During the production of Monsters University, Story Supervisor Kelsey Mann couldn’t help but be drawn to continuous story ideas regarding a certain phrase from the film – “Welcome to party central. We haven’t had a party yet, but we will someday.”
Mann who stepped out of the story role and into the director’s chair for Pixar’s upcoming short, Party Central recently shared some additional insight into what he and the team created with The Disney Insider (UPDATED: Link removed as it is no longer active).
(In case you missed it, the first official screenshot of the upcoming short was recently released as well.)
What we found to be interesting was that a lot of the Monsters University crew lent a hand on working on the Party Central short. Mann mentioned that working on a short was a learning process, “You can’t treat a short like a feature,” he says. “Pete Docter gave me the best advice on that. He said, ‘set up a great premise and pay off on that premise over and over again and just have fun with it’.”
Like many Pixarians, the story, animation and direction is often inspired by events from their own lives. Party Centralis no exception with Mann reflecting on his own college days, while he admits that his college days weren’t as raucous as what will be seen in Party Central. “I was not a huge partier in college, so I did not come near to what the Oozma Kappas are doing at their house.” After hearing his comment we can only imagine how far the Party Central team pushed the envelope to make this short an epic party!
If you’re anything like us, we always keep our eyes peeled for the numerous easter eggs that are hidden within Pixar feature films as well as their short films. Mann promises that Party Central will not lack in the area of hidden items, “There actually is an Easter egg. It’s not really something from the past like the Pizza Planet truck, but there’s definitely something in the short that it takes people even here at the studio a couple times to see…but you’ll know it when you see it.”
Don’t miss Party Central as it hits theaters ahead of Muppets Most Wanted on March 21, 2014.
Can't tell you how pumped I am for this. I'm gonna love seeing these characters again. When I read this same article last week and was reading about the easter eggs, I immediately thought of you and Julie since you guys are Pixar easter eggs experts. I'm like they are gonna eat this up. I expect a post on them all when the time comes, ha!
Ha! We will certainly been looking out for the hard-to-find one that Kelsey mentioned for sure! By the way, if we're Easter Egg Experts, does that make us Eggsperts? <— Bad pun of the day (cue the drum fill)!
I (T.J.) haven't met him myself, but Julie did at the MU Press event. Well, she only really had a chance to say hi – she didn't get a chance to talk.
Man, another Pixar short next to ANOTHER Muppet Movie? I mean one would be great enough, but together? Brain = Explode.
I love the Muppets as well – I can't wait. I was going to be there opening day even before I knew it was going to be paired with Party Central. In fact, on the forum I we were chatting about this briefly – I even posted a screenshot of the Muppet I got for the holidays this year – http://pxrpst.co/1njDTjASince you mentioned \”Brain = Explode\”, I'm assuming you're a big fan as well! Ha! 🙂