”

3:05 - It’s basically a sizzle reel about UP, showing zero footage from the movie, but they liberally sprinkled footage from Monsters, Inc. throughout.

3:01 - I know I’m a cynical film blogger at times, but stuff like this gets me more excited than the megapanels of The Spirit and Terminator. Now comes something from Pixar. It’s….can it be? Another….clip!

2:53 - Wow, ANOTHER clip, and a bye-bye from Chris and Byron, they’re heading out because this is a very long clip in which Bolt thinks that styrofoam is his kryptonite.

2:51 - So, the premise is that Bolt, the dog, never leaves the set, and he thinks he’s actually this super-powered dog. However, after five years, Bolt gets shipped off to New York City, and thinks that all cats that he encounters are the evil minions of Dr. Calico. Bolt tries to drag Penny back to Hollywood, to rescue her, and hijinx ensue as Bolt starts to “face the facts about who he actually is.”

2:48 - And we’re back. It actually looks pretty darn cute. The footage isn’t finished completely, we saw plenty of storyboard shots and unfinished CGI, and…we’re now seeing another clip.

2:39 - We’re about to see an episode of Bolt’s television show. For the folks who don’t know “Bolt is the star of this Michael Bay over the top TV show, where Bolt has all sorts of superpowers.. Bolt has literally grown up on the set, so you get to see what he’s had to go through every day.”

2:37 - Eric: “So people probably already know from the teaser that John Travolta and Miley Cyrus play the two main voices in this thing, but you guys have some other stars too…”

Chris, “That’s true, we have Susie Essman from Curb Your Enthusiasm playing this cat named Mittens… and she doesn’t swear quite so much. Malcolm McDowell playing the evil Dr. Calico, James Lipton from Inside the Actor’s Studio, and Randy “The Macho Man” Savage… who is here somewhere.”

2:36 - Eric: “So you guys had to create some new technology for this movie and you have some patents pending?”

Byron: “Yes! Patents ‘pending.’ Some software was developed that actually could put brush strokes into CGI animation.”

2:34 - Eric Morrow from IGN is mderating, and wants to know what it’s like working with John Lasseter.

Chris Williams: “Well, John has been running the animation studio, and he’s everything you would hope he’d be. He’s been very hands-on with Bolt. And he does this thing where, by just being around, it makes you feel good.”

2:33 - Chris Williams and Byron Howard from Disney Animation Studios’ upcoming animated film Bolt take the stage. They’re going to be showing us 20 minutes of footage from the movie. Wahoo!