Ready to find Dory again?
Pixar, during their presentation at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, announced a new theatrical short film set in the world of “Finding Nemo” and “Finding Dory” called “Loving Dory.” The new short, due out soon, is produced by Mary Alice Drumm and directed by Lou Hamou-Lhadj, who were both present to introduce the new short.
This is the first Pixar theatrical short in quite some time; “Burrow” was meant to be ahead of exhibitions of “Soul” before the pandemic put an end to that and, in the last few years, most short-form content from Pixar has debuted on Disney+ or platforms like YouTube. “Loving Dory” is a return to the theatrical shorts of old, with some of Pixar’s most beloved characters.
While only one section of the short was shown (and mostly finished), Drumm and Hamou-Lhadj walked the audience through the story, which begins with Dory dropping Nemo off at school and getting stuck in some sea anemone. She’s soon “rescued” by what she assumes is a jellyfish, but what we know to be a plastic bag, dropped by a child at the ocean’s surface at the beginning of the short. Dory being Dory, she falls in love with the plastic bag and much of the short is devoted to their “relationship” as they cruise around the ocean together, sharing romantic moments and even a hilarious scene where she introduces the bag to her friends as her new boyfriend and Mr. Ray and Nemo look on quizzically.
The bit of finished film they showed was a montage of them doing stuff together; it was incredibly charming and was reminiscent, in some ways, of a similar scene from Pixar’s masterpiece “WALL•E.” (The one where WALL•E and EVE are “together” but it’s him taking her on dates while she is cocooned and waiting to return to the spaceship.)
The bits of rough animation and storyboards ended with a moment where Dory is taking the bag somewhere and then she loses him… only to eventually find him with another fish.
“Debbie!” Dory exclaims. And while they didn’t confirm her involvement during the presentation, Ellen DeGeneres has recently started talking about the short so, yes, she is returning to voice the hapless Dory.
In terms of the technical ground being broken and systems being tested by this short, which has been a hallmark of Pixar theatrical shorts in the past – need to work on feathers? Here’s “For the Birds!?” Don’t need that blobby alien design we made for “WALL•E” and then discarded? Say hello to “Lifted!” – Hamou-Lhadj discussed a newly designed system for “puppeteering” characters in rough form. Basically, this is a way of staging the performances, for rough layout, before final animation comes in to get a sense of their placement in the scene and the blocking of the characters. Since it is somewhat automated, there needs to be layers of refinement before finished animation, but in terms of getting a sense of what the shots could look like, it proved invaluable and extremely timesaving.
While this wasn’t discussed during the presentation, the near-finished animation had a dreamy, somewhat distorted feel that is reminiscent of what Pixar did on “Toy Story 4.” Lots of particles in the water, diffusion, layers of sunlight and shadow and bokeh add up to a dreamy sense of romance in the air, even if it is between a memory-plagued fish and a plastic bag that used to hold sunscreen. “Loving Dory” is really striking looking, for sure – evocative and a little melancholic, which pairs nicely with the gag-heavy nature of the short’s storyline.
“Loving Dory” hasn’t officially been attached to any theatrical project yet, but we hope to see it soon. Because it really did make us swoon.
