Lifted (2006 film)
Lifted is a 2006 Pixar computer-animated short film directed by Gary Rydstrom. This is the first film directed by Rydstrom, a seven-time Academy Award winning sound editor and mixer, and the first produced by Katherine Sarafian, who went on to produce Pixar's Brave released in 2012.
The short premiered on October 12, 2006, at the 42nd Chicago International Film Festival at Columbia College, and was released theatrically and on home media with Pixar's Ratatouille (June 29, 2007).
Plot
A young alien, Stu, is inside a spacecraft taking an examination in alien abduction. He must snatch a sleeping farmer named Ernie under the watchful eye of his impassive examiner, a gelatinous blob named Mr. B. Working from memory, Stu is expected to use an array of thousands of identical unlabeled toggle switches for this purpose; Mr. B's stoic expression gives no hints of which ones to use.
Stu's hesitant flicks of the switches turn out to be wrong, causing Ernie to bump into the walls and ceiling, albeit without waking him up. As Stu grows increasingly frustrated, Stu yells and swipes randomly at the array. Ernie bounces randomly around the room like a pinball, knocking over the furniture in the process but remaining asleep. Eventually, after checking his notes, Stu does succeed in maneuvering Ernie out the window and up into the ship, but he shuts off the tractor beam without closing the cargo hatch. As Ernie plummets toward the ground, Mr. B takes over and catches him, then works the switches with incredible speed to put him back in his bed and clean up the mess created by Stu.
