How the Panic Attack Scene Was Made

• “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” follows the heroic cat as he chases a wish to restore his nine lives.
• The Oscar-nominated film features a sequence in which Puss has a panic attack, and it’s gone viral online.
• Insider spoke with the film’s director, and artists who worked on the sequence, about how it came together.

In the Academy Award-nominated animation film “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” the titular main character undergoes a panic attack — and online, the sequence has spread like wildfire as people remark about how much it rings true to their own experience.

A sequel to the first “Puss in Boots” film, which premiered in 2011 and was itself a spinoff of the Shrek franchise at DreamWorks, “The Last Wish” is more visually and emotionally ambitious than anything else in the series. Nowhere does that shine through more than in a “panic attack sequence” midway through the film, a moment that went viral in January and resonated heavily with audiences.

—. aoki (@marcsmoons) January 16, 2023

Insider spoke with the film’s director, Joel Crawford, as well as storyboard artist Taylor Meacham and animator Prashanth Cavale about how the “panic attack” sequence came together — and how they drew from their own experiences while approaching it.

The ‘panic attack’ sequence shows Puss in Boots at his most vulnerable 

“Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” strips down its hero fairly quickly: after a fight with a giant, Puss dies for the eighth time. He’s unbothered until he realizes that he’s now just as mortal as everyone else — and this time around, there’s a wolf bounty hunter hellbent on taking his life. He embarks on a journey with his ex-fiancée, Kitty Softpaws, and a small dog nicknamed Perrito in pursuit of a “Wishing Star” that will grant him a wish to restore his lives.

The “panic attack” sequence takes place midway through the film, after Puss flees from a confrontation, having caught sight of the wolf. He experiences a panic attack from which Perrito, who has aspirations of becoming a therapy dog, calms him down.

Crawford told Insider that while Puss in Boots is a “larger than life” figure at the beginning of the film — cocky, essentially immortal, and most importantly, lonely — the story eventually became a “zero to hero” journey about embracing vulnerability.

Attempts to make Puss “express vulnerability” in the script felt “insincere,” Crawford said. But the sequence, which doesn’t feature any dialogue whatsoever, forced the character to express that vulnerability physically — and eventually accept help.

“It was a natural point to arrive at where his anxiety, his fears, built to a boiling point where he couldn’t physically handle it anymore, and he’s almost forced to ask for help,” Crawford said. “We needed him to basically be forced to let down the facade of being a fearless hero, and that’s how it kind of evolved.”

To effect that sentiment, Crawford said that the team used “every tool we could,” from Puss’ racing heartbeat to his shallow breaths, to the camera’s very shallow depth of field. It’s a stark departure from other sequences in the film, which range from bombastic action sequences to cheery character moments alike.

The sequence came together through personal experience and layered input at all phases of the process

Taylor Meacham, a storyboard artist on the film who boarded the sequence, told Insider via email that he volunteered specifically for it. While artists don’t always choose the scenes that they work on, he said, head of story Heidi Jo Gilbert was “incredibly supportive” and assigned it to him.

His connection was personal. In early 2020, Meacham told Insider, he started to experience “very intense” panic attacks himself and wanted to inject that firsthand experience into the sequence.

“I wanted to put whatever specifics I could from my first-hand experience into what Puss in Boots would be facing too,” he said. “That feeling of claustrophobia, dizziness, sweating, heavy breathing, thumping in your ears… all the things that usually happen when you’re having a very intense panic attack.”

 

 

DreamWorks

 

Prashanth Cavale, who animated the sequence alongside Julien Bocabielle, Patrick Danaher, and Fabio Lignini, told Insider that he admired the “sincerity” in Meacham’s storyboards, and added one small, but impactful detail, himself.

“At the very end on Puss, I added the final exhale and the last press with his lips and tongue which was not a part of the original launch and neither did we have the audio for that,” Cavale told Insider over email. “I felt the moment required it as he was coming out of the panic attack and I’m thankful the directors loved it and decided to retain and add the audio effect.”

—prashanth cavale (@CavalePrashanth) January 18, 2023

Crawford told Insider that he, too, had begun to experience anxiety and panic attacks while wrapping another DreamWorks film, “The Croods: A New Age,” at the beginning of the pandemic. He suspects that the sequence resonated with people because it’s compromised of layers upon layers of experience, from his own history to Meacham’s storyboards, to details from Cavale, up the production chain to Antonio Banderas’ voice acting.

Crawford said the fact that Puss in Boots is an animated, sword-wielding cat, actually makes him more relatable as well.

“In animation, you have the absurdity of a talking cat that wears boots,” Crawford said. “It’s absurd, but it helps everyone abstractly disconnect and see themselves in that character. And that’s what animation is so beautiful for.”