Hello, my name is Angus MacLane, and I was the director of BURN-E,
the short film that's happening just to the left
of WALL-E, feature film.
The idea of BURN-E came from wanting to do more
with this little character that was stuck outside of the ship.
Right in the middle of production of WALL-E,
I'd animated a scene with BURN-E, the scene that appears in the feature,
and I wanted to animate this particular shot,
because BURN-E was a welder,
and my father, at one time, had been a welder.
And I realized that we never found out what happened to BURN-E.
So I pitched to Andrew Stanton, director of WALL-E,
that we cut back to BURN-E later on in the story,
and this central idea of BURN-E getting the screws put to him
is a joke that's set up, but never really paid off in the feature.
And so Andrew couldn't figure out a way,
without slowing the pace down,
of showing BURN-E again in the feature film,
but he encouraged me to board up something as a short film, potentially.
And the result of that is BURN-E.
BURN-E was a really appealing character to me
because of his limitations, he didn't have any mouth,
and he could do far less than WALL-E could.
So the challenge was getting his emotion
and how he was feeling through storytelling,
and through the way that it was being edited
and the shots were composed.
I knew that I wanted to have Beethoven's Ode to Joy
at the end of the movie.
So when there was the idea of BURN-E humming to himself,
I figured it would be a nice idea to have him humming Ode to Joy.
Plus, rights-wise...
I think it's public domain. I hope so.
So here's a total cheat.
You can see where the door's opening and there's no light there.
This isn't even on the ship where he would be,
it's a total movie cheat.
I like the idea of BURN-E not knowing about hand waving.
And since WALL-E is kind of introducing
humanity to everybody on the ship...
I mean, the whole idea of the film was that WALL-E
makes everyone's life better,
but except for this one robot,
who actually... He makes this robot's life worse for him having shown up.
Who actually... He makes this robot's life worse for him having shown up.
But he does teach BURN-E how to wave.
So there's really two stories going on in this short film.
There's the story of what's happening to BURN-E
and then there's the feature story from the movie.
And we needed to come up with a quick shorthand
to remind the audience at what point in the movie
the events of BURN-E, the movie, was happening.
So here is a reminder of what part of WALL-E, the feature film, we're viewing,
and then there's the BURN-E short film.
Here, his boss has three of these light spires,
so the audience knows he only has three chances.
Successful movies have a series of rules that you're following,
and you understand the parameters, and then you play with those.
The parameters here are there are three light spires,
so he has three chances.
And with those set of rules,
it was clear what each character was thinking.
So he is successful here at attaching one of the light spires,
but it's not on.
I tried to tell earlier that he had to turn off the power
before he operated on the light.
Which is really good to learn,
that you should always turn off the electricity
before doing any electrical work.
This section is really meant to be what you missed
just after the shot in the feature,
of BURN-E stuck outside very lonely.
And no one's paying attention, and, meanwhile, the film is going on inside.
So when we started thinking of ideas of different ways
he could get back into the ship,
we just thought back to what was going on in the movie,
and the garbage area was one of the sections
where, technically, he could maybe get back inside the ship.
Even though the garbage airlock and this particular door
isn't exactly in the correct orientation in the spaceship in the movie.
But no one knows that, it's fine.
To me, what's really, really funny about this universe of BURN-E,
and this kind of subterranean world that he works in,
is that his only job is to attach broken light spires on the ship.
That's it.
And then SUPPLY-R's only job is to just distribute these light spires.
So each character only has really one thing that they're supposed to do.
The mechanics of this,
of how BURN-E would have to press this button
and then that would be the thing that would finally light up the light
was difficult to sell. I don't know if it actually reads.
But it was important that he not actually get the light on automatically,
so it wouldn't ruin the end joke.
Notice the elevator here says ELV-426,
which is a thinly veiled reference to Aliens.
The planet on Aliens and Alien is LV-426,
so that's elevator 426.
Totally nerdy.
I love this shot, the "star gate" shot. It really feels like an old optical effect.
And we'd spent a lot of time on this movie
trying to make it feel like a '70s, '80s sci-fi film,
and then not do too many effects that looked too computer-generated.
BURN-E stands for Basic Utility Robot Nano-Engineer,
which is completely made up after the fact.
Originally, I was thinking about calling him WELD-R,
and when we made the feature, his name was Repairbot.
I feel like acronyms,
especially in the late '70s, early '80s were very big with robots.
You needed to have an acronym.
You couldn't just call a robot Bob, or Maximilian,
it had to stand for something really, really ridiculous.
And in that vein, we went with BURN-E, and SUPPLY-R.
Terrible, terrible jokes.
I think that children pay attention to the details
a lot of times that adults miss.
There are aspects of the detail of what BURN-E goes through
that I kind of imagine him as a kid
where the parents are like WALL-E and EVE
and they're going off and having their adventures.
And BURN-E is this kid that everyone's forgotten about.
And so, when children watch this film,
and they watch the feature a second time,
hopefully they see the feature first,
that they say, "Oh, this is what's happening to BURN-E
"while the main feature is happening."
Or if the camera would just pan left a little bit, you'd catch BURN-E.
So the idea of these doors was
I kind of wanted to destroy the world with mechanical doors.
It's kind of weird.
I had a great crew on this film.
Everyone really believed in the project,
and one of the difficult things about doing a film
that's attached to the feature is you're making it right after the feature,
and so everyone has to work really, really hard
on just one more thing.
The effort really, really paid off.
The whole crew really made this feel like an extension of the film.
And not only in content, but also in quality,
and I'm really grateful for that.
It was a pleasure and a privilege to work on it with them.