piper short film hero's journey

Member-only story

The Hero’s Journey as a Short Film

Scott Myers

Go Into The Story

Pixar shows it’s possible to adapt the Hero’s Journey in short form storytelling.

In response to a blog article on Joseph Campbell — ”Every myth is psychologically symbolic” — Carlton Bell posted this :

I’m curious. How would you go about incorporating the hero’s journey into a short film? 15 minutes is hardly enough time I think to go through all the stages. I want to make a short film and having all the elements of traditional stories comes off as elusive when making a 15 minute film.

This is an example of how the conversation about the Hero’s Journey has gone off the rails — through no fault of Carlton’s. It’s just that over the years, a kind of belief has settled into screenwriting consciousness that the Hero’s Journey is comprised of 12 “stages” as if this is a mandatory type of thing, even some sort of predetermined paradigm.

In fact, Joseph Campbell never intended for writers to use the Hero’s Journey as a blueprint for storytelling. Rather he came at it from the other direction: through a lifetime of reading tens of thousands of stories from around the world, he found this organic underlying nature of Story (in fact in his book “The Hero With a Thousand Faces,” Campbell details 17 narrative elements common to the Hero’s Journey).

Like Carl Jung, who was a huge influence on Campbell, he believed in the power of archetypes and how creative expression best derives from an artist’s unconscious self — dreams, fantasies, senses, feelings. Stories which reflect the Hero’s Journey do so organically because they reflect the innate nature of Story which people experience worldwide through their upbringing and the collective unconscious .

As far as I’m concerned, it’s more helpful for writers to think of the Hero’s Journey in terms of the meta take Campbell provides. Three movements:

Separation. Initiation. Return.

That not only completely aligns with Three Act Structure, it sets aside this notion which — again — has somehow taken root in Hollywood that we HAVE to use 12 stages in order to qualify as a Hero’s Journey.

This is ESPECIALLY true when it comes to short form storytelling as in the case of Carlton’s question: short movies.

When it comes to short form storytelling, nobody is better than Pixar (in my humble opinion). They produce a short film to accompany each of their feature length movies and that collection of movies ( Vol. 1 , Vol. 2 ) offers a wonderful education in storytelling.

Consider their 2016 short film Piper :

This is a classic Hero’s Journey in three movements:

Separation: Piper’s mother compels Piper to leave the comfort of home — where he is fed by his mother — to test out how to feed himself. Like many Hero’s Journey tales, this is a story about a youth transitioning into adulthood.

Initiation: Piper gets wiped out by a wave. His fears and anxieties are now elevated, making it harder for him to move forward. Then a Mentor figure shows up: A sand crab. Curious, Piper follows the crab, then gains ‘wisdom’: Piper can burrow himself into the sand when the wave comes and as a result see the world in a new light, opening up a new way to forage for food.

Return: Piper reconnects with his ‘tribe’ of birds, demonstrating his wisdom in action, embracing his inner sense of confidence as he’s armed with his newfound capability — he doesn’t have to run away from the waves (the tribe’s Old Way of Being, rather he brings back the ‘booty’ of what he’s learned, burrowing into the sand when the waves come). Everybody benefits and Piper is a transformed individual.

All of THAT in 4:15 (before credits).

That is a Hero’s Journey! Separation. Initiation. Return.

So Carlton, it’s not only possible to craft a Hero’s Journey story in 15 minutes, you can do it in 4 minutes!

Free yourself from this rigid notion that we HAVE to structure scripts according to 12 “stages” of the Hero’s Journey or, frankly, ANY other sort of paradigm.

If your story follows three movements as first detailed by Aristotle — Beginning / Middle / End — or articulated in his own way by Campbell — Separation / Initiation / Return — or Hegel — Thesis / Antithesis / Synthesis — or sonata form — Exposition / Development / Recapitulation — or your own computer keyboard — Ctrl / Alt / Delete — then…

You’re probably telling a Hero’s Journey story, even in a short film.

Written by Scott Myers

More from scott myers and go into the story.

Daily Dialogue —March 1, 2017

Harry: wait a minute ron: you understand why, harry once i make my move, the queen will take me. then you’re free to check the king….

100 Scene-Writing Prompts

At a fundamental level, screenwriting is scene-writing. use these prompts to improve your scene-writing chops..

“Definitive List of Cliched Dialogue”

Movie analysis: “her”, recommended from medium.

Writing and the Creative Life: Is the key to creativity “unlearning”?

What if we are inherently creative as children, then over time lose much of that capability that possibility is what i discovered when i….

The Writing Cooperative

Everything You Need to Know Before You Structure Your Novel

With detailed story structures and why sticking to one may harm your creativity.

My Favorite Writing Advice & Inspo

Our favorite writing prompts and inspiration

Stories To Help You Overcome Writer's Block

Best of The Writing Cooperative

Amy L. Bernstein

ILLUMINATION

Five Myths About Writing We Can Live Without

Conventional wisdom will not make you a brilliant writer.

Story and Plot

The Midpoint

While medium is a monthly blog for me, i publish a free screenwriting lesson every tuesday morning at storyandplot.com..

Alison Acheson

The Unschool for Writers

Working With “Mystery” in Fiction

John keats’ idea of ‘negative capability’.

Tom Zimberoff

Danny DeVito

Ruthless people.

Text to speech

• My Storyboards

hero's journey: piper

Create your own Storyboard

Storyboard text.

