Domee Shi, the first woman to direct a Pixar short, is on her way to debuting her first full-length animated film with the backing of Pixar studio. Shi looks forward to this first-time opportunity.
“We’re just developing the story for it right now,” Shi says to Deadline. “It’s super early on, but I’m really excited to play in this new 90-minute film format.”
Shi (seen in photo by Boungwa via Wikipedia Commons) joined Pixar as a story intern in June 2011 before receiving the opportunity months later to work for the animation studio as a story artist for Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur, and the upcoming Toy Story 4. She worked closely with Pete Docter, chief creative officer of Pixar, who then later supported her Oscar-nominated brainchild Bao.
The short film Bao screened before the nationwide showing of The Incredibles 2 this year, and explores the story of a Chinese mother experiencing empty nest syndrome. She gains a new sense of joy when one of her handmade dumplings come to life as described by Pixar. While this parent-child story incorporated her fascinations with dark fairytales, including both the Gingerbread Man and Thumbelina, the main inspirations for her Pixar short drew from Shi’s own life and her love for food, reports Los Angeles Times.
Shi, who is Chinese Canadian, said to the Los Angeles Times, “Growing up I was that overprotected little dumpling for my Chinese mom. I was an only child living in Toronto with my parents, and they’ve always kind of watched over me and made sure I was safe — kept me really, really close. And I just wanted to explore that relationship between an overprotective parent and their child with a dumpling as a metaphor, as weird as that sounds.”
The progression of Shi’s influence and leadership inside Pixar animation studios as well as the creative organization’s support for diverse animated features like Bao, Coco, and Sanjay’s Super Team showed Shi that the support for animated productions featuring characters from racial and ethnic identities isn’t just a trend. The studio and their executives’ decision to take on Shi to produce a full-length feature, in a way, indicates social shifts in mainstream media.
Shi says during the end of her interview with Deadline, “Hopefully, there will be more different stories down the road from these big studios because I think they’ve just all realized now that they can’t keep drawing from the same creative well over and over again.” She ends by saying, “If Pixar wants to stay at the forefront of animation and storytelling, they’ll have to look for different sources.”
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