Toy Story 5 VFX supervisor Thomas Jordan has been keeping it a secret for months, but he revealed during a panel discussion at SXSW London on Friday that he’s known about Taylor Swift’s song for the animated film since February.
Swift’s “Toy Story” song, titled “I Knew It, I Knew You,” is the pop star’s return to her rural hometown and was released Friday ahead of the film’s June 19 theatrical release.
“It turns out that Taylor Swift, like a lot of us, is a huge fan of ‘Toy Story,'” Jordan said. “She had actually seen an early version of the movie and requested to see it before it was finished, and she wrote a song and asked us if we wanted it. And we said, ‘Oh, yes! Yes, we want it.'” That was in February, and we’ve had to keep it a secret ever since. ”
Jordan added that because “a very small group” of the Toy Story 5 team knew about the song’s existence, they had to “create a decoy version” of the film without the song to show it to the press and other Pixar/Disney staff who didn’t know the information.
“The Toy Story 5 production staff didn’t know this secret until last week,” he said.
The fifth film in Pixar and Disney’s iconic animated series picks up the beloved toys Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), Woody (Tom Hanks), and Jesse (Joan Cusack) several years after the events of the fourth film (voiced by Greta Lee). This time they face the existential threat that technology poses to playtime, exemplified by the smart device Lilypad.
During the panel, Jordan took attendees behind-the-scenes to see how the film’s VFX was assembled, showing previously unseen footage of how the team animated the tight curls of 50 Buzz Lightyears, a horse named Narcissus, and new human character Blaze. He claimed that all the animation in the film was 100% human-made and that no AI was involved.
“We are an artist-driven studio and also technology-based…We always try to stay current by creating our own animations and learning what others are doing,” he said. “So we’re fascinated by AI, and we’re learning about it and experimenting with it. But so far, nothing has lived up to our standards and expectations for the quality of our work.”
