DISNEY RETURNS TO MAKING THEATRICAL SHORTS!

How to Hook Up Your Home Theater

Spending time in Walt Disney World really got me excited about everything that Disney is doing right now. The constant quality that Pixar/Disney keeps turning out. John Lasseter being put in charge of Disney Feature Animation and him resurrecting the 2D department. The good reviews of Meet the Robinsons. The return to fairy tales with Frog Princess. All of this makes me think that a new era of Disney is just around the corner. Now check this out:

Disney and the brilliant John Lasseter have made the decision to bring back theatrical animated shorts in the same style as they used to in the good old days.

When Disney started his career in the 20s all the studio produced were five to seven minute shorts that were shown before feature films. Many of these are landmark films that have influenced the evolution of animation. A few examples are Steamboat Willie (the first cartoon to sync animation with sound effects and dialogue) and Flowers and Trees (the first colour cartoon made with the Technicolor process). When Disney and other studios started making feature films the shorts became less frequent and then the invention of television killed the production of shorts all together.

Goofy is doing what he does best.

But Lasseter saw the benefit in giving the audience more for their money and helping out up-and-coming artists polish their craft so he created shorts that appear before every one of his Pixar movies.

Now he is doing the same with the Disney movies starting with a brand new Goofy cartoon called How to Hook Up Your Home Theatre. This cartoon will be Goofy's return to the big screen and will be an homage to the How to instructional shorts of the forties and fifties.

You can read an interesting interview between Animated News and Disney animators Andreas Deja and Mark Henn here Here are a few highlights:

"John Lasseter came in and announced that we were going to do shorts again, because Pixar’s doing shorts and it’s a good idea to nurture new talents and attach directors and storytellers to the new films, and everyone was thrilled." -Deja

"We really wanted to pay attention, even though the subject matter is contemporary, that the look and feel still has the fun and feel that you see in the older classic Goofy shorts." -Henn

I don't care what movie this short will be paired with! I'll pay top dollar when it comes out this fall!