-Hi. I am John Lasseter. - I am Dan Scanlon.
We both have been directing Ghost Light.
The inspiration for Ghost Light came from a story that allegedly happened on Route 66.
During our research we found a town called Riverton, Kansas,
and a shop called Eisler Bros. Store.
There we bought, as Michael Wallis would put it, hand-made sandwiches.
We got to know cool people, one of them was Dean Walker.
Dean Walker told us a story
about something you can find in Kansas. It's called the "Ghost Light"
An orb of white light
haunting route 66.
It's floating around at night, sometimes it even gets into your car.
Nobody knows what it is, but everybody has seen it.
We thought that was a fascinating story.
When we had finished "Cars" we were discussing what else we could put onto the DVD.
Without doubt we all wanted to make a short film.
Was it Joe that came up with the idea first? Joe Ranft?
When we heard about that we had just finished the annual assessments (?)
and Joe said: "We are doing a short film, maybe Ghost Light."
Years ago I had bought him a set of these
fake hillbilly-teeth from the internet,
when they were quite new and nobody knew them.
I gave them to Joe as a gift, and that turned out to be the best investment of my life.
A soon as Joe put on these fake teeth he transformed into this other guy,
this hilarious hillbilly-guy.
Mater was supposed to be a towing truck,
because a towing truck helps other vehicles.
That's what gave him a good heart right from the start.
Joe was always with us for the test recordings
for Larry, with his hillbilly teeth.
That resulted in a good character.
Joe's first drafts of his idea of Mater
were used unchanged as a design for Mater later on.
Other than that, for Ghost Light
we had Michael Wallis, who did the voice acting for the Sheriff in Cars.
He took us with him on excursions on route 66.
Michael Wallis is an awesome storyteller.
During our trips on route 66 he would often pull over the car.
There was something like a burned house, and we were sitting there for an hour
while he was telling us what had happened. We were thrilled.
He is brilliant.
With him, the smallest detail grows into a wonderful story.
"Have a look at this cliff over there, it's old Mississipi rock."
He made a trivial object into something fascinating.
That was something we hadn't had the time for in the film.
It was great to watch him go to work.
That's what it is about, a Sheriff telling a story.
yarning along...
We always thought of mater as a Don Knotts of sorts.
We thought it would be funny to put him in a situation
where he was shaking with terror.
His body is rattly anyway, so that could be funny.
You cannot really see the funny stuff in a storyboard.
It's funny because a gifted animator, in this case it was Victor Navone,
takes this material and does something completely unexpected with it.
You left that open. "Just make it funny!"
Yeah. "Victor, make it funny. We want to laugh."
He had all kinds of ideas how Mater could shake.
He was so terrified.
There was a version where he pulled himself together so hard
to stop the shaking and rattling, that in the end he managed to keep all of his parts quiet
except a rattling air filter element. We included that in the movie, at the end.
We loved it.
Our good mate Brad Paisley wrote two brand new songs for the film Cars.
He was asked to write one song, but he liked the film so much that he wrote two instead.
One of the songs is called Behind the Clouds.
We immediately liked the nice and oldfashioned style.
It reminded us of Mater, and therefore we chose this song as
Mater's theme melody.
It creates the right mood at the beginning of the film.
Yeah, it fits nicely to hear this music
while he is scaring everybody else.
And then again when he is trying to calm down
by singing part of it.
Larry did such such a great job on that,
we couldn't help laughing.
The most efficient time during a film production is right at the end.
Everybody knows the characters. They are working ard and fast. Great animations.
Lighting is well, too. Everything is flowing.
They finished Mater and the Ghost Light in an amazingly short time.
Yeah, it almost finished by itself. Remarkable.
Yeah, and everybody had a really good time working on it.
The good thing about short films is
that we fall in love with the characters all the time.
At the end of the film we are all good friends.
For us they seem to be real.
You know exactly what they would do and what not.
The whole crew enjoyed working on this short film,
because we had a reunion with the characters, and the town.
And almost the complete short film could be done with
the models from the full feature film.
I think, only the lantern was new.
Mater's garage door had to work. And his headlights popped out.
And in the end, the roaring of the desert beast.
When we were sitting together at the story meetings for Cars
Steve Purcell, one of the best storyboard artists in this film, sat there and he was
constantly drawing monsters. Never said anything.
- Steve never stops drawing. - Right.
That's a waste-product of his thoughts,
beautiful waste, though.
He is drawing these gorgous monsters
and those terrifying creatures.
So when we had the idea of this desert beast,
Steve came to our mind immediately.
this hissing beast in the film, and Mater does not realize
that it's real...
Steve was working on another project at that time,
but he helped us out and drew this gruesome monster for us
made out of parts of bulldozers
skip trucks and stuff like that.
The hissing what?
In the end titles you see some drawings.
These are concept drafts for Mater and the Ghost Light made by Joe Ranft.
- His drawings are fantastic. - Yeah, they are.
they are so expressive, I find them hilarious.
Those few drawings are the whole story.
Pretty short, but it's all in there.
The desert fairy was made of model elements.
If you look closely, you will discover parts of Mack,
of Mater and the Hummer.
they just took parts from all the 3d-Models, mixed them with a few new elements,
banged them together, that's it.