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Pixar Popcorn

Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2020 6:22 pm
by Sotiris
Next, grab a quick snack with Pixar Popcorn, a collection of mini shorts starring some of your favorite Pixar characters in all-new, bite size stories. Popcorn Coming to Disney Plus in January.
Source: https://twitter.com/Disney/status/1337193176818446336

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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0xnI1sBp_g

Re: Pixar Popcorn

Posted: Sun Dec 20, 2020 7:39 pm
by D82
Pixar Post has revealed the exact date when these shorts will start being available on Disney+:
At the time of the presentation, there wasn't an exact date for release, however, we now know that Pixar Popcorn will come exclusively to Disney+ on January 22, 2021. At this time we are unsure if all below mentioned titles will be released on that date.

• To Fitness and Beyond
• Chore Day: The Incredibles Way
• Dancing with the Cars
• A Day in the Life of the Dead
• Cookie Num Num
• Dory Finding
• Fluffy Stuff with Ducky and Bunny
• Soul of the City
These shorts look similar to the Zootopia ones, don't they? At least Dancing with the Cars, which looks like it could be a parody of Dancing with the Stars. Are the other titles parodies too or just that one?

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Re: Pixar Popcorn

Posted: Sun Dec 20, 2020 11:57 pm
by Sotiris
D82 wrote:These shorts look similar to the Zootopia ones, don't they? At least Dancing with the Cars, which looks like it could be a parody of Dancing with the Stars. Are the other titles parodies too or just that one?
The rest don't sound like parodies to me. They're more like a Pixar spin on mundane activities like exercising, doing chores, working, going about one's day etc. These are labeled "mini shorts", so I expect them to be much shorter than their regular or SparkShort shorts. I'd be surprised if they're over a minute long.

Re: Pixar Popcorn

Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2020 11:22 pm
by D82
^I guess you're right about what the other shorts are about and their runtime. They'll be different from the Zootopia ones then, though I think those will probably be quite short too.

Re: Pixar Popcorn

Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2021 10:50 am
by Farerb

Re: Pixar Popcorn

Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2021 12:43 pm
by Sotiris

Re: Pixar Popcorn

Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2021 3:02 pm
by DisneyFan97
Will there be dialogue in these shorts ?

Re: Pixar Popcorn

Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2021 9:12 pm
by bruno_wbt
DisneyFan97 wrote:Will there be dialogue in these shorts ?

In the trailer there's dialogue:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9DEbXYGWCk

Re: Pixar Popcorn

Posted: Wed Jan 20, 2021 11:29 pm
by D82
Here are also some stills from the shorts. It's interesting that some properties are getting two shorts or series of shorts (Toy Story, The Incredibles and Cars) and others just one (Finding Nemo, Coco and Soul). I wonder if there'll be more seasons and more Pixar films will also get mini shorts.

Re: Pixar Popcorn

Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2021 4:10 pm
by Sotiris

Re: Pixar Popcorn

Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2021 11:00 pm
by D82
I have Disney+ this month (I subscribed on Christmas Day to watch Soul) and I've seen the shorts. I wasn't expecting much, but I still found them disappointing. Most of them don't have a story; they're just comprised of a series of gags. The Soul one is especially bad as all its footage is reused from the movie. I think the only ones that have dialogue are the two starring Ducky & Bunny. My favorites were the two with the characters from The Incredibles. Especially the one titled "Cookie Num Num", which is one of the few which do have a story.

Re: Pixar Popcorn

Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2021 6:48 am
by Farerb
I liked the Toy Story and Incredibles ones, the rest was meh and I skipped the Cars ones.

Re: Pixar Popcorn

Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2021 7:00 am
by UmbrellaFish
I did not realize these were already released. Looking forward to checking them out. A bit disappointed they apparently cheaped out by skimping on the voice actor budget!

Re: Pixar Popcorn

Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2021 8:39 am
by blackcauldron85
D82 wrote:Most of them don't have a story; they're just comprised of a series of gags.
https://www.polygon.com/disney-plus/222 ... -interview
Because the animators were all transitioning between projects, they were only available for around two months, give or take, which meant that the entire project had to be expedited — no scripts, storyboards, or other preliminary steps.

“We started directly with animation,” Giblin says.

A hundred animators divided into 10 teams, each led by a different director, and pitched ideas, then immediately started the animation process once a pitch was approved. Because of the time and production constraints, the animators also had to follow specific guidelines.

“They had to use existing characters and sets from our feature films,” explains Giblin. “The characters had to act authentic to how they would in the feature. We couldn’t record new dialogue. They had to think of ideas that can be done within this window of time.”

As a result, most of the 10 shorts are close to dialogue-free, with a few exceptions, and they run from one to three minutes long.
I, too, didn't realize that these were out yet; I'm glad I read the thread first so my expectations aren't too high. :p

Re: Pixar Popcorn

Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2021 10:21 pm
by D82
^I didn't know that. Thanks for the info, blackcauldron85! Well, considering Pixar animators had to work with those limitations, the results are not that bad. Plus, I should've guessed by the titles most of them would be comprised of "slice-of-life vignettes", as the article describes it, and wouldn't have a clear plot. I've watched those shorts again and I liked them more this time. Some gags are quite good and at least they do have some thread that connects the different situations. But, as I said, in my opinion "Cookie Num Num" was way better than the others. Apart from having a defined story, they found a good excuse for the characters to stay silent in it. I've also noticed Michael Giacchino and Thomas Newman have written new music for some of the shorts. The ones for Chore Day - The Incredibles Way and A Day in the Life of the Dead were particularly good.
farerb wrote:I liked the Toy Story and Incredibles ones, the rest was meh and I skipped the Cars ones.
The Ducky and Bunny ones were quite funny. Since the article says one of the rules was that they couldn't record new dialogue, I wonder if unused recordings of Ducky and Bunny from Toy Story 4 were used for those two shorts. By the way, the article is wrong about the Olaf shorts. They aren't wordless; Josh Gad recorded new dialogue for them.

Re: Pixar Popcorn

Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2021 12:02 am
by Kyle
The Ducky and Bunny ones were decent. The rest felt very off putting without dialogue. I'm not saying you need dialogue to do a proper short, some of the most memorable ones around have none, but here it felt super forced. Like they were just cheaping out or something.

I kinda hoped they were going to find a way to make use of Don Rickles's unused lines they were going to use in Toy Story 4 in this, but none of the characters spoke really. My guess is they used little to no dialogue to make translation a non issue for the most part.