One Man Band (film)

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Treble, from One Man Band

One Man Band is a Pixar short film. The film made its world premiere at the 29th Annecy Animation Festival in Annecy, France, and won the Platinum Grand Prize at the Future Film Festival in Bologna, Italy.

The short was written and directed by Andrew Jimenez and Mark Andrews and produced by Osnat Shurer, head of Pixar's Shorts group. The score for the short was written by Michael Giacchino, who also composed the score for Pixar's animated feature film The Incredibles.

Like many Pixar shorts, the film is completely free of dialogue, instead using music (played by the characters) and pantomime to tell the story.

On January 31, 2006 it was nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film, but lost to The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation by John Canemaker and Peggy Stern.

[edit] Story

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In this animated short film, we see Bass, a street performer playing a routine tune on a deserted Italian village square one fine afternoon, waiting for a pedestrian to tip him in his rusty iron cup. Soon, he spots Tippy, a humble peasant girl clutching a big gold coin, with the intention of dropping it in the piazza fountain to make a wish. Bass, seizing the opportunity, immediately plays an impromptu track, capturing the young girl's attention. Just when Tippy is about to drop the coin into Bass's cup, a newcomer steps onto the scene. Treble, a suave and flamboyant street performer, plays a more attractive sound, effectively stealing Tippy's attention, much to the anger of Bass. Not to be outdone, Bass ups his ante, with Treble daring to take it even further. As the two rivals unleash their arsenal of musical weapons, trying to vie for the attention (or rather, the tip) of Tippy, the girl cowers in their wild musical cacophony, and in the process, drops her sole gold coin, which falls down a drain and gets lost in the sewers of the village.

Heartbroken, Tippy sheds a single tear, but then angrily demands from Treble and Bass a replacement coin for the one they made her lose. When the two musicians come up empty-handed, Tippy insists she take a violin from Treble and Bass's iron cup in an attempt to get her money back by playing solo, despite the wary reservations from the two rivals. However, the ending comes with a very humorous and unexpected twist...! She then tunes the violin and begins to play it like a true virtuoso, prompting a passing pedestrian to drop a large bag of gold coins into her cup. Elated, Tippy hugs the bag and approaches the fountain, but not before she pulls two coins out of her bag and tempts Treble and Bass. But as they eagerly reach out to grab them, she tosses the coins into the top of the fountain, out of reach, to the dismay of the two one-man-band units. A post-credits scene shows that it is now nighttime, with Treble standing on Bass, trying to reach for the coins in vain. As the two start to fall backwards, the film ends.

[edit] Trivia

The 1988 Pixar short Tin Toy also featured a one-man band, albeit a toy one.
Attached to the theatrical and video/DVD releases of Cars.
The musicians recorded for the soundtrack were Los Angeles studio violinists Clayton Haslop ("Treble") and Mark Robertson ("Tippy").