The Big Picture

Once Upon A Studio is a short film celebrating the 100th anniversary of Walt Disney Animation Studios, featuring 543 characters from over 85 Disney films. The short combines hand-drawn and CG animation, taking the audience on a roller coaster of emotion and bringing back beloved voice actors to reprise their famous roles. The filmmakers, Dan Abraham and Trent Correy, wanted to create a nostalgic and joyful tribute to Disney’s storytelling legacy, and were thrilled to work with the iconic Disney characters.

[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for Once Upon A Studio.]To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Walt Disney Animation Studios, the short Once Upon A Studio is nearly 10 minutes of utter joy, getting to watch an all-star cast of beloved animated characters interacting with each other. To be more exact, 543 characters from more than 85 Disney feature-length and short films appear, bringing back dozens of voice performers to reprise their famous roles, all while blending hand-drawn and CG animation and taking the audience on a roller coaster of emotion.

Collider recently got the opportunity, along with a variety of other media outlets, to preview this nostalgic warm hug on the big screen at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood. Then, we got to chat with Dan Abraham and Trent Correy, who wrote and directed the short, about what makes being a part of Disney’s 100 years of storytelling so magical, how this short came to be, the Donald Duck elevator sequence, working in Chernabog from Fantasia, what Walt Disney might think of this short, and that special Walt/Mickey moment accompanied by “Feed the Birds.”

Collider: Since we’re celebrating 100 years of Disney magic, what makes being a part of Disney storytelling magical to each of you guys?

DAN ABRAHAM: This is the only studio that I’ve ever wanted to work at. When I was growing up, there wasn’t a lot of animation influences out there besides Disney and going to the theater to see those films was an event. We didn’t do it very often in my family, so when my mom took me to see Lady and the Tramp and The Aristocats and Fox and the Hound, those movies became a part of me. Now, to be able to bring those characters, specifically, back to the screen to influence a new generation and maybe reintroduce people to them again, it’s unreal. It’s beyond a dream come true to get to work with all these characters and bring them together in this way and share the joy. It’s all about joy.

TRENT CORREY: During the making of this, every day, we would use words like, “It’s an honor and a privilege, and I can’t believe we get to do this. We’re standing on the shoulders of 100 years of legacy and talent and characters and artists and people that walk through the building. We knew, while making this, the tremendous respect that we had for it, but we’re also honored to be able to make this short.

Image via Disney Animation

You’ve said that no one asked you to do this and that no one knew you were doing it, so why did you do it? How did you find yourselves in this position, where you decided to take on something this huge that you didn’t know would ever get made?

ABRAHAM: We had directed a short together prior to this, called Once Upon A Snowman, an Olaf origin story, and we had such a good time doing that. Trent comes up through animation and I come up through story. Even though we’re in the same building, we’re in different departments. We always had the same goals, but coming from those two different pipelines and mindsets, was really a fantastic team of figuring out the best way to tell a story. We enjoyed that so much that we were just trying to work together again, so we came up with this idea to celebrate the milestone. They were already making Wish as the 100-year film, but we wanted something that, right on the nose, celebrated the legacy and the history, and we just wanted to work together again. And we’re such big Disney fans that it was perfect. We were like, “Even if this goes nowhere, we’re having so much fun doing it.”

CORREY: It’s so true. It just came from that earnest place where we started making a short that we would want to see for the Disney 100-year anniversary without knowing that it would actually ever get made, for eight or nine months. We’d be working on a Sunday or at lunch time and say, “They’re probably never gonna make this, but it’s a whole lot of fun to do it, so let’s just keep going.”

There are so many very special moments in this. The first one I want to ask you about is the elevator. Was there anyone you originally wanted to squeeze into that moment that just didn’t work out? How did you know when you hit all those beats as perfectly as they hit?

CORREY: I remember very clearly when Dan came up with that idea and boarded that section. It was perfect, right off the bat, that Donald [Duck] would be waiting for Flash (the sloth). That became the North star for where all the comedy and character overlapping and pairings had to work. It’s so fun to see these characters together that have never shared the screen, and of course, who would Donald get the most pissed off about, waiting for the elevator? It had to be Flash. It became a new bar, as we were boarding, to make moments like that.

Image via Disney Animation

And adding Baymax was just the cherry on top of that whole moment.

ABRAHAM: That was what was so much fun about this short. The possibilities were endless. We have thousands of characters, every disposition you could think of, and every size and shape. We had an endless amount of options, and it was super fun to play with.

CORREY: In that elevator moment, I enjoy seeing who’s inside the elevator. The great Tony DeRosa animated those characters, and seeing Humphrey the Bear look like exhausted the next time we get back to it and Mother Gothel back there in the corner, it’s just fun to see them riding in an elevator together.

ABRAHAM: I remember us talking about, “Well, who are we okay squishing because they’re gonna get squished.” You don’t wanna squish some sweet character, so it was mostly these guys that were in there. We were like, “We’re okay with squishing them.”

CORREY: These are the type of silly conversations we had every day.

Another moment that I really loved was the Dalmatians watching Night on Bald Mountain from Fantasia. What led to that moment? How did you come to the puppies watching that moment of nightmares?

CORREY: From my memory, that moment came a little later. We had the puppies, and we were using the puppies in a couple of different ways. And we always wanted Chernabog in the short, but we were stumped on how to do that. He was on our list on our whiteboard, but we were stumped about how to fit a character the size of a mountain inside of the studio. And then, Dan came up with that idea of the puppies sitting in their original form from the movie. We had a young animator, named Jorge Ruiz, who he grew up in Venezuela. That was one of his first theater experiences and he wanted so badly to animate Chernabog. He’s in the computer animation department at Disney, and he reached out to us and said, “I would love to do this. This is my favorite character of all time.” He actually animated Chernabog for us in hand-drawn animation and worked with the team to do that.

ABRAHAM: It’s not the easiest character to draw.

Image via Disney Animation

Because of all the struggles that happened early in the life of the studio and everybody who thought Walt Disney was mad before they realized he was a mad genius, how do you think he would feel to see this legacy altogether like this? He did so much to change and shape the future of animation, what do you think it would mean to him to see how it’s not only carried on, but just to see these characters all interact with each other?

ABRAHAM: Boy, I sure hope he’d be proud. He always was the guy that was embracing technology and what’s the next thing? I think his mind would be blown by the CG animation world and where we’ve gone, but he also had a sentimentality to him, the way he idealized Main Street in Disneyland reflecting his hometown. If you watch the beginning of the Mickey Mouse Club in the fifties, they’ve got Humphrey the Bear and Clarabelle Cow and all the different characters together marching along the screen, so I think he’d be okay with us putting his characters together and I think he would like this 100-year milestone.

CORREY: And I think he’d love to see that Mickey has still stood the test of time, after all these years. I think he’d enjoy that little Mickey/Walt moment too.

ABRAHAM: And that Mickey is front and center, to this day.

How did you even get through that Mickey/Walt moment without crying?

CORREY: I’ll tell you how we got through it, we cried.

ABRAHAM: Yeah.

CORREY: That’s how. Every day.

ABRAHAM: We knew we wanted a Walt/Miceky moment, but we thought we were gonna have to really finesse and finesse and finesse and finesse to get to where we wanted it to be. But when we first saw it rough cut in editorial, we were like, “Wow!” It worked, right from the get-go. We were stunned. We felt something and we got all choked up because we had “Feed the Birds” peppered in underneath it, and it worked out.

Once Upon A Studio will debut on ABC during their “The Wonderful World of Disney: Disney’s 100th Anniversary Celebration” special on Sunday, October 15th.