• ordinary world
• call to adventure
• Piper's ordinary world as a baby seagull consists of waiting in safety for his mother to find food and feed him.
• crossing the threshold
• Piper's mother has decided that he is old enough to start finding his own food. She tries to convince him to leave his usual spot away from the shore and come look for clams. 
• mentor/helper
• Piper is intimidated by the big waves and doesn't want to stop being fed by his mother. He likes having her just bring him food, but she goes to the shore and lets him know that he needs to learn to feed himself.
• tests/allies/enemies
• Piper decides to go for it and because he's inexperienced and it's his first try, he gets wiped out by a big wave. Now he's kind of traumatized and is even more scared of going near the water.
• When his mother encourages him to try again, he does. Except, this time he meets a sand crab, and follows it out of curiosity. He watches as all the sand crabs approach the shore and just burrow themselves into the sand when a big wave approaches.
• These crabs become his allies and teach Piper how to do what they do. At first he's still hesitant and runs away whenever a wave comes. Then, he decides to try it and a big wave approaches. He does what his allies do and doesn't get wiped out.

Oscar-winning movie “Piper”: An Inspiration to Life

Hey Guys….!!!

As John D. Rockefeller said “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great” A few years back when I started writing publically, one of my teachers sent me this video saying ‘This is Oscar-winning movie, write upon it.” When I watched this short animated movie – Piper, it really inspired me and I find it worth sharing. So, I thought to start a new blog  Random Inspirational Things at that time for this video under the name “Take A Chance…” as the theme of inspiration.

Back then, I didn’t know much about this video. But now I do. The name of the movie is “Piper”. It is a computer-animated short film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. This short movie was written and directed by Alan Barillaro and theatrically released on 17 June 2016, alongside Pixar’s Finding Dory. It won Oscar for the best animated short film at the 89th Academy Awards in the year 2017.

 Just watch this Oscar Winning Video and I will talk more about this video and how it inspired me or can inspire you.

You could know more about this movie on the Pixar website. Check the details of the Oscar Award for this movie on Oscar’s Site .

The story of this movie and our life

As we all could see, the duration of this movie is just 6 minutes and 5 seconds. But to create it, the director took 3 years (a really long time though). We can all say that this video was worth the effort and time.

So, this movie is about a baby piper who used to eat food which his mother piper brings for him. But one day, She wanted him to be on his own for his food like every parent does. Baby piper was amazed to see new things on its first attempt. But it went really horrible for him as he didn’t know how to do things like others just like sometimes we don’t know where to be careful enough. Baby piper got really scared and doesn’t want to go to that place again.

It did not go there back till he was starving for food. Just like we sometimes do things only when we really do not have any other option left. Baby piper was completely scared and that was when it met a new friend. This new friend helped him see the beauty of the world it was feeling the danger of. Baby Piper suddenly became enthusiastic which helped him feeding other adult pipers too.

A  baby piper  who was feeding on his mother just TOOK THE CHANCE and became a piper who feeds others  in just 2 days of experience with a whole new way. Similarly, sometimes, it is important for us to take that one step ahead to achieve what we want to achieve. The step that can make us or break us.

Message of Inspiration

There is always one way or the other to do things. If one door is closed another is opened and it is more beautiful than the previous one. So, Take A Chance and Be open to new things. Not only what we do but also How we do it. How much strong are we to take that step. Can we be courageous enough to stand again after falling? There are a lot of sayings and examples where people fall and then again take another step towards the beginning of the same thing. People doing a new start because the old one faded and getting successful. So, Who do you want to be – the one who cries about their failures or the one who tries to be successful? I always say one thing to everyone when they are stuck in thoughts – It’s all in your mind like it was in this baby piper’s mind. The change of perspective changed its whole life. It can yours too.

Regards, Ar. Anjali Singla

Author’s Note … bout the Write-Up: “This video was sent to me by my teacher to write upon when I started my public writing journey. When I watched this video I was inspired enough to start a new inspirational blog at that time. Now, when I look at people and their lives, it makes me feel more related to the lives they live these days. People need to get inspired and that is what I am doing through this Oscar-winning animated short movie. Sometimes a small thing teaches a big lesson.” says Ar. Anjali Singla Here I would love to hear your perspective of this video too in the comments below. P.S. This article was previously published on Random Inspirational Things . So this is the second and modified version of this article. I will see you soon 🙂 – Ar. Anjali Singla

For regular updates from Appreciation Arte on Facebook Page , Facebook Group , and Instagram Or for becoming part of our family Contact Us . You can also Subscribe to our YouTube Channel .

Ar. Anjali Singla

My super hero: my dad, our interesting story: the appreciating tale of artist connecting aspiring artist…, you may also like, voiced words and life experiences… poetry by piyush..., the spark anthology book (inviting submissions), maybe… you will never cross paths again…., finding your real self, affordability of silly mistakes, 15 comments.

Always a massive fan of linking to bloggers that I enjoy but dont get quite a bit of link love from. Enriqueta Putnem Caravette

Well, Appreciation Arte is about promoting art and talented Artists. Then why not give the credit? You will always find some link love here. 🙂

When some one searches for his essential thing, thus he/she needs to be available that in detail, thus that thing is maintained over here.

Thank you so much… We truly try to define such a level in our projects and blogs… We are glad it is meeting that level of information…

Way cool! Some very valid points! I appreciate you penning this write-up plus / the rest of the site is really good.

Thank you so much. Really appreciate such words from you 🙂

I know this if off topic but I’m looking into starting my own weblog and was curious what all is required to get set up? I’m assuming having a blog like yours would cost a pretty penny?

I’m not very internet savvy so I’m not 100% sure.

Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated.

if you are finding what is required to do a weblog setup. You need to find what do you want to do in it and how it should be looking like. You will get an answer. And yeah starting a blog can be free and costly. So that actually depends upon your choices. I had done professional hiring.

Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent,

Hi there, I would like to subscribe for this web site to obtain newest updates, therefore where can i do it please assist.

Hello, We really appreciate you liking our work. Thank you! You can follow us on our social media channels for the latest news mentioned at the bottom of our articles or from our Reach Us page. We will bring more updates on Appreciation Arte in the future.

Excellent post. Articles that have purposeful and also insightful information are extra enjoyable.

Thank you 🙂

I am sure this article has touched all the internet viewers, its really really pleasant piece of writing on building up new webpage.

Thank you 🙂 Glad to know it touched you. We will keep on posting for such positive feelings.

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Pixar’s New Short Film "Piper"

Sanderlings spend a lot of time in the ocean, scuttling in and out of the water in search of tiny invertebrates buried in the sand. Even downy hatchlings must immediately learn to fend for themselves and feed between unrelenting waves. So the last thing any Sanderling needs is a crippling phobia of the ocean. But such is the lot of the young heroine in Pixar’s newest short, Piper . Directed by Alan Barillaro, the six-minute film preceding Finding Dory concerns the trials of a young chick as she conquers her natural habitat —— and greatest fear.

The idea came to Barillaro during his morning jogs in the Bay Area, where he would see hordes of the little speckled birds scampering to feed amidst giant kelp, resembling little wind-up toys. He found this collective feeding frenzy charming, but he couldn’t quite shake his impression that these shorebirds were afraid of, well, the shore.

Studying Up on Shorebirds

To create Piper, Barillaro and his entire team entered the Sanderlings’ world. They spent weekends on beaches all over the Bay Area, meeting at 5 a.m. on a dusty road under a bridge in search of the birds. “Half of us were chasing around different beaches and calling each other on cell phones until we found a flock we could get close to,” Barillaro says. “It became this treasure hunt.”

The migratory Sanderlings were only ever around during the fall, but Barillaro and his team spent ample time observing Western Sandpipers, Godwits, and a flurry of other shorebirds would eventually mingle with his star in the short. Throughout these trips, Barillaro constantly watched for the Sanderlings’ distinct antics. “They have so much personality,” Barillaro says. “To see them hopping around on the laziness of one leg, joyously fluffing their feathers entirely to warm up.”

Staying True to Reality

Beyond the beach, things got a lot more complicated. All animal animation straddles the fine line between reality and caricature, as directors must create convincing and expressive characters out of their real-world counterparts. This often leads to anthropomorphism, where a tentacle can bend to make an elbow and a wing can wave like an arm. Pixar’s earlier stab at avian animation, a short called For the Birds , had no pretense of scientific accuracy, featuring large blue birds with no identifiable species that pointed their feathers like fingers.

Barillaro took a different tack, adamant that his film stay true to the biology of a bird. He eschewed common anthropomorphic strategies of animators, such as giving an animal eyebrows or human eyes. Instead his strategy became exaggeration, seeing how well he could capture the natural antics of the birds without making them human. But Barillaro and his team faced massive technical challenges confronting three of the trickiest substances to animate—water, sand, and feathers.

Barillaro deconstructed Sanderling anatomy and discovered that it's pretty much a ball on a stick, covered in feathers. Which may sound simple, except every single one of the feathers needed to move in reaction to the atmosphere, the wind and water, and the behavior of each bird. This amounted to 4.5 to 7 million feathers on each bird in Piper , a task that Barillaro admits was exceedingly hard. “But the funniest parts of birds come from the reality of feathers—how they look when she’s wet, when she’s scared, when she’s hungry,” Barillaro says. “They can express the full gamut of human emotion.”

The Sanderlings’ spangled tawny plumage added an extra level of difficulty in its animation, as Barillaro and his team strove to keep each bird’s coloring constant even while in motion. The light and shadows on the sandfurther complicated the task of shading a bird that could look anywhere from pure white to off-white to light gray, all depending on the placement of the sun. “Patterning is everything on a sandpiper,” he says. “Getting that right as well as getting the performance and the right story across mattered a lot.”

Barillaro worked with shorebird experts at the Monterey Bay Aquarium to ensure any creative liberties he took would not stray far from actual biology. Because the animals were too skittish to examine up close, Barillaro observed Makana, a Laysan Albatross at the aquarium, as a feather model. He studied how her feathers moved and shone in various levels of light to mimic these reflexes in animation. When Makana molted, the aquarium sent her feathers to Pixar so the Piper team could model directly off of them, says Aimee Greenebaum, the aviculture curator at the aquarium.

Adding the Emotion

The more he watched the Sanderlings, the more Barillaro recognized something elementally human about the little birds: their awkwardness. Studying a frame-by-frame video taken of a Sanderling chick falling on its back, all Barillaro saw was an awkward kid picking herself up off the playground. This natural behavior lent itself easily to Piper’s story of courage, both as a child and a parent. “The mother [Sanderling] represents the parent I wish I was, giving your kids enough room to make mistakes so that they can overcome their fears,” Barillaro says. And even though the film forgoes dialogue for bird calls, viewers can hear the tenderness of the mother-daughter relationship. Barillaro and his team spent hours listening to the spectrum of sandpiper vocabulary , picking out what felt warm or what felt cautionary.

In their studio, Barillaro and his team made a little homage of shorebird posters drawn in the style of John James Audubon for both reference and inspiration. “It’s all about that research,” Barillaro says. “There’s a beauty to that work of identification as well as capturing the species itself.”

Though Barillaro has always seen himself as a bird person—he had a Budgie as a kid—he’s actually allergic to them. But the three years he’s spent on Piper have given him a whole new appreciation for birds. “Now I find myself wanting to go off work birdwatching,” he says. “It really is an addictive thing.”

