Lifted (2006 film)

Lifted
Lifted poster
Directed by	Gary Rydstrom
Produced by	Katherine Sarafian; Osnat Shurer (executive producer)
Music by	Michael Giacchino
Distributed by	Walt Disney Pictures (2007 release with Ratatouille)
Release date	2006
Running time	5 minutes
Country	USA United States

Lifted is a 2006 Pixar computer animated short film directed by Gary Rydstrom. This is the first film directed by Rydstrom, a seven-time Academy Award winning sound editor and mixer.

The film was released theatrically with Pixar's Ratatouille (June 29, 2007). However, the short received a sneak peek at The 42nd Chicago International Film Festival.

Plot

A young alien, Stu, is in a spaceship taking an examination in abduction. He must snatch a sleeping farmer under the watchful eye of his instructor, Mr. B. However, there is an array of thousands of unlabeled toggle switches he must manipulate to get the human into the ship's tractor beam, and he is having trouble. He mistakenly propels the human into walls and occasionally the ceiling (never waking him up from his slumber through it all). After repeated failures to successfully lift the human into the ship (he almost succeeds, but forgets to close the door on the bottom of the ship before turning off the tractor beam), Mr. B takes over and, wielding the massive bank of switches with ease, returns the farmer back to his room, and cleans up the mess that Stu had made.

Ashamed over his failure, Stu starts whimpering, trying to hold his tears back from Mr. B. Mr. B generously allows Stu to launch the space ship back home. Full of glee, Stu takes hold of the joystick and starts to lift the ship into the air, but once again, he fails, and the space ship plummets to the Earth, crushing the farmer's house and leaving nothing but a crater with a tall pillar of dirt in the center, atop which the farmer is still sleeping soundly in his bed with some small remnants of his house remaining. The ship quickly lifts off again.

During the end credits there is the sound of an alarm clock, the farmer waking up, then a Wilhelm scream as he (presumably) falls into the crater all around him, and finally, a thud.

Parodies

The short contains a reference and parody of the 2002 thriller Signs at the beginning, where the bench on the front porch begins to suddenly swing all by itself, and the windmill starts moving, both of which happened in Signs. Both are, arguably, references to a similar scene in the 1977 Steven Spielberg film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In addition, the action takes place at a farmhouse with a cornfield behind it, exactly the same setting as Signs. Also, when the aliens arrive, a blue light can be seen from inside the house, this being almost identical to the light seen before the aliens entered a room in the TV movie The Intruders.

Awards

Lifted was nominated for best animated short film on January 23, 2007 in nominations announced for the 79th Academy Awards.

Trivia

• The abduction console is based on the sound mixer's console.
• Mr. B is named by Gary Rydstrom, suggesting a teacher that would give his students 'B' Grades, no matter what.
• Pixar regularly use its short film to implement new software plugins and techniques, for this film was a jiggle program (used to animate Mr. B.) where an animator can pick a certain section of the computer model, tap on it and it will resonate.
• The voice of Stu is provided by Gary Rydstrom's dog.
• The sound that the console makes whenever Stu bumps the abductee into a wall is the "Hero" alert sound from Mac OS X.

External links

• Lifted at the Pixar Wiki