Viewers tune in to the Pixar animated film To redden can end up wondering what exactly the characters are saying during two key sequences where they start saying singing in Cantonese. In one scene from the animated film, 13-year-old protagonist Mei, who transforms into a giant red panda when she gets emotional, engages in a family ritual designed to control her inner panda. Her parents, grandmother and other family members rhythmically sing to begin this ritual. Later in the film, the chant is repeated in a different context. The words are not subtitled, even in the film’s various Chinese translations.
“What do you say?” Mei asks Mr. Gao (voiced by James Hong) who is conducting the ritual. He tells her it doesn’t really matter – the ritual just requires the participants to sing from the heart. “No matter what,” says Mr. Gao. “I like Tony Bennett. But your grandma, she’s old school.”
But director Domee Shi and producer Lindsey Collins couldn’t just have the cast sing anything — they had to develop their own vocals for the film. The couple tell Polygon that a lot of work went into making the ritual sound right.
“We really took inspiration from Taoist chants that monks would sing in Taoist temples,” says Shi. “First we wanted to see if there was an existing Taoist chant that we could use. But then we thought, because this family is so specific, the situation is so unique – this family has this magical panda curse running through it! – we should come up with our own song for it.”
Shi wanted to ensure a native speaker was involved in the development of the vocals, so she and her team reached out to Herman Wong, the Hong Kong-based Asia Pacific operations manager for Disney Character Voices International, the Disney division responsible for translation and synchronization is responsible services. She says she doesn’t remember the exact wording of the ritual herself because it was a translation of a play Wong helped them find.
“We knew it had to be in Cantonese because the family is Cantonese,” she says. “He helped us translate a poem, a protection chant, with lyrics about taking care of this girl and guiding her through her journey. He helped us create this rhyming chant.”
The next step was to ensure that the cast – including Sandra Oh and Ho-Wai Ching as Mei’s mother and grandmother – were comfortable with the poem and made it sound like something the family had passed down for centuries.
“We worked with Andy, a Cantonese dialect trainer. We loved him,” says Shi. “He worked very closely with each of the actors when it came time to record the vocals.”
At the film’s climax (spoilers ahead!), the family repeats the chant, this time to bring Mei’s mother’s panda under control after she is injured, and rages against Mei’s teenage rebellion. Finally, in the crowning closing number, the vocals meld with Ludwig Göransson’s score and “Nobody Like U,” one of the songs written for by siblings Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell To redden
“Funnily enough, we came up with the idea of combining the vocals with the 4*Town music and orchestration at the end and hoped it would all come together,” says Shi. “But it was still a shot in the dark. It was a lot like, ‘I don’t know, maybe this will work?’”
“And then Ludwig was great,” says Collins. “He said, ‘Okay, so if the 4*Town song is in that key, let’s do this—’ He worked with us to make sure we were rhythmically doing what we needed to do for him to produce that could remix. You know, besides being a composer, he’s also a pop record producer. So he was able to pull the vocals into his own system along with the 4*Town song and do this great remix where we were like, ‘Oh my god, it works!’ But I think it worked because he’s a wizard. I’m not sure if it worked because became Wizard.”
To redden is currently streaming DisneyPlus.