The Walt Disney Animation Studios Short Films Collection was recently released on Digital HD/Disney Movies Anywhere and Blu-Ray. The Short Films Collection includes the never-before-released Frozen Fever, along with Feast, Get A Horse!, Paperman, Tangled Ever After, The Ballad of Nessie, Prep & Landing-Operation: Secret Santa, Tick Tock Tale, How To Hook Up Your Home Theater, The Little Matchgirl, Lorenzo and John Henry.
At an early morning Q&A breakfast panel, before Sunday’s D23 panel, we got a chance to talk with 4 of the Producers and Directors: Peter Del Vecho, Producer of Frozen Fever; Mark Henn, Director of John Henry; Dorothy McKim, Producer of Get A Horse!, the Ballad of Nessie, Tick Tock Tale, Prep & Landing-Operation: Secret Santa; and Mike Gabriel, Director of Lorenzo.
Here are 6 Fun Facts from the Q&A about the Short Films Collection:
1) A lot of times the shorts are not from a Director that’s already done a feature. Sometimes they’ll go and get somebody that is Head of Animation or somebody that’s even like a Production Assistant or whatever. They have a whole thing where people can pitch an idea. And then if John Lasseter picks that idea then it goes forward. It’s about testing out talent, seeing if there’s a Director in that particular idea and also the technology to produce it.
2) Production schedule of a short can vary and the crew working on it is sometimes small. You are borrowing talent that are working on other features or become available at the time. Prep & Landing-Operation: Secret Santa finished in 5 months, Get A Horse! in 18 months, Frozen Fever was 8 months. So they’re all a little different.
3) Aside from Frozen Fever, there is also merchandise from a few of the other shorts. Prep & Landing, and Nessie had some plush. Winston the dog from Feast is a plush in the Disney Store. There are 2 versions of John Henry Vinylmations, one with shirt on and one with shirt off. Lorenzo is supposed to have plush.
4) John Lasseter was the person who pointed out that the word “Red” was not Walt’s voice in Get A Horse! After they had screened the short for him he said, “Everything is Walt. Everything is Walt, great. I’m so excited.” But then John said, “No, there’s one word in there, the word red is not Walt.” Out of all that, he picked that out and he was right. They searched through the Disney library and could not find him saying the word red anywhere. So they worked for 3 months with the Sound Designer and he found an “ER-EH-DE” from Walt. Three syllables that they were able to splice together. So it is 100% Walt’s voice.
5) The sound effects for Get A Horse! are authentic to the original short and the animation used is all brand new. All the props used for the sound effects still exist after all those years. They started out using the original artwork that had been found in the estate of a collector years ago, then later stored in the Disney archives, being pulled and were just going to add to it. But later realized it was working against them a little bit, so they decided to start it all from scratch with brand new art.
6) There are a couple of Easter Eggs in a Get A Horse! and Frozen Fever. Plus there is still one in Frozen, that they would not disclose to us, that no one has ever found.
Bonus Fact: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice may have been the first short before becoming the full feature movie, Fantasia. It started out as a short and was turning out so well, they decided to make a feature of it. Although Mike Gabriel said that he gets people telling him they want to see Lorenzo be made into a feature.
The Disney Short Films Collection is available on Digital HD/Disney Movies Anywhere and Blu-Ray. Featuring an inside look at the Disney Animated Shorts with all-new extras, including introductions and interviews with the Disney Animation filmmakers.