Check out a teaser (true to its name) below: 

Pledge to stand with Audubon to call on elected officials to listen to science and work towards climate solutions.

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

• What Is Cinema?
• Newsletters

Behind the Scenes of Piper, Pixar’s Best Short Film in Years

By Joanna Robinson

When it comes to animating feathers, sand, and water, the general rule—according to director Alan Barillaro —is “pick one, not all three.” But all three elements are on display in the heartwarming, shockingly realistic new short Piper, which has landed a coveted slot in front of Pixar's highly anticipated Finding Nemo sequel, Finding Dory. It took three years for Barillaro to craft the six-minute short, using cutting-edge technology that could very well signal the future of the studio.

The dialogue-free film follows a baby bird as it learns to brave the shore and feed itself, making a friend or two along the way. It all started with an animation test based on the cute sandpipers Barillaro would see on his morning Bay Area runs. With encouragement from Pixar chief John Lasseter and Finding Dory director Andrew Stanton, Barillaro set about turning the visuals into a story. Barillaro has been working in Pixar's animation department since the days of A Bug’s Life —but as part of the Pixar shorts program, he was encouraged to take “daunting” technical risks on this new short.

“We had to come up with new techniques across the board to solve feathers,” he says, invoking the technology Pixar created to capture the flaming, bouncing curls of the heroine Merida in 2012’s Brave. “The more we studied birds, it was apparent that all of the appeal required being in control of the feathers.”

That study involved four early morning field trips from Pixar’s Emeryville headquarters to the foggy sands of Muir Beach, where even Canadian-born Barillaro was shocked to learn how freezing cold Northern California beaches can be. But getting the environment just right was key for Barillaro. As the filmmaker proudly points out, the hermit crab who befriends the baby sandpiper was inspired by real crabs he and his kids found on the beach. “Those are actually shells that I went down and found with my kids,” Barillaro says. “That beautiful orange color was something we found in nature. We didn’t take the shells because I was telling my kids, ‘We don’t take shells from the beach,’ but I definitely got my photo reference right.”

Though lovably cartoonish, Finding Dory embraces human gestures—octopus tentacles become nonchalant elbows, fins become contemplative fingers. But Barillaro bent over backwards to avoid anthropomorphizing his creatures in Piper. “I put it on the crew to avoid hand gestures and things like that,” he says, instead asking them to find more believably non-human ways for the short’s characters to express themselves.

For months Barillaro followed migration tides and studied plovers, sandpipers, and sanderlings up and down the California coast, visiting the aviary at the Monterey Bay Aquarium (the inspiration for Finding Dory ’s setting) to make sure every detail was right. “That’s all John [Lasseter] instilling in us that you have to go and get your research.”

In addition to final character designs that were more realistic than the short's early, cartoonish sketches, Barillaro added faux lenses to give Piper the illusion of a nature documentary. “You want to develop the lenses that we use at Pixar and the kind of expression you can have with CG animation [to make it] similar to live action,” Barillaro says, explaining that zooms and moments of focus give the short an added dash of realism. “I really loved the macro photography,” Barillaro continues, “and wanted to see that pushed further.” Because Piper was developed at the same time as Finding Dory, Barillaro was able to borrow some of the costlier feature’s technological advances. “We probably took advantage of them more than they took advantage of us,” he confesses.

The Pixar shorts program was originally intended as an avenue to push the boundaries of software, part of research and development at Lucasfilm; Lasseter himself directed four out of the company's five original shorts. But today, the shorts are also used as a testing ground for new talent. Mark Andrews graduated from the Oscar-nominated short One Man Band to direct the feature-length Brave. Directors and projects are often plucked from the stable of existing Pixar talent, as in Barillaro's case. But developing technology is still a key component of these films—so don’t be surprised if a few years down the road, the realistic feathers and sea foam of Piper make their way into a longer feature.

After working on several of Pixar’s most famous films, the director knew to draw inspiration from the studio’s past. The script for Piper consists entirely of chirps, rather than dialogue—a nod to one of the studio’s biggest artistic leaps. “I’ll never forget being in [Andrew Stanton’s] office and him handing me the script for Wall-E, and reading act one and seeing there’s no dialogue,” Barillaro says. “Not that I’d compare this to Wall-E at all, but it gave me confidence to tackle something like Piper. ”

By David Canfield

By Chris Murphy

Whenever Barillaro was tempted to give up on his commitment to realism, it was John Lasseter who put him back on course. “There were times where I said, ‘A line of dialogue could really save me here,’ and I remember a specific moment where I had chosen a human gesture and John said, ‘Oh no, keep digging for the harder thing.’ That’s the mentorship I’ve appreciated through this project.” Barillaro says that Pixar’s daily meetings—in which everyone shows what they’ve been working on—are crucial to the company’s success. “You’re trying to make your peers laugh and yourself laugh and your family laugh, and if you get that, you hope there’s something honest there that audiences will relate to. It’s like, ‘Hey, I made John giggle. I feel set.’”

Barillaro’s three kids were also tough critics of Piper , all six minutes of it. “They let me know, ‘I don’t like that one. I don’t like that character at all.’” They especially didn’t like a moment, halfway through the short, where it looks like the fluffy baby bird might be in real danger. But, in this case, Barillaro was right to ignore his family: “I felt like it was important, that little bit of fear and worry. I just wanted the audience’s imagination to go farther than I ever would.” That sequence—which mirrors some of Finding Dory ’s themes about the dangers of the ocean—was received with audible gasps in my screening.

