How Walt Disney Animation Studios kept “Feast” from looking like a dog’s dinner

Jim Hill

9 years ago

Patrick Osborne tried something interesting back in 2012. He
set up two 1 Second Everyday accounts. With one, he used this app to capture
brief glimpses of his day-to-day life. And with the other, Patrick recorded
quick footage of many of the meals he consumed that year.

"And it was the 1 Second Everyday footage of all that
food which turned out to be the far more compelling recording. There's
something cool about the amount of life you see just in showing your meals.
These hints of intriguing and exciting things happening out beyond the edges of
the plate," Osborne explained during a recent phone interview.

[View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVa0BC37Cxo&feature=youtu.be]

Coincidentally, right after "Paperman" took home
the Oscar for Best Animated Short in February of 2013, Walt Disney Animation
Studios announced that it was formally reviving its shorts program. What's
more, studio staffers were then invited to submit pitches to WDAS' new shorts
trust.

"And as I was trying to come up with some ideas for
films that I then could pitch to the shorts trust, my mind kept circling back
to that 1 Second Everyday recording that I did of all that food. It just felt
like that there was something there that I could center a short around,"
Patrick continued. "So I started with that concept and then mixed it in
with the patterning and the color of different foods placed on the table, just
to see what that might be like."

But in the end, in spite of the obvious potential for doing
fun things with sound design and color, Osborne's app-driven idea came up
short. Mostly because Patrick's short idea lacked a thru-line. A reason for an
audience to sit and watch this parade of food go by.

"But then I thought: What if we put a dog under that
table? That's a character who would be supremely interested what was being
served for breakfast, lunch and dinner within that household. Which then gave
us a strong reason to focus on all that food. And what if this dog had been
newly adopted by this family? Maybe in the background of all these brief
snippets of meals, we could then show how this dog's relationship with his new
family was unfolding," Osborne stated.

This was one of the three ideas that Patrick pitched to WDAS's
story trust ("John Lasseter won't allow you to come into a pitch session
with just one idea," Osborne explained. "He doesn't want you to put
all of your creative eggs in one basket. So you always have to come into these
shorts pitch sessions with three distinctly different ideas.") Then he
went back to his day job, which was working as the co-Head of Animation of
"Big Hero 6."

"And then in October of 2013, they called and said they
were going to make my short. And then, in an instant, everything changes. I'm
no longer working on 'Big Hero 6' and I now have a deadline for Story, which is
something that I've never done. So I immediately began trying to figure out how
I was going to turn my pitch into an emotionally satisfying short film,"
Patrick said.

And given that "Feast" 's greenlight also came
with a delivery date (This new WDAS short had to be completed by June 10, 2014
so that it could then have its world premiere at the annual Annecy
International Animated Film Festival in France), Osborne didn't have any time to dither. Especially since — before
production could actually begin on "Feast" — he and his team first had
to nail down this short's story.

"That's the real difference between making a
full-length animated feature and an animated short. When you work on a feature,
a little bit of story gets approved and then moves into production. But when
you work on a short, all of your story gets approved at once. Which is kind of
a blessing and a curse. Given that you know — as soon as your story gets
approved — layout needs to get done by next week," Patrick explained.

Getting that final story approval wasn't easy, though. The
first three "Feast" story reels that Osborne and his team submitted
didn't pass muster with Lasseter. Largely because they hadn't yet realized the
vision for this animated short that he had originally pitched.

"John was always quick to point out all of the stuff
that was already worked. He loved 'Feast' 's look right from the get-go, how
strong the design of the food was. How you could immediately identify every
meal that was being served no matter how briefly that food item was up on
screen. But what John really pushed us on was this short's thru-line,"
Patrick recalled. "At every meeting, John would remind us that the reason
he selected my pitch for development was because something felt emotionally
right to him about this story idea. He just kept after us to deliver on the emotional
promise of that pitch."

And in the end, Osborne and his storyboard artists did
finally find a way to deliver on "Feast" 's initial promise. But a
lot of that was because of many of the behind-the-scenes creative decisions
that these WDAS staffers made as they rushed to put this new animated short
together.

Take — for example — Winston, the cartoon canine who
serves as "Feast" 's central character. Given that this animated
short was mostly going to be made up of sequences that were less than 5 seconds
long, it was crucial that audiences had to be able to quickly find Winston in
every single scene. What's more, audience members had to be able to immediately
read all of this dog's emotions.

"That's why — after looking at all of these breeds of
dog — we decided to make Winston a Boston Terrier. Given this breed's
distinctive black & white coat, that was then going to make Winston very easy
to find in every scene," Patrick said. "More to the point, given that
Boston Terriers have these big, expressive eyes, that was then going to make
possible for audience members to quickly determine what this dog is thinking
and feeling."

Of course, to make sure that audiences absolutely knew for
sure what was going on at all times in "Feast," Osborne & Co. did
employ a few cinematic cheats. Like how Winston is placed in the very center of
most shots in this short.

"We also don't immediately start in with those three
and five second-long shots. What we learned from our first few story reels that
— if we started too quickly — we then didn't give our audience enough time to
get onboard with the creative conceit of this short," Patrick continued.
"That's why 'Feast' 's first few shots are the longest. We wanted to give
the audience a chance to get to know these characters first, let them take in a
little of their world and enjoy the performances before this short then really
kicks into gear."

And to make sure that the cartoon canine at the very center
of "Feast" came across as an authentic dog, WDAS brought in a trio of
Boston Terriers — Gizmo, Chibi and Swee'Pea — in for Osborne and his
animators to observe.

"And we took full advantage of our time with those
Boston Terriers. That scene in 'Feast' where Winston is trying to lick peanut
butter off of his muzzle comes straight from the afternoon that our artists
spent watching and drawing those dogs," Osborne laughed.

And in the end, Patrick and his team met their deadline and
delivered a fully realized version of "Feast" just three days before
this short was supposed to have its world premiere at Annecy 2013. And to now
have "Feast" screening in front of "Big Hero 6" in theaters
around the globe little more than a year after this WDAS production was first
officially put development just seems kind of amazing to Osborne.

"John always says to 'Trust the process.' But to be
right in the middle of that process, trying to get the hang of things like
scoring … I won't lie to you. It was very challenging and often pretty
scary," Patrick concluded. "But to be honest, the best part of
working on 'Feast' was that the team at WDAS got to build on everything that
we'd learned from our last couple of shorts. We got to use Meander again like
we did in 'Paperman' but do it in more of a naturalistic style of shooting film
with a little bit more focus on cuts and cinematography."

Which is perhaps a polite way of saying that — just because
Walt Disney Animation Studios newest short stars a dog — doesn't mean that
"Feast" then had to looks like a dog's dinner.

This article was originally published on the Huffington Post's Entertainment page on December 29, 2014