The Pixar Touch - history of Pixar

Collaboration in production

A lot has been written (including by me) about the role of collaboration in Pixar's story development process. But how does the idea of collaboration get translated into reality once a film goes into production, where budgets and deadlines are much more important forces--and where everyone's micro-level ideas for improvements need to be checked against the director's big-picture vision of the scene and the film? (And, of course, where ideas from the crew can continue to shape the director's vision.)

Pixar animator Victor Navone has posted some first-hand observations on the interplay between the animator, on one hand, and the supervising animator and director, on the other.

Once in awhile, I'll come up with two or three solutions for how to approach a shot, and if I absolutely can't decide I'll rough block all the ideas and show them to the director to let him choose. . . .

I did this recently on a shot for Toy Story 3; I was blocking a scene featuring a little girl and I wanted to have her act like my own daughter would act in the same situation. It was pretty different from how the shot had been storyboarded, but I felt strongly enough about my ideas that I thought it was worth trying. I blocked one version my way, and another version that was closer to the boards. I did both in one day so as not to waste too much time. I showed both to the director and he was more partial to the version that was close to the boards, but he also found ideas in my alternate version that he liked, and so we ended up going with something in-between. In this case, the alternate version I created was not a waste of time because some of the ideas stuck. More importantly, I got a good idea for what the director DIDN'T want, which came in handy later, as I am animating other shots with this character.

More here.

Norman Borlaug, R.I.P.

Turning to a personal subject: Probably the most important person I've ever interviewed is Norman Borlaug, the agricultural researcher whose work saved hundreds of millions of people in the developing world from starvation. I profiled him back in November of 1997 for Investor's Business Daily, where I was a reporter at the time. I was sad to learn last weekend that Dr. Borlaug passed away on Saturday. 

He worked from the ground up, so to speak, setting up small demonstration plots to entice local farmers. The approach was slow going at first.

"The first time I tried to organize a farmers' field day at the main research center in northwest Mexico . . . I think we got 25 people--but only five of them were farmers. The rest were bureaucrats who came for the barbecue and free beer."

But the few farmers who came were impressed and told others what they saw. The next year, a couple of hundred farmers showed up. 

"Then it grew very rapidly, many hundreds and thousands," he said. "It became unmanageable."

The rest of the profile (this is a scan of my only copy) is here. I hope I was able to convey something of his resourcefulness and humanity.

On leave

Going on hiatus from posting for a while.

If you're a newcomer to the site, please help yourself to a look at the archives. A few of the more popular posts (or the most visited ones, anyway) are The Docter Is In (and how he got there), Happy 80th birthday, Steamboat Willie, and Pixar's film that never was. Finally, there's more here about The Pixar Touch.

Jan Pinkava

One of the many pleasures of working on The Pixar Touch was having the chance to talk with, and trade e-mails with, Jan Pinkava. Jan, after joining Pixar back in 1993, directed the Oscar-winning Pixar short Geri's Game and was the original director of Ratatouille. 

Ever since mid-2007, when Jan helped me understand the story behind the making of Ratatouille, I've been laboring under the belief that my project was the only place where he's discussed this experience in depth. But I was wrong: I just learned that the web site Animated Views did a terrific interview with him the following February.

One of my favorite Disney films is One Hundred and One Dalmatians. It was the first thing I saw in the cinema in England after my family left Czechoslovakia. Growing up in England I later realized that the flavor of London that the Disney artists brought to the film was not really accurate, but rather it was an American perspective on London, informed by a genuine affection for the place and its people. That sympathy came across in the movie and gave their London an authentic quality all of its own. I hoped we could do something similar with Paris.

More here. (Via Justin Hunt.)

Motorama

Pixar staged this year's Motorama yesterday.

Some offices have Take Your Child To Work Day. Pixar has Motorama, its annual car show and picnic attended by employees and their families and friends. Hot-rod fanatic Jay Ward, art department coordinator for Cars, organizes the show and decides which classics and exotics make it in.

 

Pictured above is a pre-WW II, Czech-made Tatra T87. For more of Motorama 2009, see the photo galleries of Matt Hamilton (who kindly permitted me to use the above photo), Jon Sarriugarte, and Pixar animator Raphael Suter.

Programs like this strengthen my opinion of Pixar as an exceptionally smartly-run company. All of us, at one time or another, have been subjected to utterly inane retreats and "team-building exercises." Here's an event that has emerged organically from employees' interests and that actually builds camaraderie, while reinforcing the perception that Pixar is a cool place to work.

Star Trek

When I went to see JJ Abrams's Star Trek a couple months ago, I went with a lot of skepticism. But the film turned out to be terrifically smart and entertaining. I thought it was interesting that Abrams didn't seem to be channeling Gene Roddenberry as much as George Lucas--the Lucas of three decades ago when he was at the height of his storytelling powers.

So what does Star Trek have to do with Pixar? From a historical point of view, everything: The computer graphics group of Lucasfilm--the team that would later start Pixar--did its very first feature-film work on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). It was a special-effects shot, not the kind of character-oriented work that Ed Catmull, Alvy Ray Smith, and the others in the group aspired to do. But what an effect. . .