In fact, the whole short went over like gangbusters—and, given Pixar’s track record with snagging Academy Award nominations, Piper might be a safe bet in the best-animated-short category. (Consider one of the most famously challenging sections on your annual Oscar ballot a lock.) But pleased as he is with Piper ’s warm reception, Barillaro doesn’t even want to talk about awards season. “All of that, and the Oscar buzz, is nothing I focus on,” he says. Instead, Barillaro is planning to take a nice, big vacation—though not where you’d expect.

“I don’t think I’ll go near a beach,” he laughs. “Everyone in the crew took breaks in the mountains. I wonder why. Take a little break from staring at waves.”

Haunting Photos of Endangered Animals in Their Ruined Habitats

Joanna Robinson

Joanna robinson is a senior staff writer at *vanity fair.*.

By Laura Bradley

By Joe Reid

By John Lopez

By Julie Miller

By Joy Press

By Karen Valby

By Hillary Busis

By Savannah Walsh

“Piper,” a film about fear — A tiny bird conquers a vast ocean

Leave a Reply - Cancel Reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

• Animated shorts
• 2016 shorts
• Academy Award winning films
• Best Short Academy Award winners
• Annie Award Winner
• Português do Brasil
• View history
• 2 Accolades
• 6 References
• 7 External links

The short focuses on a newborn sandpiper, the eponymous Piper , who is brought to the shoreline by her mother so she can learn how to feed on bivalves. However, she is caught off guard by an incoming wave and becomes engulfed in it. Traumatized, Piper refuses to go to the shore again; however, her hunger leaves her no choice but to risk it. On her second attempt, she sees a tiny hermit crab who also comes ashore to feed. As a new wave approaches, she observes that the crab simply buries himself down in the sand. Out of other options, Piper resorts to imitating the crab. The wave submerges Piper, but she still stays safely at the bottom. Opening her eyes, she marvels over all the bivalves creeping out of the sand to take a quick breath before the wave ends. The short ends with Piper no longer afraid of the waves, even jumping playfully in the water and tucking herself in the sand each time a wave flows and is seen later that night, sleeping in the nest with her mother and using shells as a pillow.

Accolades [ ]

• Piper is the first Pixar short film to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, since 2001's For the Birds .

Gallery [ ]

References [ ]

• ↑ Piper: Meet Pixar's cutest new short-film hero — exclusive

External links [ ]

• 1 Lyn Rakish
• 2 Johnny Worthington III
• 3 Randall Boggs

• Today's news
• Reviews and deals
• Climate change
• 2024 election
• Fall allergies
• Health news
• Mental health
• Sexual health
• Family health
• So mini ways
• Unapologetically
• Buying guides

Entertainment

• How to Watch
• My watchlist
• Stock market
• Biden economy
• Personal finance
• Stocks: most active
• Stocks: gainers
• Stocks: losers
• Trending tickers
• World indices
• US Treasury bonds
• Top mutual funds
• Highest open interest
• Highest implied volatility
• Currency converter
• Basic materials
• Communication services
• Consumer cyclical
• Consumer defensive
• Financial services
• Industrials
• Real estate
• Mutual funds
• Credit cards
• Balance transfer cards
• Cash back cards
• Rewards cards
• Travel cards
• Online checking
• High-yield savings
• Money market
• Home equity loan
• Personal loans
• Student loans
• Options pit
• Fantasy football
• Pro Pick 'Em
• College Pick 'Em
• Fantasy baseball
• Fantasy hockey
• Fantasy basketball
• Download the app
• Daily fantasy
• Scores and schedules
• GameChannel
• World Baseball Classic
• Premier League
• CONCACAF League
• Champions League
• Motorsports
• Horse racing
• Newsletters

New on Yahoo

• Privacy Dashboard

Piper: Meet Pixar's cutest new short-film hero — exclusive

Before this summer’s Finding Dory plunges you back into the ocean, the new Pixar short film preceding the Finding Nemo sequel will offer you a prime spot on the beach alongside what could possibly be the studio’s cutest character creation yet: the big-eyed, diminutive little beach-dwelling bird, the eponymous Piper .

The inspiration for the six-minute short — about a hungry baby sandpiper learning to overcome hydrophobia — came from less than a mile away from Pixar Studios in Emeryville, California, where veteran Pixar animator and Piper director Alan Barillaro would run alongside the shore and notice birds by the thousands fleeing from the water but returning between waves to eat.

“Seeing the way these sandpipers react to waves and run, I always felt, ‘Gosh, that’s a film, that’s a character,” says Barillaro, who began toying with animation software as a personal challenge to design a non-speaking character who was afraid of the water yet had to venture into it to eat. “It’s always fun to show a world we’re familiar with but from a different perspective. We’ve all been to the beach, but have we ever viewed water from just an inch off the sand? That could be very fearful from a bird’s perspective.”

WANT MORE EW? Subscribe now to keep up with the latest in movies, television and music.

Barillaro’s early concept work was playful and low-stakes, but his progress on Piper impressed his mentor, Dory director Andrew Stanton (whom Barillaro worked with on Nemo , A Bug’s Life , and Wall-E ). “You always want to show directors, ‘Hey, are these cool tools you’d like to use to make films?’” Barillaro says. “So I showed Andrew the Piper tests thinking I was very much just showing him a test, but he kept poking at me, like, ‘It’s a cool test, but keep working on that story.’ And then John [Lasseter] did the same. There’s remarkable encouragement at Pixar that when you think of an innovative idea, don’t forget the story. It was their encouragement or else I would have stopped at the test phase.”

The story then grew, as Piper became a tale of a child learning from a parent about the way of the food chain — and a child learning from another child, as Piper encounters a small hermit crab who teaches her the way of the waves. “It’s the kid at the playground feeling,” says Barillaro. “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. 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.”

