\tThe animated short \u201cAn Almost Christmas Story\u201d completes Alfonso Cuaron\u2019s trifecta of Christmas stories.<\/p>\n
\tThis time, he turned to \u201cThe Green Knight\u201d director David Lowery to helm the storytelling. \u201cIt was almost exactly three years ago that I read the script for the first time,\u201d says Lowery. He happened to be feeling very festive, and it was an instant yes to sign on. \u201cIt feels exactly the right thing to do. I love Christmas. I love the tradition of Christmas movies, and I love short Christmas films,\u201d Lowery says. He also loved the idea of what Cuaron had done with \u201cThe Shepherd\u201d and \u201cLe Pupille,\u201d creating a new series of films for Disney+ which hopefully, along with \u201cAn Almost Christmas Story \u201d would become perennial classics. \t<\/p>\n
\t\u201cAn Almost Christmas Story,\u201d now streaming on Disney+, is based on the true story of an owl that was rescued from the Rockefeller Plaza Christmas tree in 2020. The owl, named Moon, is taught the true meaning of Christmas as he seeks to be reunited with his family. <\/p>\n
\t\t\t \t\t\tPopular on Variety\t\t \t \t\t \t \tCuaron knew he was going to be involved solely as a producer and would leave it up to the director, in this case Lowery, to create the story\u2019s vision.<\/p>\n
\tAt first, Lowery had the idea for it be live-action, but as he spent time on the script developing the story, he started to have other ideas. \u201cI\u2019ve done photo-realistic CG animals before, and they\u2019re wonderful, and I love getting to do them. But in this case, I felt there was an opportunity for a wonderful level of whimsy, and that we could remove one degree of reality from this movie and make it a little bit more fantastical, more magical and a little bit more in keeping with the tradition of the Christmas films that I grew up loving.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tHe decided to make all the animals \u201clook as if they\u2019re stop-motion.\u201d The other challenge was filming in New York City over the holidays would be impossible, and with that, Lowery decided to embrace a fully animated world so he could have a greater degree of creative flexibility. Ultimately, he primarily focused on using CG animation that visually emulated stop-motion. He created texture by using cardboard-like textures.<\/p>\n
\tThe shift to animation also allowed Lowery to focus on the themes and bring those to the surface, particularly the theme of belonging. \t<\/p>\n
\tOne of the first scenes Lowery worked on with his editor Mike Melendi was the moment Luna (voiced by Estella Madrigal) and Moon are on the subway. \u201cThey find a meaningful connection with one another. When we saw that\u00a0on paper, on storyboard and then the animatic, that revealed itself very early on to be the heart of the film,\u201d Lowery explains.<\/p>\n
\tBecause it was essential to the film, Lowery reveals the scene was one that took a lot of reworking. \u201cIt was originally much longer and much busier and much more complicated, and because it was so essential to the movie, it also needed to be as simple as possibly could be, and we kept reducing and distilling it down to the core essence of what that connection between those characters was.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tLowery worked closely with creative designer Nicholas Bateman who helped build New York City as a cardboard city. His brief for Bateman was simple, \u201cJust set your team loose. Have everyone build a two-scale version of New York City, particularly Rockefeller Center and the areas around it entirely out of cardboard.\u201d He adds, \u201cThey built everything to work as it really would; the taxis and automobiles. But, if you look closely, you\u2019ll see it\u2019s all built of cardboard.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tCuaron was watching from afar. \u201cI was fascinated David\u2019s process and how he kept developing the tone.\u201d He adds, \u201cI learned how each one of these forms completely changed the tone. There was an innocence to the result.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tLowey adds, \u201cIt became a fable or a fairy tale in a way that it wouldn\u2019t have been in any of those other versions.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tTake a look at the storyboards below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The animated short \u201cAn Almost Christmas Story\u201d completes Alfonso Cuaron\u2019s trifecta of Christmas stories. This time, he turned to \u201cThe Green Knight\u201d director David Lowery to helm the storytelling. \u201cIt was almost exactly three years ago that I read the script for the first time,\u201d says Lowery. He happened to be feeling very festive, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21502,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}