‘Us Again’ Animator Zach Parrish on Which Unsung Disney Classic Served as Inspiration for the Short

thewrap.com:

The segment is based on George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody In Blue” and features characters designed to look like the caricatures of famed artist Al Hirschfeld (who was a consultant on the “Rhapsody in Blue” segment in “Fantasia 2000”), many of whom dance, drum and ice skate to the rhythms of Gershwin’s jazz-infused classical score as they follow their dreams in Depression-era New York.

Parrish tells TheWrap that he regularly invoked “Rhapsody In Blue” as a comparison when pitching his vision of “Us Again” to his colleagues at Disney. “I wanted this story to be in a world of dance and for that dance and the music to be the dialogue of the story, very similar to ‘Fantasia,'” he said. “‘Rhapsody In Blue’ was always the specific example that I brought up.

I connected to it the most with its style of music, the caricature design of the characters, the way the music became the sound effects for the story, and it just felt fitting when we were making ‘Us Again’ to have ‘Rhapsody In Blue’ on the screen as they dance through the drive-in.” Of course, while “Fantasia 2000” had an iconic classical score to work from, “Us Again” would have to make the music that would serve as its narrative backbone from scratch.

In collaborating with Turkish-American composer Pinar Toprak, Parrish had a back-and-forth process where he would outline the main beats of the story to Toprak, who came back with a five-minute temp score that would slowly get expanded as Parrish established more points in the story.