Barillaro also landed King Crimson singer Adrian Belew to score the film, after initially using Belew’s music temporarily. “I put him in as a placeholder in my very first original story,” he says. “And Andrew said, ‘Adrian contacted me and would love to work on a Pixar project.’ So it was my first choice and his first choice come together. We were pretty excited, and he was instrumental in getting the right tone.”

Fast-forward through about three years of storyboards, R&D, and production, and Piper has landed the plum spot before Finding Dory — a stroke of serendipity and well-earned fortune for an animator rising through the ranks to join the prestigious club of short directors. “To work with Andrew so closely over the years, it means a lot to me that I’m in front of his film,” says Barillaro. And as for Piper and Dory ’s shared nautical theme? Purely a coastal coincidence.

Finding Dory — and Piper — hit theaters June 17. Meet Piper ’s Piper in the concept art above.

Recommended Stories

Former nba guard darius morris dies at 33.

Former NBA guard Darius Morris has died at the age of 33. He played for five teams during his four NBA seasons. Morris played college basketball at Michigan.

The FDIC change that leaves wealthy bank depositors with less protection

Affluent Americans may want to double-check how much of their bank deposits are protected by government-backed insurance. The rules governing trust accounts just changed.

Timberwolves coach Chris Finch calls Jamal Murray's heat-pack toss on court 'inexcusable and dangerous'

Murray made a bad night on the court worse during a moment of frustration on the bench.

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan says he’s not voting for Trump : 'Character is too important'

Ryan says he would be writing in a Republican candidate instead of voting for Donald Trump.

Cardinals lose C Willson Contreras after left arm fractured by J.D. Martinez's swing

The Cardinals' nightmare season continues.

Post-draft NFL fantasy power rankings: Offenses we love, like and want to stay away from

With free agency and the draft behind us, what 32 teams look like today will likely be what they look like Week 1 and beyond for the 2024 season. Matt Harmon and Scott Pianowski reveal the post-draft fantasy power rankings. The duo break down the rankings in six tiers: Elite offensive ecosystems, teams on the cusp of being complete mixed bag ecosystems, offensive ecosystems with something to prove, offenses that could go either way, and offenses that are best to stay away from in fantasy.

Ranking the best situations for the rookie quarterbacks: Start with Michael Penix in Atlanta at No. 1

It’s key to note that we’re not saying the “best team” or “best roster.” Instead, we’re talking about the best confluence of factors that can outline a path for survival and then success.

These 3 stocks are poised to benefit from the massive energy transition

The energy transition will benefit companies providing electrical needs for surging demand. Analysts point to these three stocks as a Buy.

Phil Mickelson on the majors: 'What if none of the LIV players played?'

Phil Mickelson hints that big changes could be coming to LIV Golf's rosters, and the majors will need to pay attention.

Blockbuster May trade by Padres, MVP Ohtani has arrived, Willie Mays’ 93rd birthday & weekend recap

Jake Mintz & Jordan Shusterman discuss the Padres-Marlins trade that sent Luis Arraez to San Diego, as well as recap all the action from this weekend in baseball and send birthday wishes to hall-of-famer Willie Mays.

The director of the great new Pixar short 'Piper' reveals the painstaking 3-year process to make it

Less than a mile from Pixar Studios in Emeryville, California, there's a calming stretch of beach that animator Alan Barillaro visits often. Three years ago, while walking along that Pacific shore, Barillaro came on an idea that has become the latest great Pixar work.

It's "Piper," the short film showing before "Finding Dory," which is out Friday.

At the time Barillaro, 41, was heavily involved in what Pixar calls a “Tools” session. It’s when animators basically spend time messing around with the company’s proprietary software to see the ways they can implement new tools for their projects.

Barillaro didn’t get into specifics of the session when he talked to Business Insider recently, but  Pixar CCO John Lassetter wasn’t that into it anyway. But  the character Barillaro created for the test had promise.

Starting out with the crow from “Brave,” Barillaro transformed that into one of the tiny sandpiper birds he saw constantly on his trips to the beach running back and forth from the tide.

With the encouragement of Lasseter and “Finding Dory” director Andrew Stanton, Barillaro found himself working on storyboards about the sandpiper.

“I got to be totally honest,” Barillaro told Business Insider, “it was outside all of the normal development structure of the studio.”

Barillaro, who has been at Pixar since he was 18, has worked on almost every level at the studio — animator on "Monsters, Inc.," supervising animator on "The Incredibles" and "Brave" — but having never directed before, he was searching for advice.

“I assumed with directing, I would get the secrets of how to do it from Andrew and John, the tools they use to guide themselves,” but then he realized something else about those filmmakers' talent.

“What I found I was lacking was how personal they take their work and being honest in what you’re trying to say,” Barillaro said.

He spent a year with storyboard artists trying to formulate his sandpiper, which he named Piper. What he came up with was a baby sandpiper who is no longer being fed by his mother, so he has to overcome his fear of the water to get his own meals.

Lasseter was impressed by the progress and greenlit the project to be Pixar’s latest short for "Dory."

Related stories

Barillaro said it was working with Stanton as animation supervisor on “WALL-E” that made him understand how to make a compelling and personal six-minute short about a sandpiper and his mother with absolutely zero dialogue.

“People have to remember, when we start these things, we have no idea how we’ll pull it off,” Barillaro said. “I remember reading the script for ‘WALL-E’ and going to Andrew’s office and reading act one and couldn’t believe we were going to tell a love story between two robots with no dialogue. I felt I was taking lessons learned from that film and applying them to mine.”

It took just over a year and a half to do the animation for “Piper,” which included close to 7 million feathers created for the sandpipers and billions of sand pebbles to make up the beach.

