Hi, I'm Gary Rydstrom, I directed Hawaiian Vacation.
Hi, I'm Angus MacLane, I did the supervising of the animation.
And I'm Jason Katz, I was the story supervisor.
One of the things we knew going into this,
it was the first Toy Story Toon.
MacLANE: The goal is to show a different aspect of the toy universe,
be it a genre of toy,
or, in this case, what the toys do when you go on vacation.
RYDSTROM: At the same time, we wanted to have
all the characters we just saw in Toy Story 3 that we liked,
and see what they're doing now,
and give them all a moment in six minutes.
It's a little bit nuts
to make a movie this short with 22 speaking roles.
KATZ: We didn't really know what we were going to end up with.
When we started, we just knew,
you know, we wanted it to feel like Toy Story,
and having the music feel right.
RYDSTROM: To get all these actors to do the voices was a thrill for me,
'cause I got to meet people like Don Rickles.
And Timothy Dalton did a great job of being an over-the-top director,
directing the aliens,
whose performances were exactly the same every time.
MacLANE: The idea was that Bonnie's backpack
was this kind of magical elevator
in between Sunnyside and Bonnie's room
and that was kind of established in Toy Story 3 I understand, right?
KATZ: Yeah. We needed some way to show
how the toys could communicate to Sunnyside.
Passing a note through the backpack was what our solution was.
MacLANE: Here's a fun fact, there's no backpack straps
on the backpack in the movie.
RYDSTROM: We asked Michael Keaton,
"What would you say to Barbie to get her to smile?"
And he said, "Say sunscreen!"
Although my favorite new prop is the camera that Ken has,
which is a completely useless plastic thing
with nothing but a hole in the middle.
MacLANE: What's funny for me about Ken is how limited his acting is.
He walks kind of stiff and his arms are pretty stiff
and you don't see his fingers move.
Here's a movie cheat.
RYDSTROM: Ken could not possibly leap up five feet to the window.
I think the pilot guy
is one of the deepest characters we've ever created,
'cause the idea of a zipper pull
who looks like a pilot but will never ever fly anywhere
is tragic and funny.
KATZ: Really the biggest turn to me
is Ken in the backpack and wanting to give up.
I think Ken is the master of his own domain.
MacLANE: Once you take him out of that world,
he really is a fish out of water really, really easily.
If you look carefully here, Buzz is not paying attention.
He's self-centered enough to be like,
"I... Okay, I got it. I don't need to pay attention anymore."
RYDSTROM: The artwork for the Hawaii brochure
was designed by Marty Baumann.
It became the thread for the story
because the events that the toys are going to recreate for us
are listed in the brochure,
so it gives us a roadmap for the whole short.
In addition,
Ken, of course, has ordered all the events with glitter pen,
which, technically, I can tell you that
glitter pen is tough to do in computer animation,
getting that glitter to hit just right.
We really had fun giving all the characters
their own Hawaiian costume,
and what would they look like at a Hawaiian party.
And the whole idea here is that
the toys have to make do with the limitations of Bonnie's room.
KATZ: It also helps the craftiness of not only Bonnie, but the toys,
and kind of being able to put on a show
but it's if, you know, you had to do that in a preschool environment.
RYDSTROM: Luckily for us,
we had limitations which kept the budget down,
but I think it's funnier that the aquarium has no water in it
and the aliens have to create the artificial bubbles.
KATZ: The shark is live action.
RYDSTROM: An animated shark wouldn't have been as scary.
MacLANE: Yeah.
RYDSTROM: Estelle Harris, who does Mrs. Potato Head, was a riot,
and we had to get her to say the Hawaiian state fish,
which took a long time and we had to write it out phonetically.
And then Erik Benson, who worked in story,
we just let him run wild
with every Hawaii gag he could think of.
KATZ: A lot of the gags were Ken was just getting
the stuffing beat out of him.
RYDSTROM: It was strangely fun to help design costumes
for Ken and Barbie.
The Barbie outfit in the surfing shot is the first outfit Barbie was sold with.
I like how the toys are clever enough
to use a jigsaw puzzle box for the background of the surfing shot,
which, also for us film geeks, it looks like a process shot from the '60s.
And Chuckles, voiced by Bud Luckey,
sings a little song that Mark Mothersbaugh, the composer,
wrote for us that we don't get to hear for very long
but it's a really lovely Hawaiian song.
MacLANE: The part here, where Chuckles has a chant,
what he's saying basically translates to "bound and rebound"
as a reference to Bud Luckey's short Boundin'.
RYDSTROM: And the lighting of Steven James
was the shot with the glow stick that Buzz dances with,
and the way it bounces the light off of everything
with the other lights in the background
was one of my favorite looking shots in the movie.
Not to mention one of my favorite animated shots in the movie.
MacLANE: Yeah, Neil Helm animated that, did a really good job.
Did a lot of reference for it,
like he looked at a ton of fire dancing footage
and took it really, really seriously.
RYDSTROM: I remember talking to Michael Arndt
and Lee Unkrich at Toy Story 3
and they always talked about
how Barbie was going to wear the pants in the family,
Barbie was in charge.
So it felt right that Barbie was the one that took that final step
to get them to the romantic moment.
Growing up in Chicago,
snowy scenes to me could be both bleak and incredibly romantic,
so the colors of the sunset in a snowstorm
can be just as beautiful as a sunset at a beach.
KATZ: That falling through the snow gag,
we had to significantly change Bonnie's house to make that work,
so if you watch the end of Toy Story 3 and look closely,
there's railings there, and there's wood that stops them from doing that,
so we had to just remove those.
MacLANE: This movie ends really, really strongly.
That last joke and the last line, and then it ends really cleanly.
RYDSTROM: There's this long pause
before Hamm says, "I'll get the shovel,"
and editing which... Axel Geddes did the editing in this.
...is all about timing.
So the pauses, if you like Jack Benny and things like that,
pauses are more important than anything.
Thanks for listening to this commentary,
and a big thanks to all the people that worked on Hawaiian Vacation at Pixar,
everyone did an amazing job.