French student film made years before Pixar's "UP"

[Dustin Crops Boy]

Anyone hear about this? Apparently this 5 minute French student film was made in 2005, and Up was released in '08.

The similarities are stunning:

Have a watch: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2oe23_above-then-beyond

More info here:http://youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com/blog3/?p=4031

 

[Jet Beetle]

Wow! Sorry but that's just too close to be a coincidence. I hope someone got some option money for this short. It's not like it really surprises me. During the writing of Sky High, the first 10 drafts or so I had a dog that went to the school named Atomic Dog - sort of like an homage to Krypto and the other super pets that I loved reading about as a kid. Anyway, Atomic Dog was able to speak thanks to the collar he wore which had a speaker in it. He would chase squirrels and tell people how much he loved them all the time - basically all of his emotions were worn on his sleeve because there was no way to hide them. Anyhow, when I saw "up" i was like - Hmmm? Knowing pixar kept close tabs on my script during development making sure it didn't stray too close to The incredibles, which was also in development at the same time. But, I tossed away any real concern knowing a dog with a collar that allows him to speak is not something i want to spend too much energy on - then I read an interview with the guys who wrote Up and they said "We found the dog character in another script at Disney and loved him They eneded up not using him so we did. Now, I have no idea if they were talking about my script - but it does make me wonder.

 

[Vaderman]

Wow, the house is clearly the same as is the idea.
I wonder how that happened? I would think that for a release in '08 Up was in the works starting around '05 (possibly earlier...)

 

[micdavis]

The idea for Up, I believe, has knocked around Pixar for 10 years or so.

 

[SmilingOtter]

According to wikipedia, they began writing in 2004.

 

[nickytea]

What makes Up such a brilliant creative success, in my opinion, has zero to do with the elements it shares with this short. A base concept is the most easily susceptible to parallel development.

The core thematic concept of Carl's arc and the depth of character are, not surprisingly, nowhere to be found here.

This stuff happens all the time. (Not that I'm saying ideas aren't ever stolen, just doesn't seem that way here.)

 

[propsculptor]

Looks way too close to be a coincidence in my opinion, and since the Students who worked on the Student Film don't actually own it, they can't Sue for infringement...

There are way too many ideas used in Hollywood that were stolen from other people's ideas and many usually settle out-of-court, so most people don't even hear the details!

 

[Benign Robot]

You can be certain Pixar sees every CG short made public - farming for new talent, sizing up the competition, and looking for "inspiration".

 

[Moviefreak]

Pete Doctor commented on this:

Pete Docter – “We came up with this idea of a floating house, and we worked backwards from that, thinking, “How did this guy get into the floating house?” And we came up with this whole backstory of him meeting this girl, and they fell in love, and they had this whole relationship. And this failed promise, that they didn’t ever get to go down to South America to live this adventure that they always wanted to do. And so it was kind of based on that.”

The resemblance to the students’ short film made me uneasy, so I had to look into this.

I contacted Yannick Banchereau and asked:

“Did someone in your team go on to work for Pixar?”

“Did Pixar buy the rights to your concept?”

“Was this purely a coincidence?”

His response (translated by Google Translate):

Yannick Banchereau – “Well, no, none of us went to work at Pixar, if you know someone who is in Supinfgraph, you should know that ESRA has a partnership with Pixar, so we concluded that for Pixar to see our film among those that ESRA had sent them, and they “kept” (stolen?) the idea into a feature film …
Unfortunately the film does not belong to us because this was done as part of our studies, so we can do nothing …
Thank you for your interest, it’s good to see that someone has acknowledged our film (even if the quality is far from the Pixar)”

 

[EvilRocketeer]

You can be certain Pixar sees every CG short made public - farming for new talent, sizing up the competition, and looking for "inspiration".

They did that with their animation short "Presto"...A few years before theymade it, some pixar guys were at an animation film festival thingy and they took or borrowed the idea from one of the shorts they had there

 

[Moviefreak]

With the talent pool at that company... they can't come up with their own ideas??

 

[nickytea]

With the talent pool at that company... they can't come up with their own ideas??

A lot of people believe that there are no new ideas. It's not hard to believe with thousands of years of storytelling behind us.

A base concept (In this case, the "flying house") is nothing inherantly remarkable. Maybe someone working for them took it from a short they saw, maybe nobody working on "Up" saw this short. Either way, it is the expert handling and specific narrative expression of the concept that is truley remarkable and ... original.

 

[Moviefreak]

I agree.... a flying house is no inherantly new idea.... but look at the rest of it. Look at the style of the house. The fact that the city is growing right around the house. The owner is being evicted, just like in Pixar's version. Sure.... if they had a house in Ohio, and the owner was retiring and flying their house to Florida.... not much question in that. But the whole look, and concept was laid out there. Way too similar for my taste.

And yes, with thousands of years of story telling, ideas are bound to repeat or be close... but there is "WAY TOO CLOSE". You can have two films with flying houses... but the set up of why they flew the houses is what made it obvious.

