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some additional insight into what he and the team created with The Disney Insider (UPDATED: Link removed as it is no longer active).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.