For the Birds (2000)

User Rating:

8.2/10   

Director:

Ralph Eggleston

Release Date:

2 November 2001 (USA)

Genre:

Animation | Short | Family

Plot:

A group of snooty birds roosting on a telephone wire get their just desserts when a goofy bird drops in.

Plot Keywords:

Bird | Computer Animation | Embarrassment | Pixar Animated Film | Slapstick

Awards:

Won Oscar. Another 6 wins

Cast

Ralph Eggleston

...

Bird (voice) (uncredited)

Directed by
Ralph Eggleston

Produced by
Karen Dufilho	....	producer
John Lasseter	....	executive producer

Film Editing by
Tom Freeman
Jennifer Leo Russ		(as Jennifer Taylor)

Production Management
Paul Cichocki	....	post-production supervisor
Renee Jensen	....	production manager
Holly Lloyd	....	production manager

Art Department
Norm DeCarlo	....	sculptor (as Norm Decarlo)
Derek Williams	....	set dresser

Sound Department
Tom Myers	....	sound designer
Jory K. Prum	....	additional character sound designer (as Jory Prum)

Visual Effects by
Byron Bashforth	....	additional shading and support
Byron Bashforth	....	render technical director
Onny P. Carr	....	additional shading and support
Christine Z. Chang	....	additional modeling and support
Jun Han Cho	....	character modeling and articulation artist
Keith B.C. Gordon	....	effects artist (as Keith Gordon)
Jesse Hollander	....	lighting artist
Leo Hourvitz	....	effects artist
Jongo	....	lighting artist
Ana Lacaze	....	master lighting artist
Eileen O'Neill	....	lighting artist
Eben Ostby	....	modeling supervisor
Cynthia Pettit	....	additional modeling and support (as Cynthia 'Kiki' Pettit)
Bill Polson	....	character modeling and articulation artist
Mitch Prater	....	shading artist
Brian M. Rosen	....	shading artist (as Brian Rosen)
Bill Sheffler	....	lighting artist
Jerome Strach	....	render technical director
David Valdez	....	CG painter
David Walden	....	shading artist
Bill Wise	....	supervising technical director

Animation Department
Michael Berenstein	....	animator
Ben Catmull	....	animator
Christine Z. Chang	....	layout artist
William Cone	....	background painter
Robin Cooper	....	background painter
Tim Crawfurd	....	animator
Ike Feldman	....	animator
Craig Good	....	layout artist
Patty Kihm	....	animator
Karen Kiser	....	animator
Angus MacLane	....	animator
Daniel Mason	....	animator (as Dan Mason)
James Ford Murphy	....	supervising animator
Michael Parks	....	animator
Karen Prell	....	animator
Roger Rose	....	animator
Doug Sheppeck	....	animator
David Tart	....	animator
Tasha Wedeen	....	animator
Adam Wood	....	animator
Kureha Yokoo	....	animator

Editorial Department
Craig Alpert	....	assistant editor
Luis Alvarez y Alvarez	....	assistant editor

Other crew
Susan Bradley	....	title designer
Perrin Cutting	....	film output
Bahram Hooshmand	....	production assistant
Louis Rivera	....	film output
Jeff Wan	....	film output

Thanks
Ken Bruce	....	thanks
Ed Catmull	....	very special thanks
Rob Gibbs	....	thanks
Dan Jeup	....	thanks
Steve Jobs	....	very special thanks
Bill Kinder	....	thanks
Ann Mather	....	very special thanks
Sarah McArthur	....	very special thanks (as Sarah Mcarthur)
Bob Peterson	....	thanks
Jeff Pidgeon	....	thanks
Joe Ranft	....	thanks
Kevin Reher	....	thanks
Catherine Roehl	....	thanks
Gary Rydstrom	....	thanks
Andrew Stanton	....	thanks
Lee Unkrich	....	thanks

Production Companies

• Pixar Animation Studios

Distributors

• Pixar Animation Studios
• The Walt Disney Company (Spain)

Other Companies

• Skywalker Sound  post-production sound services

Runtime:

3 min

Country:

USA

Color:

Color

Certification:

South Korea:All | Argentina:Atp | Australia:G | Germany:o.Al. | Spain:T | Sweden:Btl | UK:U | USA:G

Company:

Pixar Animation Studios

Trivia:

After experiencing great success with their animated shorts, John Lasseter opened up the department's facilities to anyone in the company who had a good idea for the next short. Ralph Eggleston, who had joined the company in 1993 to oversee art design on Toy Story (1995), had this idea from his CalArts days that he hadn't been able to complete.

Movie Connections:

Featured in The Pixar Shorts: A Short History (2007) (V)

Soundtrack:

Big High Wire Hop

Yes, yes, it's all true!

For The Birds is the side-splittingly hilarious short animated film that preceded the rather unimpressive Monsters, Inc, and all this hype that you may have read about For The Birds in the comments index here on the IMDb is pretty accurate, with the exception of the occasional grump who calls it forgettable or just amusing or some other such nonsense. Pixar is becoming more and more famous for the hilarity of their films (especially the short ones, if only because they are virtually uniformly hilarious), and For The Birds is definitely no exception.

What you have here is a story that is about as simple as they come - a bunch of tiny egg-shaped birds on a telephone wire who are approached by a big goofy bird, and they are all contemptuous toward her and do everything they can to get rid of her. It's the conspiracy that these little birds come up with to get rid of this ostrich-looking bird (yes, I know it's not an ostrich, by the way) and the fact that Pixar is able to communicate it to the audience without a single piece of dialogue other than these hilarious cheeps and grunts that the birds make that makes the film so impressive and funny and, yes, MEMORABLE. The Academy Award that For The Birds won for Best Animated Short Film for 2001 was even less of a surprise than the one that Shrek won for Best Animated feature! It was a given!

For The Birds is not the kind of short film that you watch before a rather short animated film and serves no other purpose than to make you feel like you got your money's worth because the feature film is rather short. This is not just something to keep you in your seats for a little longer (how much of a difference would three minutes really make in that case?), this is something that Pixar throws into the mix because they're so good at what they do that they can deliver pure entertainment even with such a short film. The old Roger Rabbit short films are the kind that are mildly amusing on a more childish level and that can be forgotten rather quickly, but For The Birds is something else entirely. Like all the Pixar shorts - not the least of which is Geri's Game (which should not be confused with Gerald's Game, which is a strikingly different story!), one of my personal favorites - For The Birds is the kind of short film that you enjoy for only a few minutes but remember for years. My only hope is that Pixar will someday come out with a special DVD just for all of their short films. Bravo!