Prep and Landing
2009 – dir. Kevin Deters & Stevie Wermers
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Originally intended as a theatrical short, Disney Animation chief John Lasseter liked the piece so much that it was decided to expand it into a Christmas television special. Here’s the official word on the project from the Disney animation site:
After working tirelessly on Prep & Landing for 227 years, an elf named Wayne is upset when he doesn’t receive an expected promotion to be the Director of Naughty List Intelligence. Instead, Magee the North Pole Christmas Eve Command Center Coordinator, partners Wayne with Lanny, an idealistic rookie who has an undying enthusiasm for Christmas. During their Christmas Eve mission, Wayne and Lanny encounter unexpected challenges that push them to their limits.
Will the elves be able to guide Dasher, Dancer, and the rest of the reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh through a raging snowstorm to ensure a Merry Christmas for all?
Directed by Kevin Deters & Stevie Wermers. Produced by Dorothy McKim.
Featuring Dave Foley, Sarah Chalke, and Derek Richardson
Up
June 12th, 2009 – dir. Pete Docter
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This unconventional tale from the director of Monsters, Inc. is the story of a 70 year old man (inspired, it’s been said, by Disney animation legend Joe Grant) who teams up with an inexperienced wilderness ranger to fight “beasts and villains.” Whatever you say, Pete!
The following description appeared in a Time Magazine article in June 2007:
Pete Docter, the Pixar lifer who made Monsters, Inc., and co-director Bob Peterson are preparing this “coming-of-old-age story” about a seventysomething guy who lives in a house that “looks like your grandparents’ house smelled.” He befriends a clueless young Wilderness Ranger and gets into lots of alter kocker altercations. Says Pixar: “Our hero travels the globe, fights beasts and villains and eats dinner at 3:30 in the afternoon.”
Directed by Pete Docter. Co-Directed by Bob Peterson. Written by Bob Peterson. Produced by Jonas Rivera. Associate Produced by Denise Ream. Story Supervisor – Ronnie Del Carmen.
Bolt
November 26th, 2008 – dir. Chris Williams
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WALL-E
June 27, 2008 – dir. Andrew Stanton
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Directed by Andrew Stanton. Written by Andrew Stanton. Produced by Jim Morris. Co-Produced by Lindsey Collins. Associate Produced by Thomas Porter.
How To Hook Up Your Home Theater
December 21st, 2007 – dir. Kevin Deters & Stevie Wermers-Skelton
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When John Lasseter arrived and solicited pitches for shorts projects, Kevin Deters and Stevie Wermers-Skelton came up with this homage to the Disney classics. Deters, a story artist for Feature Animation, took some of his recent experiences from purchasing a widescreen TV for the Super Bowl as the basis for this continuation of the faux-instructional Goofy “How To…” shorts of the 1940′s and 50′s. Directed by Jack Kinney and animated by John Sibley, these original shorts are fondly remembered and would provide an easy way to segue classic characters into contemporary situations. After pitching the story to Wermers-Skelton (herself a story artist at Disney), the directors began to develop and board the story, which John Lasseter then signed off on.
When production began, the directors were fortunate to have some of Disney’s top animation talent come on board to contribute. Animator Dale Baer, who began at Disney with Robin Hood in 1973 and has animated on many major projects since, signed on as lead animator for Goofy. Big-name animators such as Eric Goldberg, Andreas Deja and Mark Henn also contributed to sequences. Mellifluous marvel Corey Burton provides an uncanny recreation of the trademark narrator’s voice, and Bill Farmer voices Goofy.
The project, though striving to achieve a traditional air, is unique in many respects. Despite being hand-drawn, the short is an experiment in the “paperless studio” concept; many animators eschewed paper altogether in favor of digital Cintiq tablets. This was done for expedience as well as an experiment and test for future hand-drawn projects such as The Princess and the Frog. Roughly half of the film was done hand-drawn but paperless; certain animators such as Deja still prefer to work in the more traditional style. Aside from the technical innovations, the short breaks ground in that co-director Stevie Wermers-Skelton is, somewhat shockingly, the very first woman to direct a film or short in the near eighty year history of Walt Disney Animation Studios.
How To Hook Up Your Home Theater premiered to rave reviews at the Ottawa Animation Festival and has also been shown at the Chicago Children’s Festival. Consensus across the board is that they managed to pull off the feat of modernizing the classic style of these shorts in a modern setting, and hopefully this is a good sign for future productions.
- Andreas Deja and Mark Henn speak to Animated News about the short
- Animation World Magazine article about the shorts program
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