Mickey shorts headed to Disney Plus feature familiar music
Fans of Disney’s “Mickey Mouse” cartoon shorts get excited: There’s anew animated shorts series that debuts on Disney Plus on Nov. 18— the birthday of the famous mouse.
In “The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse,” Mickey and his pals (Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Goofy and Pluto) embark on adventures in short films featuring classic character cameos, modern settings, the classic art style of the “Mickey Mouse” shorts and new music.
Like the shorts that debuted in 2013 and ran for five seasons, the music for the new show is composed by Christopher Willis.
“I’m so excited about this show,” he said. “It’s going to look and feel exactly like the Mickey shorts that everyone loves with a few different elements, a few twists. We delve into historical periods, which nowis a lot of fun.”
Each episode is seven minutes long, which allows for further character development.
“You tend to experience more of the characters in more episodes because there’s more length,” Willis said. “That’s one of the knock-on effects of the cartoons being twice as long.”
“The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse” also includes references to the history of Disney, the company’s cartoons and the parks.
“It’s such a huge heritage. There’s somany rides, and there’s so much that’s happened with Disney over the past hundred years or so,” he said. “There’s sort of an endless amount to explore.”
The series’ music will be reminiscent of tunes heard on Mickey& Minnie’s Runaway Railway— no surprise there, since Willis also composed the music for the Hollywood Studios ride— aswell as compositions from previous Mickey shorts.
“The ride was playing around with some references that the fans of the [original] shorts would recognize,” he said. “We go to locations in the ride that are reminiscent of places we’ve been to in the shorts, and in the new show, we’re sort of continuing to have a lot of fun in that same sandbox.”
When developing the series, Disney opted for Willis to view the episodes as theywere animated instead of writing the music based on a storyboard.
“We decided that Iwould simply start once therewas animation, and then I could respond to all the color and all themovement,” he said. “That gives me less time, so I just have to be pretty quick.”
First, he met with the creative team to hear their thoughts. Then he researched, listening to relevant musical influences, from Bollywood hits to medieval melodies. He then mapped out each episode on a piano.
“That’s very similar to what an animator would do or what a director would do because they would map the episode out by drawing it ina story board without any color and without any frame-by-frame animation,” he said. “Sketching it out onthe piano is sort of a lot like drawing the storyboard before filling in the colors.”
Music canmake a big difference in the episodes, especially when there is little to no dialogue.
“In those cases, as the composer, I’m really telling the story sonically,” he said. “I’m really carrying you from one scene to another and setting the pace and setting the tone.”
Willis is even more involved should an episode require a song.
“I might actually feel that I’m kind of structuring the episode because the song might begin at the start of the episode and then the development of the song and the conclusion of the song that come at the end of the episode,” he said. “Whenwe started the Mickey shorts, we weren’t really sure exactly what theywere going to be and … I think music became a bigger part of them thanwe had originally anticipated.”
As the music became more important to the shorts, so did Willis. He helped mix the sound and developed the music, but he also attended story meetings. He has seen the mostly finished version of each episode while mixing sound and has attended a few Zoom screenings for the cast and crew.
“Alot of the fans are very keen on some of the songs thatwe wrote in the original shorts and in the specials. I can promise that there are more songs in’ The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse,’ ” said Willis, whose wife, Elyse, writes the lyrics. “We’ve got some real extravaganzas coming involving songs, so stay tuned!”
“The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse” debuts Nov. 18 and will feature two new shorts each Friday starting Nov. 27. Ten shorts will premiere this year, with an additional 10 shorts set for summer 2021. For those who can’t wait and want something towatch in the meantime, all five seasons of the “Mickey Mouse” shorts are currently available on Disney Plus.
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