Hundreds of Amateur Filmmakers Contribute to a Crowdsourced Version of ‘Toy Story’

Pixar Animation Studios has produced some creative and quirky movie scenes over the years. But the executives at the Hollywood blockbuster machine couldn’t imagine what a pair of Burlington drag queens have done with their Toy Story.

Earlier this year, Caley Gervais heard that the Media Factory, the Burlington nonprofit that promotes community-made radio, TV and film projects, was inviting local amateur filmmakers to contribute scenes to a full-length, crowdsourced version of the 1995 animated classic. Her response: “Yes! I need to do it!”

Gervais, 33, is an early childhood educator by day and a radio host and burlesque performer by night. Though she had no previous experience in film production, Gervais reached out to her friends Justin Marsh and Kat Redniss, aka local drag performers Emoji Nightmare and Katniss Everqueer, and said, “Hey, you guys are weird, and this is a really strange idea. Would you be down to do it?”

Indeed they were. So one night, the three pulled together costumes, sets, lighting and sound effects to film what Gervais called a live-action, “dragified” scene from Toy Story: the one in which Buzz Lightyear and Woody get trapped in Sid the sadistic neighbor’s bedroom with a gang of cannibalistic toys.

The scene, which the trio shot with an iPhone and edited on a laptop, is only one minute and 20 seconds long. But it’s one of 32 other scenes that were produced by more than 200 other Vermonters that comprise Crowdsourced Toy Story. The finished product premieres on Thursday, November 30, at Merrill’s Roxy Cinemas in Burlington and Friday, December 1, at Manchester Community Library.

“I’m so excited to see it all put together and how other people interpreted their scenes,” Gervais added.

This is the fourth crowdsourced movie organized by the Media Factory, a South End community media center that provides equipment, studio space, and technical training and support. According to community engagement manager Gin Ferrara, the Media Factory launched its first crowdsourced film project during the 2020 lockdown, when the pandemic forced community media centers around the state to cancel their usual summer camps for kids. Instead, the Media Factory worked with 36 teams of amateur filmmakers from around Vermont to remake Cast Away, the 2000 isolation drama starring Tom Hanks.

“You only needed one actor and a volleyball,” Ferrara said, “so it was very easy for people to join in.”

Since then, the Media Factory and its partners have produced three more crowdsourced movies: Jurassic Park in 2021, Star Wars in 2022 and this year’s Toy Story. The idea came from two media centers in Massachusetts — Northampton Open Media and the Brookline Interactive Group — that have been making crowdsourced movies for 12 years.

For these community-driven projects, Ferrara explained, any Vermonter could participate, regardless of age or experience level. For the Toy Story film, 33 scenes were assigned randomly. Some were produced by one person, others by duos and larger teams, such as families, camps and neighborhood groups. Participants’ ages ranged from toddlers to people in their sixties.

Though the Media Factory offered guidelines, equipment and technical advice, Ferrara said, nearly all the decisions on how to re-create each scene were made by the participants themselves. The only unbreakable rule was that the filmmakers couldn’t use any copyrighted material, including images, stills, graphics or sound effects. Aside from the storyline and dialogue, everything had to be created from scratch or downloaded from royalty-free sources.

For the first time this year, the Media Factory received grants totaling $3,000 from the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts to cover its postproduction and exhibition costs. This enabled organizers to hire a professional editor, Ken French. Composer Jonathan Seward of the band Steady J. volunteered to score the original music.

For obvious reasons, continuity is never a concern in crowdsourced filmmaking. In one scene, the characters may be portrayed by live actors; in another, they’re Claymation or animated Lego figurines. Scenes might shift stylistically to resemble film noir, a silent movie or a slasher flick.

“Part of the reason we pick these popular movies is because there’s so much ability to riff on them,” Ferrara said. “They’re in the public consciousness and we know what’s supposed to happen, so everyone can follow along.”

At least half the participants in Crowdsourced Toy Story were returning filmmakers from past years, Ferrara noted. They included Daniel Lyons of Bristol; his 14-year-old son, Sawyer Visco-Lyons; and six of his son’s friends. Last year, the same team re-created an iconic scene from Star Wars in which Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi says, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”

Though Lyons said he helped with some of the editing, he mostly supervised and kept the kids on task.

The Bristol team would watch 10 to 15 seconds of the original scene, Lyons said, then figure out how to re-create it. They built Buzz Lightyear and Mr. Potato Head out of cardboard boxes, used a salad bowl for Buzz’s helmet and raided the family’s costume bin to devise other looks. The boys also made their own sound effects using a toy buzzer, a cap gun and other household objects.

“It was really ingenious how they came up with ways to re-create that scene,” Lyons added. “When they got into character, they really did an awesome job … The fun they were having was the best part for me.”

Correction, November 29, 2023: An earlier version of this story misidentified how some of the grant money was used on the project. Composer Jonathan Steward, who scored the film’s original music, volunteered his services.

Related Stories

The Media Factory Premieres ‘Crowdsourced VT Home Alone’

This article appears in Nov 29 – Dec 5, 2023.

Got something to say?

Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!