''How to Hook Up Your Home Theater'' is a 2007 American

animated Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most anim ...

comedy

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

produced by

Walt Disney Animation Studios Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS), sometimes shortened to Disney Animation, is an American animation studio that creates animated features and short films for The Walt Disney Company. The studio's current production logo features a scene fro ...

, directed by Kevin Deters, and co-directed by Stevie Wermers-Skelton. It was the first theatrical

Goofy Goofy is a cartoon character created by The Walt Disney Company. He is a tall, anthropomorphic dog who typically wears a turtle neck and vest, with pants, shoes, white gloves, and a tall hat originally designed as a rumpled fedora. Goofy is a ...

solo cartoon short in since ''Goofy's Freeway Troubles'' 42 years earlier.

Plot

In the style of Goofy's "

Everyman The everyman is a stock character of fiction. An ordinary and humble character, the everyman is generally a protagonist whose benign conduct fosters the audience's identification with them. Origin The term ''everyman'' was used as early a ...

" cartoons of the 1950s, this short follows Goofy as he buys and then sets up his

home cinema Home cinema, also called home theaters or theater rooms, are home entertainment audio-visual systems that seek to reproduce a movie theater experience and mood using consumer electronics-grade video and audio equipment that is set up in a roo ...

system to watch

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly ca ...

Production

The short was partially produced using a new "paperless" production pipeline for Disney, the first major change in production technique for hand-drawn animation at Disney since the introduction of

CAPS Caps are flat headgear. Caps or CAPS may also refer to: Science and technology Computing * CESG Assisted Products Service, provided by the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters * Composite Application Platform Suite, by Java Caps, a Java ...

, and was also an attempt to see if the new digital animation tools could be used to produce a short with the same graphic look as that of a late 1940s, early 1950s cartoon. Instead of animating with pencil on paper, some of the animators, such as Dale Baer, worked on

Wacom () is a Japanese company headquartered in Kazo, Saitama, Japan, that specializes in manufacturing graphics tablets and related products. Headquarters locations The main headquarters are located in Kazo, Saitama, Japan. Its office in the USA ...

's cintiq tablets along with Toon Boom Harmony for the animation, while other animators such as

Mark Henn Mark Alan Henn (born April 6, 1958) is an American animator and film director. His contributions to animation have included several Walt Disney Animation Studios leading or title characters, most notably heroines. His work includes Ariel in ''Th ...

and Andreas Deja continued to work in the traditional method with pencil on paper. About 50% of the short was done using the new paperless technique.

Release

The short was released with

Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...

's '' National Treasure: Book of Secrets'' on December 21, 2007. It was also paired with '' The Game Plan'' for the film's release in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Nor ...

. The short was shown early at the "Animate with the Greats" class taking place at Facet's Theatre. Several

animation artists taught the class, including Kevin Deters and

Stevie Wermers Stevie Wermers-Skelton (born January 28, 1966) is a Disney story artist and director. Together with Kevin Deters she co-directed the traditionally animated shorts ''How To Hook Up Your Home Theater'' (2007) and '' The Ballad of Nessie'' (2011), ...

. It is also available for purchase on the

iTunes Store The iTunes Store is a digital media store operated by Apple Inc. It opened on April 28, 2003, as a result of Steve Jobs' push to open a digital marketplace for music. As of April 2020, iTunes offered 60 million songs, 2.2 million apps, 25,000 ...

. It was included in the Animation Show of Shows in 2007.

Home media

''How to Hook Up Your Home Theater'' was released on the ''Walt Disney Animation Studios Short Films Collection'' Blu-ray on August 18, 2015.

Online

The short is available for viewing on the Disney Website.

References to other media

* The two football teams are called the Dawgs and the Geefs, both of which refer to two of Goofy's pseudonyms over the years, Dippy Dawg (his earliest incarnation) and George Geef (the name he went by in his "everyman" shorts of the 1950s). * When the box arrives, a label on the box says "Dopey

Digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Technology and computing Hardware *Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals **Digital camera, which captures and stores digital i ...

", a reference to

Dolby Digital Dolby Digital, originally synonymous with Dolby AC-3, is the name for what has now become a family of audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. Formerly named Dolby Stereo Digital until 1995, the audio compression is lossy ( ...

and Dopey, one of the Seven Dwarfs from ''

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is a 19th-century German fairy tale that is today known widely across the Western world. The Brothers Grimm published it in 1812 in the first edition of their collection ''Grimms' Fairy Tales'' and numbered as Ta ...

'' (1937). The construction number on the side of the box is M1C-K3Y MO-U5E, a reference to

Mickey Mouse Mickey Mouse is an animated cartoon character co-created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. The longtime mascot of The Walt Disney Company, Mickey is an anthropomorphic mouse who typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white g ...

. * On Goofy's shelf there is a photo of

Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film pr ...

, Clarabelle Cow, Goofy's first appearance from ''

Mickey's Revue ''Mickey's Revue'' is a 1932 Walt Disney cartoon, directed by Wilfred Jackson, which features Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow performing a song and dance show. The film was delivered to Columbia Pictures on ...

'' (1932), and a signed caricature of

John Lasseter John Alan Lasseter (; born January 12, 1957) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, animator, voice actor, and the head of animation at Skydance Animation. He was previously the chief creative officer of Pixar Animation Studios, ...

, then-chief creative officer of Pixar and Disney Animation.

References

External links

''How to Hook Up Your Home Theater''
at

*
''How to Hook Up Your Home Theater''
at The Encyclopedia of Disney Animated Shorts
Keeping It Old School: Looking Like the 40s in a Digital Age

How to Hook Up Your Animated Short at Disney

Deja and Henn on the Return of the Goof
{{DEFAULTSORT:How To Hook Up Your Home Theater 2007 films 2007 animated films 2000s Disney animated short films Goofy (Disney) short films Films scored by Michael Giacchino Films directed by Kevin Deters 2000s English-language films