Nike Free Shoes Interview Doeri Welch-Greiner on D

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You mentioned the change in atmosphere ever since John and Ed took over. Can you get into that a little bit more?
Let’s talk a bit about the shorts program. This has been big news, that you’ve been bringing back animated shorts to Disney.
I read in Steve Hulett’s blog that he was really impressed with how the animators are now bringing their work to other animators, instead of suits.
How did everyone react to the news that Chris Williams was replacing Chris Sanders on Bolt?
Suite 101 chatted with "Glago's Guest" associate producer Doeri Welch-Greiner about the new shorts program, and working with John Lasseter, Ed Catmull and Williams.
One of the biggest news of John Lasseter's return to Disney Animation (he was fired from Disney in 1983) was his re-introduction of the shorts program. 2007 saw the debut of the Goofy short "How to Hook Up Your Home Theatre," and this year sees "Glago's Guest," a Chris Williams-directed short about a Russian soldier who receives unexpected visitors. It precedes Bolt into theatres on November 21st.
"When Ed Catmull came in I thought, ‘Oh, he’s the computer science guy and he’s going to have this engineering approach.’ But wow, he’s so multi-faceted and really concerned about process, not just the technology part of it. He’s really concerned with how we’re approaching the movies [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and how we make movies, and how we ensure that our division is a viable thing going forward. It’s a really exciting time.”
“Sure. John Lasseter’s very hands-on. He comes into your story meetings and he’s like a dose of Vitamin B [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], it’s just fantastic. His notes are always exactly what the team needs to hear. He’s really passionate about the work, and he inspires that in other people.
“Ed and John have a fantastic vision for the studio. One of the first messages we got from John was this idea he has about over-delivering. He loves that: you come to see the movie and you get a short, and you get a short when you get your DVD, and there’s all that excitement about this extra thing you got.
“Yeah, yeah! And even what that’s done to different groups within the studio. There are all these little task forces going on [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], of people really taking ownership of their own areas, and trying to make it their own little paradise and making the tool set what they want, and the work atmosphere what they want and that’s a different kind of ownership, I think.”
"So he re-instated the shorts program that had been pretty much dead since Fantasia 2000. They were thinking about Fantasia 2006: there was a series of shorts made going towards that goal that we released on DVDs or as bonus material. But Fantasia 2006 never happened, so there wasn’t a lot of focus on shorts. But John and Ed said, ‘We want to do this to develop new talent, to develop new technology, and to really push our envelope in terms of storytelling,’ and it’s such a great entertainment form that they wanted to get it back into play.”
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“Well, I’m not working on Bolt, but I know John Lasseter totally believes in him, and that Chris really turned that story around. It’s such a fun movie, I think it’s going to be hugely successful. Chris and his co-director, Byron Howard – the two of them together with Chris’s strong story sense and Byron’s animation