“At some point you just realize numbers haven’t been created to count how many we did,” Barillaro said of the sand pebbles.

But seeing as “Piper” was born from a Tools session, Barillaro wanted to push the animation technology at Pixar as far as he could. The short uses the new render software that Stanton also used in “Finding Dory,” and to get the sandpiper feathers and the rushing tide to look right, animators — who totaled up to 40 — did almost everything by hand, as opposed to having the software create simulations.

“We pushed the rendering power to its limit in this film,” Barillaro said.

But with all Pixar projects, short or long, focus on the story is paramount. And Barillaro’s biggest challenge was finding a way to have Piper and his mother carry a conversation without it looking too human.

Dialogue that was written by  Barillaro guided the team initially, but by year three of production, they had to figure out how to make Piper and his mom communicate on their own.

“I was very passionate about not humanizing the story and not going to gestures that are very human, like using hands,” Barillaro said. “One time I asked the animator to do a head shake for the bird, like a human saying ‘no.’ And what I appreciated was a note that John gave me saying, ‘I know it’s hard, but look for another gesture.’ His encouragement to keep looking and not going for the easy one, that meant a lot.”

Barillaro finally handed off “Piper” a few weeks ago — literally hours before the deadline to have the short attached to “Finding Dory” when it plays in theaters. He admits it’s a bittersweet feeling.

“It’s the moment you feel you know how to do it,” he said.

But he also knows that at Pixar, there’s always something else to tackle.

“You come back to the office the next day and after all those years being a bird, now you have to be a monster or a fish,” he said.

Watch a clip from “Piper” below:

Watch: Meet the genius behind all your favorite Pixar and Disney movies

• Main content

‘Piper’: 12 Things to Know About Pixar’s New Short, Plus First Clip Revealed

The cutest thing you'll ever see will debut with 'Finding Dory.'

The new Pixar Animation Studios six-minute short Piper , in theaters with Finding Dory , tells the story of a hungry sandpiper hatchling who ventures from her nest, for the first time, to dig for food by the shoreline. When little Piper discovers that the food is buried beneath the sand, where scary waves roll up onto the shore, she must find a way to overcome her fears.

During a presentation at the press day for Finding Dory , director Alan Barillaro and producer Marc Sondheimer talked about the extensive research, technical testing, the themes explored in the story, inspirations, and finding Piper’s personality and sound. We’ve compiled a list of 12 things that you should know about the making of Piper , but before that, here's a first look at the adorable short:

• Piper director Alan Barillaro has been an animator at Pixar since 1997. He was a supervising animator on The Incredibles , WALL-E and Brave . After Brave , he wanted to further explore how to better express himself with CG.
• At Pixar, they’re very close to the water, and as Barillaro went on his morning run, he realized just how many sandpipers there are. He decided to explore how much character is in a little bird running across the sand to the water.
• Barillaro did a technical test to explore the bird’s personality and showed it to Andrew Stanton (the director of Finding Dory , which the Piper short is in theaters with), and was encouraged to develop the story of a sandpiper scared of the water more deeply.
• With the story, Barillaro also wanted to dig deeper about parenting, as the father of three kids. At Pixar, they’re taught to be really honest about the story they’re telling, and to make sure it comes from the heart.
• The idea of conquering your fears is not only the story Barillaro wanted to tell with Piper , but it was the way he felt about beginning filmmaking and being a first-time director. Not only did Piper have to face the wave, but so did Barillaro.
• The entire film had to be expressed from the point of view of a sandpiper that’s four inches tall. To figure that out, the filmmakers got out to the beach as often as possible, so that they could emotionally capture the story in the correct way. Barillaro even went to Hawaii with a Go-Pro camera for further research.
• One of the things that makes Piper unique is that everything is a character. Not only do you have the little bird as a character, but the waves are a character and the bubbles are a character. The timing of everything has to be right, and there’s an interplay in the performance.
• Even though you can’t lean on the normal gestures you can use with people, birds are so expressive. The moment you start studying birds, you see the choices of personalities that are possible to explore.
• You realize that it’s really all about the feathers. By posing the feathers, you can really bring out and change the personality. Each bird has four to seven million feathers, and they have to be animated, placed and shaped by hand.
• For the vocals, they had to pick a language and realize it. Piper’s vocal range is not that wide, so she had to have single syllable sounds, like a child who has one-word answers. They used a broken squeaky toy as reference for the sounds that Piper makes.
• In comparison, the mother is warm, graceful, caring and calm. To express that, they used warmer vocal sounds.

Piper is in theaters with Finding Dory on June 17 th .

• Search Please fill out this field.
• Newsletters
• Sweepstakes

Piper: Pixar's cutest new short-film hero gets first look

The beach-based short will premiere before 'Finding Dory' this summer.

Before this summer’s Finding Dory plunges you back into the ocean, the new Pixar short film preceding the Finding Nemo sequel will offer you a prime spot on the beach alongside what could possibly be the studio’s cutest character creation yet: the big-eyed, diminutive little beach-dwelling bird, the eponymous Piper .

The inspiration for the six-minute short — about a hungry baby sandpiper learning to overcome hydrophobia — came from less than a mile away from Pixar Studios in Emeryville, California, where veteran Pixar animator and Piper director Alan Barillaro would run alongside the shore and notice birds by the thousands fleeing from the water but returning between waves to eat.

“Seeing the way these sandpipers react to waves and run, I always felt, ‘Gosh, that’s a film, that’s a character,’” says Barillaro, who began toying with animation software as a personal challenge to design a non-speaking character who was afraid of the water yet had to venture into it to eat. “It’s always fun to show a world we’re familiar with but from a different perspective. We’ve all been to the beach, but have we ever viewed water from just an inch off the sand? That could be very fearful from a bird’s perspective.”

