This post is brought to you by Disney.
Available now from Walt Disney Animation Studios, you can own an award-winning collection of short films including the never-before-released Frozen Fever and the Oscar-nominated Lorenzo. The Short Films Collection also includes the groundbreaking Mickey Mouse cartoon, Get A Horse! and Oscar® winners Paperman and Feast. Each short includes all-new extras including filmmaker interviews.
Frozen Fever
Elsa and Kristoff plan the best birthday ever for Anna – but when Elsa catches a cold, her powers put more than just the party at risk!
Get A Horse!
Mickey, Minnie and friends hitch a ride on a musical hay wagon – but Peg-Leg Pete tries to one-up them with his jalopy.
Tangled Ever After
The Kingdom gathers for Rapunzel and Flynn’s royal wedding – but Maximus and Pascal run into a bit of trouble with the wedding rings.
Prep & Landing- Operation: Secret Santa
Mrs. Claus enlists Wayne and Lanny on a secret mission to retrieve a mysterious item hidden deep within the office of Santa Claus!
How To Hook Up Your Home Theater
Goofy tackles every consumer’s nightmare – selecting the perfect home theater system, and worse, trying to hook it all up.
Lorenzo
Lorenzo is the story of pampered cat, Lorenzo, who is “dismayed to discover that his tail has developed a personality of its own.”
Feast
One man’s love life as seen through the eyes of his best friend and dog Winston and revealed bite by bite through the meals they share.
Paperman
A young man in an office sees the girl of his dreams in a skyscraper window across the street. But how can he get her attention?
The Ballad of Nessie
The Ballad of Nessie tells the honest-to-goodness true tale of Scotland’s Loch Ness and its most mysterious resident.
Tick Tock Tale
An antique clock shop is robbed, leaving the fate of the kidnapped clocks in the small hands of an outcast who seems a little cuckoo.
The Little Matchgirl
It’s Christmas Eve, and a poor little match girl finds visions of happiness in the flames of the matches she lights to keep warm.
John Henry
The story of the legendary steel-drivin’ folk hero, who pitted his strength against that of a machine and won the contest.
We had the chance to sit down with the filmmakers to discuss the process of making a short film, their favorite memories and much more.
Dorothy McKim shared a story about screening Get A Horse:
We screened it for John Lasseter, the short, and he said, “Everything is Walt. Everything is Walt, great. I’m so excited.” We screened it, we finished, and John said, “No, there’s one word in there. The word red is not Walt.” I’m like, “How did he pick that out?” Of everything he picked that out and he was right. Walt-we could not find the word red anywhere, anywhere in the library. So we worked about 3 months with our Sound Designer and he found an ER-EH-DE from Walt. 3 syllables and we put ‘em together. So it’s 100% Walt.
Mike Gabriel talked about inspiration:
I got mine from one of the earliest Walt Disney super stars of the studio, Joe Grant, who was Walt’s right hand man- his story idea man and character design man, Joe Grant… Joe had this idea for Lorenzo the cat made back in the 40’s…So he’d been there from ’33 to ’50. 17 year run, he left for 40 years. He came back in 1989. He still had this Lorenzo idea in his head and he put it up in the drawings. He kept it alive.
We learned about the way shorts were used as tests from Mark Henn:
Oftentimes the shorts, from a technical side, were done specifically to test out some new process that was implemented into a feature. The Old Mill, for example, was playing with the multiplying camera back in the 30’s and 40’s. I’m thinking of…a little short called Goliath 2. It was about a miniature elephant, but they basically testing out the Xerox camera process which replaced inking painting…So those kind of things get their birth or get launched in a short and often get implemented in a feature.
Every filmmaker had a special moment where a fan helped them realize they were making a difference. Peter Del Vecho shared this one:
I mean for me just coming to D23 and seeing the people who took the time to actually make their own costumes. Even the new Ana dress-they’ve had people create that. The You Tube videos, all of that. But certainly for the movie there were many, many stories we’ve heard. A lot of them centered around the song “Let It Go.” You know kids who you know felt they were getting too much pressure from their parents to be something they weren’t. But the one who sticks out to me the most was a guys who fought in the Gulf War and lost both his legs. And he said that the song “Let It Go” made him realize that he needed to accept who he was and become who he is. So stories like that are extremely powerful and uh it’s not the norm, but when they happen they hit you really hard.
Everyone on the panel has also appeared in a Disney film-in animated form!
Mike Gabriel: Oliver and Company. There’s a scene where there’s the Butler looking at a wrestling match on the TV, but toward the end of the film I’m one of those Wrestlers.
Mark Henn : I’m a polyp-I’m a polyp in Mermaid. I’m a polyp with a mustache and glasses. That’s me.
Peter Del Vecho: I tango across the dance floor in Princess and the Frog.
Dorothy McKim: In Beauty And The Beast when they’re going to the Beast there’s a little girl waving out the window and her name is Dot.
You may have seen some of the Frozen Fever merchandise in stores, so we had to know…will any of the other shorts have merchandise?
Dorothy McKim: Yeah, they should do that. Prep and Landing had some plush. Nessie had plush.
Winston the dog from FEAST is a plush in the Disney Store
Mark Henn: I actually have 2 John Henry’s that are vinylmations. One with the shirt on, one with the shirt off. And a hammer.
Mike Gabriel: They were supposed to have a Lorenzo plush over there, but I haven’t seen it maybe it didn’t happen. I know I approved it and did draw-overs, but I know John (Lasseter) – 3 years ago…he’d always get us telling him, “John when are you gonna release the shorts on DVD?” Well he finally got the right number and the right Oscar winner package of shorts together. But he always said to me that we’re gonna’ merchandise these things.
“Michael…I want Lorenzo, I want Lorenzo merchandising. We’re gonna’ do this right and really make products on it, and really put it out there. People are gonna’ love these things. So we’re gonna’ really- they’re gonna’ have with fun it.” So I think it might come in the phase 2 of the deal. Most people really know the shorts and…and John always knows what he’s doing.
Finally, I’ll leave you with this bit of information from Peter Del Vecho:
There’s still one Easter egg in Frozen and no one has ever found.
[bctt tweet=”There’s an Easter Egg in Frozen that no one has ever found. -Peter Del Vecho #DisneyShorts “]
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