‘An Almost Christmas Story’ Director David Lowery Discusses His New Disney+ Holiday Tale (New Clip)

This article was written for the December '24 issue of Animation Magazine (No. 345).

Back in November 2020, a tiny owl was discovered in a Christmas tree destined for Rockefeller Plaza. Four years later, this real-life event has inspired a heartwarming animated special, produced by none other than Oscar-winning Mexican helmer Alfonso Cuarón (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Gravity, Roma) and directed by David Lowery (A Ghost Story, Pete’s Dragon, The Green Knight). Titled An Almost Christmas Story, the half-hour charmer features the voices of Cary Christopher, Estella Madrigal, Jim Gaffigan, Mamoudou Athie, Alex Ross Perry, Natasha Lyonne and John C. Reilly, and premieres on Disney+ this month.

An Almost Christmas Story is the third and final installment in Cuarón’s acclaimed holiday shorts collection, which includes the live-action Oscar-nominated Le Pupille and The Shepherd.

“I had just finished directing Peter Pan & Wendy for Disney, and it was during the Christmas break when this wonderful project landed in my inbox,” recalls Lowery, who is best known for his highly imaginative and poetic live-action movies. “It was the screenplay Alfonso had worked on with Jack Thorne [Enola Holmes, His Dark Materials] and they were looking for a director. I had just finished making this huge, epic Disney film, and the idea of making something short really appealed to me. I am also a big Christmas person and love everything about the holidays.”

Textures of Real Life

Originally, the project was going to be done in live action, but Lowery, who used to make stop-motion shorts early in his career, wanted to bring a handmade aesthetic to the work. “As we started to prep, we realized the cost and difficulty of shooting in New York City during Christmas created more complications,” he recalls. “I didn’t want to compromise on so many of the wonderful things that existed in the screenplay. So, I thought the best way to tell the story was using animation.”

After exploring the possibilities of a stop-motion shoot, the creative team opted for a traditional CG approach due to the time frame and budget restrictions. “That made the best sense, but I was determined to make it as handmade as possible,” says Lowery. “I went to my friend Nick Bateman and his team at Maere Studios, with whom I had worked on Peter Pan & Wendy and The Green Knight and a couple of my short projects. He helped us build a CG New York City backdrop that feels like it was constructed out of cardboard.”

To create the look and feel of stop motion with CG animation, the team first built physical puppets. “That gave us the idea of what we wanted to see in three dimensions and what our template for the textures should be,” says the director. “I always want everything to look like you can just reach out and touch it. Everything needed to be as textured as possible, even the cardboard needed to be bent and corrugated. Our animators used Blender, and I am just stunned at what the software can do these days. I’m trying to teach myself to use it because I see my friends are able to whip up these incredible things with it. I love the fact that it’s a tool that’s available to everyone, and you can download it and start using it right away.”

‘I really love where animation is going right now. CG used to feel a lot cleaner and antiseptic. But today, it is becoming very handmade in the way it looks and feels.’

— Director David Lowery

After the development period, Lowery began drawing storyboards, and by mid-2023, the team had created an animatic that looked a lot like the finished special. “Last fall, we recorded all the voices, and we began building the world in 3D and creating the environments. The characters all got built and put into place in the spring of 2024. We then created a grayscale animation and worked with the wonderful team at 88 Pictures to do all the character animation in April.”

Of course, like all great holiday specials, music plays a big part in the success of the artistic package. Daniel Hart composed the music for the project, and the songs (including two originals) are performed by actor John C. Reilly, who voices a street performer (The Folk Singer) in the short. “The music really captures what Christmas means to me,” says the director. “It’s that unmistakable, effusive feeling you get during the season, which is a combination of colors and sounds and the cold temperature outside, and there’s that music playing on the radio. John’s character was an addition I made to the script. I wanted him to act as a Greek chorus — kind of like the Burl Ives in Rankin and Bass’s Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

Lowery admits that there were many technological challenges involved in creating the special artisanal look he was after. “We had to make sure the idea that Luna [the young girl in the special] has a prosthetic leg came through in the animation, especially when you’re animating on twos when everything already has a slightly exaggerated movement. We also had to communicate that our owl’s wing is broken in the right way. We had to figure out how to convey those things while binding the aesthetic, and a lot of credit for that goes to Nick Bateman, who helped come up with the overall look and design of the special.”

Childhood Memories

The director was a big fan of Disney classics when he was growing up. “I started a Little Mermaid fan club because I loved the movie so much,” he tells us. “The Great Mouse Detective, The Beauty and the Beast and Pinocchio were my favorites. When I got a little older, I became obsessed with Miyazaki; his ideas about filmmaking influenced both my live-action and animated works. René Laloux’s Fantastic Planet and Tim Burton’s Vincent are also big favorites. My love of texture came from Tim Burton’s movies, especial Henry Selick’s work in The Nightmare Before Christmas. I also remember renting Marv Newland’s Bambi Meets Godzilla from Blockbuster Video back in the day!”

He says that Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox also left a big impression on him. “I watched that over and over again when I was making Pete’s Dragon,” he says. “I just had it on a loop in the background. It embedded itself in my consciousness. Overall, I really love where animation is going right now. The most overt example is probably the Spider-Verse films, which took CG animation [and] pushed it in a fresh new direction beyond what we assumed computer-generated imagery could create. You see that also in The Mitchells vs. the Machines, Blue Eye Samurai and Arcane. CG used to feel a lot cleaner and antiseptic. But today, it is becoming very handmade in the way it looks and feels, and that’s really exciting to me.”

Lowery has big hopes for his holiday offering’s unwrapping this month. “I hope An Almost Christmas Story will become the kind of special that families watch and share year after year,” he says. “We wanted to make a short film that would become part of people’s holiday traditions. Even if we even come somewhat close to accomplishing, I’ll be very happy.”

An Almost Christmas Story premieres on Disney+ on November 15. Watch the new clip “Moon at Rockefeller” below and see the previously released trailer here.