Lifted

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.

The film was released theatrically with Pixar's Ratatouille (June 29, 2007). However, the short received a sneak peek at The 42nd Chicago International Film Festival.

A young alien, Stu, is in a spaceship taking an examination in abduction. He must snatch a sleeping farmer under the watchful eye of his instructor, Mr. B. However, there is an array of thousands of unlabeled toggle switches he must manipulate to get the human into the ship's tractor beam, and he is having trouble. He mistakenly propels the human into walls and occasionally the ceiling (never waking up from his slumber through it all). After repeated failures to successfully lift the human into the ship (he almost succeeds, but forgets to close the door on the bottom of the ship before turning off the tractor beam), Mr. B takes over, returns the farmer back to his room, and cleans up the mess that Stu had made.

Ashamed over his failure, Stu starts whimpering, trying to hold his tears back from Mr. B. Mr. B generously allows Stu to launch the space ship back home. Full of glee, Stu takes hold of the joystick and starts to lift the ship into the air, but once again, he fails, and the space ship plummets to the Earth, crushing the farmer's house and leaving nothing but a crater with a tall pillar of dirt in the center, atop which the farmer is still sleeping soundly in his bed. The ship quickly lifts off again.

During the end credits there is the sound of an alarm clock, the farmer waking up, then a Wilhelm scream as he (presumably) falls into the crater all around him, and finally, a thud.