Pixar Shorts:
Lifted

As with all Pixar shorts, artists and engineers at the animation studio use the short film to explore new technologies and software. In the case of Lifted, a new jiggle program was used to animate Mr. B., the instructor character. I think it worked quite well; he looks like lime Jell-O!

Rydstrom, who is a sound editor, wanted the instrument panel aboard the UFO to resemble the impossibly complicated sound mixers console. The title of Lifted is also a play on the TV series Taken and the film is a reference to Stephen Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Keep a look out for Tinny, from the Pixar short Tin Toy, underneath Ernie the farmer's bed as he's being abducted off the floor.

Lifted Plot

It's a quiet, still night at a small farm out in the middle of nowhere. A man is sleeping in his bed when suddenly a bright blue light shines through his window.

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A flying saucer hovers over the house, the beam of light shining in the bedroom. Ernie the farmer levitates over the bed and floats toward the open window. (He looks identical to Linguine, the lead character in Ratatouille.) But the aim is off and Ernie gets his head bonked on the wall instead! It happens again and again.

Inside the saucer, Stu is a teenage alien taking his abduction exam under the scrutiny of his instructor Mr. B. Stu sits in front of an enormous control panel with thousands of identical switches. He flips one then another, making mistake after mistake all the while Mr. B. clicks his pen and makes notes about it with no expression on his face.

Stu can't take it anymore and he swipes his arms all over the console. This tantrum throws the farmer into the ceiling and bounce him off the walls, but somehow Ernie never wakes up.

The teenage alien flips through his manual again and finds the answer. Ernie is lifted from his the bedroom floor bottom first. He can't fit through the window in that position, so Stu nudges the switch gently a couple of times and when that doesn't work, he pushes hard and Ernie pops through at last.

Now the only problem is that the farmer is now stuck in the tree since the beam runs through it to the house. Ernie is pulled through and on his way to the mothership. He reaches the inside of the ship and Stu is proud of himself as he holds his finger on the switch that levitates the human. As the bottom of the ship closes, Stu lets his finger off and down drops Ernie through the hole that hasn't finished closing.

Mr. B. saves Ernie from crashing to the ground and in a series of quick, complicated moves, sends Ernie back to his bed, unharmed as if nothing happened and the rest of the room put back in order.

Stu feels bad about the whole thing and starts sniffling. Mr. B, a compassionate guy, feels for him and offers him the chance to drive the spaceship. However he manages to crash the saucer directly over the house. The ship lifts up again, but with enormous amounts of earth stuck to the bottom. A crater forms around Ernie's bed in a perfect circle.

During the credits of this Pixar short, Ernie's alarm clock goes off and we hear him get out of bed, then he screams as he falls into the crater and lands with a thud.