Don’t be late for Disney’s Feast!
By Mindy Marzec
If you’re planning on seeing Disney’s “Big Hero 6” in theaters this weekend, make sure you’re not running late! You won’t want to miss the adorable short film that runs before the main feature, called “Feast!” It’s only a few minutes long, but it tells a pretty emotional and savory story, through the eyes of its main star, a Boston Terrier pup named Winston.
Last month I had a chance to talk with producer Kristina Reed during a press roundtable about making “Feast.” Kristina told us, “The idea (for ‘Feast’) came from something that Patrick (Osborne, the director) had been doing, which was using a one-second-a-day app and filming his dinners, and you watch the film now and it’s just plates of food. He sat down and watched all of these meals in one sitting, it was about six minutes, and he realized he could see what was happening in his life through these meals. He could see when he was in a production crunch; he could see when his fiancé moved in with him, he could see how his feelings were changing, how his life was changing, just by looking at his food. And he started to wonder if it was possible to tell a broader story, one that the audience could figure out. And that was the genesis of ‘Feast.’”
“One of the things (Patrick) did to make it broader, was he realized dogs are creatures of pattern, so if something changes for them, they notice. So he realized that would help the audience see the changes more quickly in the story beat, so that was how he realized he needed to tell the story with a dog. Then it became an issue of finding the right dog. The first thing we did was look through all the Disney films and say, well, we want a new dog, we want a fresh dog, we want to pick a breed that’s never been done before, which is … Disney has had quite a lot of dogs. We wanted a small dog, because we wanted to show the meals are moving from the floor, to the couch, and to the table. Then when the girlfriend comes it’s back down to the floor. So you sort of see this promotion and demotion happening. And then because Patrick knew he wanted a flat rendering style, when the dog turns you wouldn’t necessarily be aware of that unless the dog had some kind of markings on their face. So that led us to Boston (Terriers) because they have that really distinctive pattern.”