Disney has been doing it for years though:
the idea of Atlantis was stolen from some anime called Nadia...or so they say... and the Lion King was stolen from something called Kimba.

 

[Moviefreak]

Thinking about this made me realize that the thought process of:
"A base concept (In this case, the "flying house") is nothing inherantly remarkable" is what Pixar and other studios rely on. What angers me is that they don't feel the need to change it that much. So you took a concept or an idea and ran with it, so what?? But why stick so close to the original.

You have Little Mermaid and Splash.... two mermaid movies about a mermaid who falls in love with a human, and she becomes human for a short time. Similar? Yes!! But a rip off?? Not even close. This is a situation where the writers of Splash might have been inspired by HAns Christian Anderson's tale (Mermaid, loves human, goes ashore), but then made it thier own.

The similarity of the short and UP, would be the equivilant of the writers of Splash, having the mermaid, come to live with the humans, behind her father's back, King...uh... Trident (see his name isn't the same, lol). And the guy she loves is a Duke, yeah, a Duke, not a prince. SEE... Now the film bears a closer proximity to the original story.

I believe that is the problem with the "inspiration" idea here.

 

[Moviefreak]

Oh... and you better bet...

If the roles were reversed, and someone made that short for a film festival, after UP was released.... Dinsey would have nailed their balls to the wall.

But here, Disney just shruggs it off as, "oh, that is just weird how similar they are".

 

[TheRealFennShysa]

They did that with their animation short "Presto"...A few years before theymade it, some pixar guys were at an animation film festival thingy and they took or borrowed the idea from one of the shorts they had there

Any proof for this? If you're referring to this short, just the idea of having a magician and a rabbit is as old as dirt, and the execution is completely different... Pixar was more obviously inspired by Tex Avery and Warner Bros. cartoons (such as this one, ferinstance)...

It's the same with Up and the french film - it's all about execution, and thematically, the films are completely different, except for some surface similarities... and it's not like the French filmmakers were the first with some of their ideas either - check out this house in Seattle, for example...

Now, if you wanna see a REAL rip-off, look no further....

 

[Moviefreak]

no matter how we can defend how different it is.... do you think Disney wouldn't go after that short if it came out AFTER their film? Disney would be all over that.

While Disney currently would agree with you and say "it's all about execution, and thematically, the films are completely different, except for some surface similarities... and it's not like the French filmmakers were the first with some of their ideas", should the roles be reversed...

Disney would be singing a whole different set of rules and views on the similiarities.

But then Disney had been doing this for years:

In the history of Disney, Steamboat Willie was "inspired" by a Buster Keaton film. But that is cool. A parody is acceptable. But then Walt names a mouse, Mickey Mouse? There was already a popular toy mouse called Mickey Mouse (not Walt's and already out on the market), and he looked alot like Walt's new creation. So he carried on with his new "creation" and then decided to make toys, using.... the same toy manufacturer of the original Mickey Mouse toy. So Walt sued the small originators of the Mickey Mouse Toy, saying that they were violating his copyright, and since he had the larger company, he squashed the little guy, who was there first with the character before him.

So trust me, if the shoe were on the other foot, Disney would suddenly see this similarity as a HUGE issue.

 

[jlee562]

Since Pixar is local, it's helpful to mention a few details of being in the bay area.

There's a house adjacent to Children's Hospital in Oakland, where the owners decided not to sell their land, so the hospital built around them (on Google Maps).

In terms of the style of the house, there's lots of those houses around Berkeley/Oakland/Emeryville, that's kind of unremarkable. The SF Chronicle, for example, speculated that this west Berkeley dwelling was the inspiration:

This is less than 5 minutes away from where I type.

I mention these things, because Pixar draws inspiration from a lot of local landmarks. Fentons (mentioned and shown at the end of Up), for example, is a real ice cream parlor. The Skyline in WALL-E borrows the giant cranes from the Port of Oakland. The "downtown" area at the end of the Incredibles bears a striking resemblance to Downtown Oakland's Lake Merrit neighborhood.

 

[Moviefreak]

All animated films need inspiration. I worked on them, trust me, I know. You looked for reference photos, went out in public and drew sketches, even took trips to other countries to find inspiration and design reference for films. So it is only natural to draw what you see around you. However, you never copied a story. Why did they choose to do a city around the house and not a hospital like the events you describe?

After learning of the student film, why not change their script a little?

Because they knew the students didn't own copyrights on a student film, and that there was legally nothing that could be done.

 

[franz bolo]

But then Walt names a mouse, Mickey Mouse? There was already a popular toy mouse called Mickey Mouse (not Walt's and already out on the market), and he looked alot like Walt's new creation.

Where did you get this information?? Please post any pics of this toy. I've never heard of it before and I think this is not based on facts.

It was originally called Mortimer Mouse but his wife liked Mickey better.

FB