I'm hungry. The upcoming release of INCREDIBLES 2 will arrive with another lovely short-film from Pixar which will undoubtedly tug at your heartstrings. BAO will tell the tale of a "Chinese-Canadian women suffering from the depression of an empty nest, who gets a second shot at motherhood when one of her handmade dumplings comes alive." Pixar has released a clip from the short, and, well, you should just watch it for yourself. I'm still hungry.
Director Domee Shi told Entertainment Weekly that she was inspired to tell a story flavoured by her upbringing as the only child to Chinese immigrants. "Often times it felt like my mom would treat me like a precious little dumpling, wanting to make sure I was safe, that I didn’t go out late, all that stuff," Shi said. "I just wanted to create this magical, modern-day fairy tale, kind of like a Chinese Gingerbread Man story. The word ‘bao’ actually means two things in Chinese: Said one way, it means steamed bun. Said another, it means something precious. A treasure." Shi's mother took part in the film as well, serving as a cultural consultant who gave the crew hands-on demonstrations in making dumplings.
Our technical directors and special effects team put the camera super close to her hands and recorded every single little detail of how she folded the dough, how she cut each piece, how she rolled each wrapper into that perfect little bun shape. We [basically] recreated those shots with her hands and used them as the reference for animation.
After so many years in the business, there's not a lot that Pixar can't do, but it turns out that one of their biggest challenges is still food. Producer Becky Neiman-Cobb said that what "brought our effects department to their knees, was Dumpling’s pork filling. That was hard. We learned there’s a very fine line between looking delicious and appetizing and looking wrong or gross. Making our food look delicious was a big triumph." I'm definitely still hungry. INCREDIBLES 2, along with BAO, will hit theaters on June 15, 2018.