Photo of Jesse Perotta & Jonason Pauley from the Live-Action Toy Story Facebook page

Compare of original scene and re-created scene.

Notice the insane amount of detail in positioning as well as the background

Again, notice the amazing details of the items in the background

They even hired a dog actor and rented a moving truck





Pixar Post - T.J.

By now you've probably heard the buzz surrounding the Live Action Toy Story project, where a small group of friends (led by Jonason Pauley and Jesse Perrotta) recreatedin its entirety (yes, the full movie) using a combination of real toys, live actors, green screens and stop-motion animation.Pixar Post had been following the team's progress for close to a year through their YouTube channel and we were ecstatic to see the film finally uploaded this January. With the flurry of media attention surrounding the duo, we were excited that we were able to catch up with Jonason to find out more details surrounding the project as well as some of the "ah-ha" moments during filming.After some introductory casual conversation with Jonason, we dug right into the questions.So, we knew that there were people that wanted to see it already. People that were online that had seen the clips like you said before. So we had these people that wanted to see it, but we had no idea how fast it was going to "go". I've been hearing from all my friends, "I can't believe it, someone else saw this before I did and I actually know you". So their friends were sharing it with them and they were like, "well I know that guy". It was crazy, I had no idea it would go so fast and this morning we were onto do a short little interview. That was fun, its really been crazy - we never expected this much so fast.- Somewhere around fifteen probably and there are countless more articles but I've only actually talked to...well, that's still quite a few.- We get asked, "How long did it take?'...and it took two-and-a-half years - just about. We get asked, "Why?"...and the answer is, "Why not"? I wanted to watch it myself and we wanted to get experience with filmmaking and things like that - there are plenty of good reasons. And then we hear the same follow up question, "What's next?" and then answer is, "not Toy Story 2"!- You know what, I don't know that there ever was. We started with Andy's room because most of the movie is there and it seemed like a good place to start...at the beginning. So we gathered up the props and bought the wallpaper and things like that - and by that time it's like, "Well, we can't quit now". So, once we started working it was just, "OK, we've got to get out of Andy's room" because it was almost a year in there because we only did it on the weekend or when we had time. So that was exciting finishing that and getting to move on and go outside a little bit. There were points where we were like, "how the heck are we going to do this" and we said, "well, we don't know - but when we get there we'll figure it out".- I wrote out all the different scenes and all the different locations that they take place in. Jesse went and watched the entire movie and paused it at every shot and wrote down every single thing that you see. He has a huge list of every prop and every character with what they're wearing and everything else. So we went through that and gathered stuff up for a month before we even started. While we were filming for the first week, we were using the TV and watching it on the DVD player in the other corner of the room while we were trying to film and it was difficult. But over the summer I had won an iPad from a Disney video contest and we quickly put the movie (the real) on there and used that - it was much easier that way.- Yeah, so we had the real movie on the iPad and then we'd watch it and pause it at every shot, do the shot and move on to the next one.- Yeah, that was so much fun. It was one of the first things we did outside of Andy's room, so it was fun for that reason because we were outside. We were filming just as much as we could with just the toys at a gas station that looked nice. And we were like, "we'll just hang out here until a truck comes" and one came to the gas station across the street. So we drove over there, talked to the guy and he was like, "oh, yeah, OK, that sounds like fun". Before he stared pumping the gas he almost ran over Woody's head for us.- It was one of those moments where I was thinking to myself, "How in the world are we going to do this shot without worrying about crushing Woody and the camera"? And then Jesse says, "Oh, we'll do it backwards" and I'm like, "Oh, yes, that's awesome"!- Started next to his head and drove backwards.- Yeah, I was really happy with the way that turned out. Watching it the first time I was like, "Oh, that's so good - it's going to work".- Well that was a science homework project so I had to do it....so that was the motivation for that...it had to be finished.- Similarly with the Toy Story movie, once we were telling people that we were doing it...now we have to finish, we can't quit because there's people wanting to see it now. So, it was similar in that way.- Yeah, I knew that I wanted to do movies since I was about seven years old and so I would always try and come up with different types of things. I did a lot of stop-motion things with my toys when I was little, so I had a little bit of experience in that. Jesse and his Brother have a puppet show on YouTube called Billy and Chucky so he had experience with puppets a lot - it's one of the things he wanted to do...so he knew what he was doing.- We just had to conceptualize it while we were there. You know the one that I thought would take forever didn't take five minutes - the one where all the toys are circling and coming closer. I thought, "oh this is going to be a nice rest of the day".- Yeah, but that shot got completed way faster than almost any of the others there because we just spend more time thinking about it. So it was like, "These strings have got to be pulled from this direction...well no one can be over there, that's in the shot. We'll put this post and wrap this strings around that. So then we pull that from over there and then they'll go that way." It took a little more planning than the others, but it went a lot faster. The one that had the most people helping - the most strings of any shot in the whole movie is when Woody stands up after Sid runs away and all the others celebrate. That had...oh how many people were there...six...seven...eight, nine...almost ten people.- Usually what we decided was, if there's a lot of toys in the shot, or if they're far away, we'll try and do stop-motion. There's a few nasty shots I'm not happy with, but you know, it was as good as we could do at the time.- Well, I don't want to redo any of it!- Yeah, there's some scenes where I wish my editing could have been better - which the only way that could have happened is if we would have planned it better while we were filming. There's some "not great" green screening and some stop-motion didn't really work out very well. But there was no way to tell while we were doing it. It's just things like that...and I am happy with the final product.- I'm thrilled that you enjoyed it.- I'm working on a degree in electronic media and film at Northern Arizona.- Well, I just used what I had and it wasn't much. It was just a basic consumer camcorder. A lot of people were saying, "What, this isn't in HD?" and well...I didn't have HD. So it was just what I had, it was a basic camcorder and then at first I was editing on Adobe Premiere Pro 2 and then that computer had a heart attack and died and we got the newer version of Premiere Pro. There was one scene that Jesse edited because I was overwhelmed with editing stuff towards the end. He edited with Vegas which is a lot more simple than most - but it was what he had.- For me personally, it was that I shouldn't be afraid to ask people for help or for something that we need because we tried to do this with a zero dollar budget, which obviously didn't happen. But we did get a lot of stuff from our friends and most of the sets are either at my parent's house or a friend's house. It was just a matter of asking people and there were so many times where we needed...like in the car chase at the end, we needed a certain number of cars and hopefully in "these colors". So we'd just go and knock on people's doors and ask, "Hey, could you come out for a couple minutes and help us"? And people we're willing - they were nice about it. That's what I'd say for people who want to do something like this - just go the extra mile and try and do it better than you thought you would have originally.------------------------Our sincere thanks to Jonason Pauley for taking the time to chat with us regarding their massive project. If you'd like to stay in touch with the Live-Action Toy Story project, you can follower their Facebook page Twitter page or their YouTube channel If you haven't checked out the full 80-minute Live-Action Toy Story , watch it below and be amazed.