WANT MORE EW? Subscribe now to keep up with the latest in movies, television and music.

Barillaro’s early concept work was playful and low-stakes, but his progress on Piper impressed his mentor, Dory director Andrew Stanton (whom Barillaro worked with on Nemo , A Bug’s Life , and Wall-E ). “You always want to show directors, ‘Hey, are these cool tools you’d like to use to make films?’” Barillaro says. “So I showed Andrew the Piper tests thinking I was very much just showing him a test, but he kept poking at me, like, ‘It’s a cool test, but keep working on that story.’ And then John [Lasseter] did the same. There’s remarkable encouragement at Pixar that when you think of an innovative idea, don’t forget the story. It was their encouragement or else I would have stopped at the test phase.”

The story then grew, as Piper became a tale of a child learning from a parent about the way of the food chain — and a child learning from another child, as Piper encounters a small hermit crab who teaches her the way of the waves. “It’s the kid at the playground feeling,” says Barillaro. “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. 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.”

Barillaro also landed notable King Crimson singer Adrian Belew—a veteran musician whose career spans five decades of solo albums and collaborations with folks like David Bowie, Frank Zappa, and Talking Heads—to score the film, after initially using Belew’s music temporarily. “I put him in as a placeholder in my very first original story,” he says. “And Andrew said, ‘Adrian contacted me and would love to work on a Pixar project.’ So it was my first choice and his first choice come together. We were pretty excited, and he was instrumental in getting the right tone.”

Fast-forward through about three years of storyboards, R&D, and production, and Piper has landed the plum spot before Finding Dory — a stroke of serendipity and well-earned fortune for an animator rising through the ranks to join the prestigious club of short directors. “To work with Andrew so closely over the years, it means a lot to me that I’m in front of his film,” says Barillaro. And as for Piper and Dory ’s shared nautical theme? Purely a coastal coincidence.

Finding Dory — and Piper — hit theaters June 17. Meet Piper ‘s Piper in the concept art above.

Related Articles

pixar piper short film

All Formats

Resource types, all resource types.

• Rating Count
• Price (Ascending)
• Price (Descending)
• Most Recent

Pixar piper short film

Literary Elements Pixar Short Film Bundle - Piper & La Luna DISTANCE LEARNING

Literary Elements Using Pixar 's Animated Short Film Piper - DISTANCE LEARNING

• Easel Activity

Literary Elements Pixar Short Film Growing Bundle - Bao, Piper , & La Luna

Monomyth Cycle (Hero's Journey) Activity Using " Piper " (2016) –  Pixar Short Film

• Google Drive™ folder

Piper - Pixar Short Film - Differentiated Scaffolded Workbook

• Word Document File

Inferencing: Piper Disney Pixar Short Film

Pixar 's Short Film ' Piper ' Resource Bundle

Pixar 's ' Piper ' Short film Questions on Slides

• Google Slides™

Resilience: Pixar Short Film Piper Activity and Worksheet

Piper pixar short film written story and writing prompts

Pixar 's Piper short film exit pass

Character Traits and Change using Pixar Short Films

Teaching Literary Elements with Animated Short Films : Piper

Wordless Short Film - Piper Worksheets

Determining Theme in Disney/ Pixar 's " Piper "

• Google Docs™

Author's Purpose with PIXAR short , Piper

Pixar Shorts Finding Theme and Summary Worksheets and Graphic Organizer

Cause and Effect Flowchart and Writing Activity for PIXAR short , Piper

Pixar Short Companion - Piper - No Prep!

Pixar Film Short Story Element Bundle

Pixar Short Films - English 2 EOC Review

Pixar -like Short Films Literary Devices, Elements, & Analysis Workshop Bundle

DIGITAL Pixar Short Film Study

Piper . Story. Comprehension. Animated Video. Overcoming Fears. ELA.

• We're hiring
• Help & FAQ
• Privacy policy
• Student privacy
• Terms of service
• Tell us what you think

• View history

Piper Clip uit de Pixar Kortfilm voor Finding Dory Disney BE

Piper is a Pixar short film shown in front of Finding Dory . The short is directed by Alan Barillaro , with music provided by King Crimson's Adrian Belew. [1]

• 2 Production
• 5 References

The short centers on a newborn sandpiper, the eponymous Piper , who is brought by her mother to the shoreline so she can learn to feed on bivalves. However, she is caught off guard by an incoming wave and engulfed in it. Traumatized, Piper refuses to go to the shore again, however, her hunger leaves her no choice. On her second attempt, she notices a tiny hermit crab who also comes to the shore to feed. As a new wave approaches, she observes that the crab buries himself down in the sand. Out of options, Piper resorts to imitating the crab. The wave submerges Piper, but she stays safely at the bottom. Opening her eyes, she witnesses with wonder all the bivalves creeping out of the sand to take a quick breath before the wave ebbs. The short ends with Piper no longer afraid of the waves, jumping playfully in the water and tucking herself in the sand every time a wave flows.

Production [ ]

Barillaro said the impetus for the short came from what watching the behavior of feeding sandpipers, who forage on the shore, but flee the water each time the waves flow. [1]

• 2017 Academy Award® Winner for Best Animated Short Film
• Annie Award Winner for Best Animated Short Subject
• Advanced Imaging Society Lumiere Award Nominee for Best 3D Short

Gallery [ ]

References [ ]

• ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Piper: Meet Pixar's cutest new short-film hero — exclusive
• 1 Johnny Worthington III
• 2 Randall Boggs
• 3 Inside Out 2