‘Tell a heart touching story’ that’s what Pixar has been focusing on since Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Inside Out and now Finding Dory. And, the same principle has been induced in its animated shorts like Lava, Sanjay Super Team and the upcoming animated short Piper.
Releasing an animated short just before a feature film is the strategy that Pixar follows and has been doing since a long time as it released the animated short The Blue Umbrella before Monsters University, Lava before Inside Out, Sanjay’s Super Team before The Good Dinosaur, and now Piper before its Finding Dory.
So, what is Piper? It’s all about ‘Overcoming fear in life’ and Pixar’s Piper is based on this simple idea where a Sandpiper faces its fear of the waves yet ventures into it to suffice its hunger and fetch its food. The Sandpiper who dwells at the beach to spot invertebrates in the sand goes to eat its food once the waves travel back as it fears and runs for its life when a wave gushes by.
Pixar animator Alan Barillaro spotted this idea as he noticed the peculiar behavioural reaction of sandpipers towards rough waves and their quest to spot their food in the minute time frame that they get before another wave comes by.
More than this basic crux, as Pixar is known for its in depth storytelling, the simple concept of the Sandpipers’ reaction extends to the larger idea that the only way to ‘overcome your fear is by facing it’. The lead character in the short ventures out for the first time into the rough beach to explore, witness and experience the ups and downs. Probably, just like a child who opens his wings and learns the milestones of life through the hard yet natural way.
In an interaction with EW, Barillaro beautifully expressed, “It’s the kid at the playground feeling. You fall down and you feel so small, but you look and see someone even smaller than you brush themselves off and tackle something, and learn from that in your own way.” He further adds, “It was important to me to stay in the kid world and see the world from Piper’s eyes, and not be from the human perspective.”
When Barillaro pitched the idea to the veterans at Pixar, he received huge support and the idea after few iterations was thus flourished into an animated short. Piper, the directional debut of Alan Barillaro will hit theatres on 17 June, 2016 before the movie Finding Dory begins.