 

The shot simulated the operation of the Genesis device, an experimental system that transformed a dead moon or planet and brought it to a verdant, Earth-like state. 

Alvy, who had sold Lucas's special-effects division, Industrial Light & Magic, on the idea of letting the computer graphics group handle the shot, told me that he thought of the project as "a sixty-second commercial to George Lucas"--he and his colleagues wanted to give Lucas a glimpse of what computer graphics could do if Lucas would unleash the talent he had under his roof.

The Genesis effect was created by the future Pixarians Loren Carpenter, Rob Cook, Tom Duff, Tom Porter, Bill Reeves (who invented particle systems for the occasion), and Alvy Ray Smith. (John Lasseter joined the group roughly a year and a half later.) If you have the chance to rent Star Trek II, you'll find their work still looks pretty impressive after 27 years.

Walt Disney Co. chairman and The Pixar Touch

Thanks to the magic of Google Alerts, I recently noticed a short article about Pixar's success story by the chairman of the Walt Disney Co., John E. Pepper, Jr. A couple of passages sounded oddly familiar. It would be peevish of me to say anything more, so I'll just reproduce those bits along with excerpts from a certain book:

From John Pepper's “If You Can Dream It, You Can Do It” (July 1, 2009) --

Lasseter had been fired from his dream job at Disney which he took coming out of college. Catmull had been turned down for a teaching position and ended up with what was called a dead-end software job at Pixar [sic]. And Steve Jobs had endured humiliation as he was ejected from Apple, the company he had co-founded.

From The Pixar Touch (2008), p. 8 --

Lasseter had landed his dream job at Disney out of college--and had just been fired from it. Catmull had done well-respected work as a graduate student in computer graphics, but had been turned down for a teaching position and ended up in what he felt was a dead-end software development job. Alvy Ray Smith, the company's co-founder, had checked out of academia, got work at Xerox's famous Palo Alto Research Center, and then abruptly found himself on the street. Jobs had endured humiliation and pain as he was ejected from Apple Computer, the company he had co-founded. . . . 

-- From Pepper: 

The Pixar story brings to mind this observation of the economist Joseph Schumpeter: successful innovation “is a feat not of intellect, but of will”. Schumpeter believed that few individuals are prepared for “the resistances and uncertainties incident to doing what has not been done before”. Those who brave the risks of failure do so out of non-economic as well as economic motives, among them “the joy of creating, of getting things done, of simply exercising one’s energy and ingenuity”.

-- From The Pixar Touch, p. 9:

The odysseys of these figures, and of Pixar as a whole, bring to mind the observation of the maverick economist Joseph Schumpeter that successful innovation "is a feat not of intellect, but of will." Writing about the psychology of entrepreneurs in the early twentieth century, a time when the subject was unfashionable, he believed few individuals are prepared for "the resistances and uncertainties incident to doing what has not been done before." Those who braved the risks of failure did so out of noneconomic as well as economic motives, among them "the joy of creating, of getting things done, or simply of exercising one's energy and ingenuity."

I'm glad he liked the book, I guess.

A director's life

Top sign I need a vacation: during my dream last night, I was actively noting changes and tweaks I wanted to make to improve it.

-- Lee Unkrich, director, Toy Story 3

Visual Effects Society award to Ed Catmull

The Visual Effects Society announced today that Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar and president of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, will receive the Society's George Méliès Award at its next annual awards ceremony in February.

The VES is an organization of visual effects professionals working in film, television, commercials, music videos, and videogames. The George Méliès Award recognizes individuals who have “pioneered a significant and lasting contribution to the art and/or science of the visual effects industry by way of artistry, invention and groundbreaking work.”

John Lasseter won this award a few years ago. Ed's recognition is well deserved, and maybe overdue, considering his direct role in several key innovations in computer animation (including in digital special effects) and his leadership role in many, many others at Lucasfilm and Pixar.

Toy Story 3

At the end of Toy Story 2, Woody and Buzz accept that Andy is going to outgrow them someday and leave them behind. In Toy Story 3, due next summer, that day will finally come. From Ed Catmull at the Cannes Film Festival:

Woody, Buzz Lightyear and their plaything pals are coping with abandonment issues in the new "Toy Story" sequel.

Next year's "Toy Story 3" has the gang learning they have reached their shelf life as the young boy who owns them grows up and goes off to college.

. . .

"It feels like the summation of a trilogy," said Catmull, adding that the filmmakers had hit on a big emotional finish to "Toy Story 3."

Sidenote: During the Eisner era, the Walt Disney Co. had its own version of Toy Story 3 under development, without Pixar's involvement, at an in-house computer animation studio in Glendale, California known as Circle 7. That film, and the development of other non-Pixar sequels to Pixar films, was scrapped in early 2006 when Disney announced its agreement to acquire Pixar. According to Disney's SEC filings, Disney spent some $26 million on those films before abandoning them.