Premiering alongside Raya and the Last Dragon's theatrical release is Us Again, the first Disney animated short film in five years. Following an elderly couple named Art and Dot, a magical rainstorm that sweeps through their town transforms them back into their younger selves as long as they stay in the raindrops, leading to whirlwind dance across town as they remember why they fell so deeply in love with one another all those years ago.
CBR attended an exclusive press conference with director David Parrish (Big Hero 6), producer Brad Simonsen (Ralph Breaks the Internet) and dance choreographers Keone & Mari Madrid (World of Dance) on how they worked together to bring the thrilling, emotionally riveting animated film to life.
Parrish reveals that the initial idea was inspired by him coming to terms with the realization that he was getting older. While recognizing that he himself was not especially old, Parrish noticed the gradual changes in his life. A conversation with his mother made the story click into place for Parrish, with the risk that spending his time looking back would inadvertently cause him to miss out on the joys of his life in the present. With that in mind, Parrish decided to make his next project a fountain-of-youth short film.
Parrish and Simonsen knew that the foundation of the film had to be its soundtrack and the dance choreography of its characters. The production team was joined by Captain Marvel composer Pinar Toprak, who was approached by Disney Animation Head of Music Tom McDougal for the project. Toprak surprised the filmmakers with her deep love of funk and soul and infused it into Us Again's original soundtrack. Keone and Mari were approached around April 2019. As lifelong Disney fans, the couple leaped at the opportunity to work with Disney Animation on the project.
Parrish and the team. looked at a lot of classic live-action and animated cinema for reference and inspiration when developing the story, animation style and choreography for Us Again. One especially valuable reference was the original 1940 Disney animated film Fantasia and early animated shorts starring Mickey Mouse as they largely conveyed a story without relying on dialogue, just like Us Again. After coming across a video of an old couple dancing to the 1978 Bob Marley and the Wailers song "Is This Love," Parrish, Keone and Mari were influenced by the video to find the emotional core of the film and their protagonists, with Parrish describing the video as "visceral" and "perfect for the film." Keone explained that he and Mari had always been trying to tell stories through their dance choreography their entire career, and this blend with animation helped make that all the more visually and emotionally clear.
Telling a story through dance choreography opened a sort of creative conundrum which Parrish dubbed a "chicken-and-egg problem." Parrish and Simonsen brought in Keone and Mari relatively early into the creative process as the first storyboards were developed. Following this, CBR asked how the creative team developed the look of the characters, both in terms of their movements on-screen and their overall physical appearance.
"We knew from the beginning that we wanted an interracial couple," Parrish explained while revealing both and Simonsen are in their own respective interracial relationships themselves. "We have an amazing group of people, artists and other employees within the building, whose focus is on diversity and inclusion and we met with them at all the design stage and all the way through the process of making the film. We had some incredible character designers who came in and started to flesh out the style of the short. I wanted something that felt similar but different to our Disney style and something that felt slightly miniature; something that was a little bit simpler in design. We gave that to the character designers and they came back with all kinds of amazing designs. Art and Dot's final design really came down to an amalgamation of different designs that our lead modeler really brought to life and really tried to encapsulate their personalities and ethnicities."
For Keone, developing Art's movements and mannerisms in the short film came from a sense that the character was coming back to something he loved as he regained his youth. Mari was especially excited by the protagonists being an interracial couple as she and Keone are both children from interracial couples themselves. The short burst of youth that Us Again's couple experiences allows them to reconnect with one another and rediscover that spark that made them fall in love with one another in the first place.
Simonsen recalled that in his and Parrish's initial meetings with Keone and Mari, they felt an instant creative connection. While many projects like this would have a temporary soundtrack replaced by the final score, both Simonsen and Parrish knew they needed to have the actual score as early as they could to help inform the dance choreography and animation. From there, the final choreography and animation clicked into place relatively quickly.
Mari explained that both she and Keone are very detail-oriented with their choreography, while Simonsen and Parrish are similarly detail-oriented with their animation. This made the team much tighter collaboratively, with both Keone and Mari praising the film's animators for nailing the choreography. For Parrish, the theme of water and the use of a rainstorm to initiate the characters growing younger was a natural extension of the fountain-of-youth inspiration for the story. Parrish noted that while the temporary chance at youth expires by the end, emotionally, Dot and Art are reinvigorated by the experience, underscoring the importance of the title Us Again.
For the film's urban setting, the filmmakers weren't tied to a specific real-world location, but drew heavy inspiration from piers and boardwalk environments of Santa Monica and Seattle for inspiration. Musical and visual Easter eggs sprinkled throughout the film include references to both Fantasia and Rhapsody in Blue as well as the 2010 Disney film Tangled, which Parrish worked on as an animator. To heighten the theatrical mood, Parrish sought to include as much neon lighting as possible in the visuals, feeling that adding a "retro" aesthetic was also evocative of modern music videos.
The creative team hoped that Us Again will not only help viewers remember not to take things for granted, but also remind them that their parents and grandparents were once younger and livelier too. The filmmakers hope audiences will see their family members differently and come closer together to focus on the present, rather than waste away looking back on glory days.
Directed by David Parrish, produced by Brad Simonsen and choreographed by Keone and Mari Madrid, Us Again will premiere with the theatrical release of Raya and the Last Dragon on March 5 and on Disney+ this June.