“Everyone at The Walt Disney Company is deeply saddened by the passing of Ron Miller,” said Bob Iger, chairman and chief executive officer, The Walt Disney Company. Eventually, as CEO, Miller pushed the Company to expand and explore, creating Walt Disney Home Video, Touchstone Pictures, and The Disney Channel. Miller’s first job was serving as second assistant on Old Yeller (1957). Ron served in the Army and played football for the Los Angeles Rams before his father-in-law recruited him to work at The Walt Disney Studios in 1957. They were married in Santa Barbara on May 9, 1954. Miller was 21 and a member of the USC Trojans football team when he was introduced to then-20-year-old Diane Disney on a blind date. Miller, Walt Disney’s son-in-law and the husband of Diane Disney, passed away February 9, 2019, in Napa, California. Pixar, smash and grab, Sparkshorts Remembering Ron Miller Other SparkShorts ( Float, Loop, and Wind) will be available on Disney+, The Walt Disney Company’s upcoming direct-to-consumer streaming service, set to launch in the U.S. Both of these Pixar Animation Studios SparkShorts shorts recently made their big-screen debut at Hollywood’s El Capitan Theatre, with Kitbull, from director Rosana Sullivan and producer Kathryn Hendrickson, hitting YouTube February 18. The YouTube premiere of Smash and Grab arrives a week after the debut of Purl, directed by Kristen Lester and produced by Gillian Libbert-Duncan. I loved just making that story come to life.” “All of these people really collaborating and creating a new pipeline-a new way of working. “It was just so inspiring for me,” adds Larsen. “We had animators actually in the suits so they could physicalize the characters,” Larsen explains, with Lally noting that team members readily embraced “the scrappy nature” of making an animated short film. To take their concept from script to screen, Larsen and Lally restructured their workflow and began experimenting with motion capture animation much earlier in the process.
As Lally asks in a behind-the-scenes video, “When those two robots want to do something other than what they’re designed to do, how far are they willing to go to do that-especially for each other?” Everything changes when Smash (the robot with the hammer arm) sees an opportunity to escape the engine room and lead Grab (the robot with the hands) to freedom. The short, part of an experimental storytelling initiative within the studio, tells the story of two robots who dream of leaving their demanding day jobs behind.
Pixar Animation Studios’ SparkShorts series continues today with a new entry from director Brian Larsen and producer David Lally.
Smash and Grab is, as its title suggests, a total smash.