Bringing together all the Disney characters in Once Upon a Studio, “a real headache” (interview)
Disney is celebrating its 100th anniversary and today unveils Once Upon a Studio, a short film bringing together almost all of the company’s animated characters. Last June, we met the directors at the Annecy international animated film festival, where the film was previewed.
First, a logistical question: how did you manage to bring back a good number of the animators of the iconic Disney characters to work on this short film?
Trent Correy: When we pitched the idea of the short to the studio, everyone was super excited. We had a great team, but it was important for us to contact a few animators who had worked on the characters in the past. We wanted them to come back for a few weeks to help us stay authentic. So we sent out the invitations and…
Dan Abraham: …everyone said yes! These are people who have a deep affection for these characters. And there, we not only gave them the opportunity to revisit them, but also to pay homage to them and participate in the legacy of their creations.
TC: And for some, 20 or 30 years later!
DA: It was all initially a pure fantasy for us. But it ended up happening.
How did you choose the characters? Some must have stayed in the ideas box…
DA: We had more than a choice. One hundred years of characters! You realize ? In fact we started quite simply, by listing those we absolutely wanted to have in the short. And then came sketches of gags and character mashups that made us laugh.
TC: The first version was about 12 minutes long.
DA: Yeah, it was longer. It was necessary to prune so that the film could realistically exist. So some things were cut… But in the end I think we really did what we hoped for.
TC: Actually the funniest part of the process was getting the two of us in a room and discussing the possibilities. “ What if we did that? What if this happened? “. It was like solving a puzzle.
DA: A huge puzzle. And very quickly, we realized that every second we spent with one character took away time from another… A real headache.
How many versions of the story were imagined before arriving at the final result?
DA: Only three. Our original pitch to Jennifer Lee (director of Snow Queen and current president of Walt Disney Animation Studios, Editor’s note) is actually very similar to the final result. We especially had to separate ourselves from certain characters and sometimes, that meant that an entire scene disappeared. But when Aladdin is in this scene, that’s not possible! So we had to find a place for him elsewhere, which changed the scenario again.
TC: But in a few weeks of discussions, we already had this concept of bringing the characters together under the pretext of taking a group photo.
DA: It would have been absurd to complicate the plot. All we wanted to do was spend time with these characters.
Technically, how do you mix 2D and 3D characters without distorting them?
TC: We have some animation geniuses at Disney (Laughter.)
DA: But it was still a real question. These characters had to retain their original look, have the same voice and be visually as we remember them. We had to juggle so that hand-drawn characters existed alongside others created by computer. It involved a few small adjustments here and there so that everyone could coexist without the result shocking the eye.
TC: It’s a lot of lighting adjustments actually, as well as framing and depth of field choices.
Were you in competition with other short film projects for Disney’s 100th anniversary?
TC: Everyone at the studio was focused on the feature film wish, which was the film that was supposed to celebrate the anniversary. And when in 2020, Jennifer Lee said: “ If you have any ideas for the 100th anniversary, please let us know ”, that’s when we started working on the project.
DA: She said that? I do not remember. Have other people made suggestions?
TC: I don’t know (Laughter.)
Really, you don’t know?
DA: Obviously not (Laughter.) In any case, based on the discussions we had with management, I think we are the only ones to have pitched something. But we never asked!
Once Upon a Studio, available today on Disney+
