Pixar Shorts
One Man Band

Keeping within the tradition of Pixar shorts One Man Band has no dialogue and only music and pantomime as the story. This short was released in 2005 and was shown with the feature film Cars in theaters.

The musical score for One Man Band Pixar was written by the talented Michael Giacchino, who also composed the scores for The Incredibles, Ratatouille and Up.

This Pixar short film premiered at 9th Annecy Animation Festival in Annecy, France, and won the Platinum Grand Prize at the Future Film Festival in Bologna, Italy. It was directed by Andrew Jimenez and Mark Andrews.

Pixar Shorts One Man Band Plot

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He looks out across the square and notices a small peasant girl named Tippy approaching the fountain with a gold coin. He greedily looks at the coin and toots his trumpet to get Tippy's attention.

Bass lures Tippy in his direction playing some fun tunes and he offers her his tin cup for the coin. Tippy almost drops the coin in when across the plaza, Treble sets his one man band stage for a performance. She goes over to see the other performance.

Treble plays different stringed instruments and even has a smiling puppet whose hat tips down for coin collecting. Tippy is wide-eyed and impressed and begins to put the coin into the puppet's hat when she turns to see Bass pulling out all the stops to get her attention again.

Bass loses control of his acrobatics though, and destroys his stage and falls all over himself and his instruments. Treble looks at Tippy as if Bass is a silly nuisance and begins to play again.

Bass doesn't give up though, and soon the two one man bands are dueling it out over the tip they both want from the girl. They both play at the same time, creating a crescendo of wild chaotic music. Tippy cowers in fear and drops her coin, which falls into a drain.

She sheds a single tear but then looks up angrily. She holds out her hand to each man, wanting one of them to pay her coin back, but they're both broke. She then points one of Treble's small violins. Bass pulls it off and hands it to her. She snatches it angrily and takes the empty cup, intending to earn her coin back by playing the violin herself. She makes a first attempt and it sounds terrible, so she tunes the violin a bit then plays beautifully, like a virtuoso.

Tippy only plays for a few seconds when a passerby dumps a huge bag of gold coins onto her cup. She takes the bag and walks toward the fountain. Tippy reaches into the bag and takes out two coins, rather teasing Treble and Bass implying "Do you want it? Come and get it!" They come in her direction, but she tosses them both way up into the fountain.

After the credits, you see Treble and Bass at night trying to reach the coins at the top.

This is such a cute movie and one of my favorites. My son Aidan's favorite Pixar shorts One Man Band - he REALLY loves Tippy.