Two brothers, Morgan and Mason McGrew, released a full-length, shot-for-shot, stop-motion remake of Toy Story 3 on YouTube. The McGrews teased the project last summer when they released a trailer for the meticulously recreated feature, shot entirely on iPhones. The project, officially called Toy Story 3 In Real Life, may have taken the brothers eight years to complete, but extra effort is visible in every frame of the incredibly detailed finished film.
When Morgan and Mason decided to recreate Pixar’s Toy Story 3 back in 2011, they knew that to convincingly pull it off they would need a location to use for Andy’s bedroom. Opting not to use digital effects (or a green screen), the brothers had only one viable option left: build a life-sized replica of the bedroom down to the smallest detail. It took the brothers two years just to complete the bedroom, but the final results are nothing short of remarkable. The hardwood floors, the bright white molding around the windows, and even the light blue, starred wallpaper all lovingly recreated. They even managed to make a replica of Andy’s whiteboard, down to the dates circled on his hand-drawn calendar.
Flash-forward eight years, a ton of toys, and hundreds of recreated shots later, to find Toy Story 3 In Real Life on YouTube, where it has already pulled in half a million views. The finished film is a tremendous example of dedication, and serves as a love-letter to the original Toy Story 3. Morgan and Mason used the audio from the original movie, preserving Toy Story’s iconic voice cast, and even though most characters’ mouths don’t move, their expressions change to match their moods thanks to the use of clay. Many of the toys featured the remake are store-bought, but a few of them had to be created from scratch to match the movie exactly.
“Toy Story 3 means the world to us, so it was awesome getting to spend time on translating it to real life,” Morgan told ABC News back in 2015. The eight-year production schedule is most obvious in a few of the remake’s Andy scenes because of the use of human actors, including the brothers themselves. The long production schedule didn’t seem to bother the filmmakers in the least. ”Yeah, that sounds like a monumental amount of time, but we enjoyed every minute of it,” said Morgan.
Toy Story 3 In Real Life‘s most impressive sequence happens towards the end of the film, when the hero toys are all tossed in an incinerator. The remake captures all the emotion and horror of the sequence using only shredded paper, clever lighting and perfectly timed effects. Perhaps the most amazing part of the story is that the film is available to view on YouTube. After dedicating eight years of their lives to the project it would have been a tragedy for them not to be able to share it with the world. Luckily, their passion for the source material, and obsessive attention to detail, convinced the executives at The Walt Disney Company to officially approve the remake’s release, ensuring the post won’t get removed from the service due to copyright claim issues.
Source: Morgan & Mason McGrew
