Start here : Orientation. The art of storytelling. We are all storytellers : The art of storytelling 2. Character : The art of storytelling 3. Story structure : The art of storytelling. Visual language : The art of storytelling 5. Film grammar : The art of storytelling 6.
Pitching and feedback : The art of storytelling. The art of lighting. Introduction to lighting : The art of lighting. Hair simulation : Simulation Code your own simulation : Simulation. Color science. Introduction to color : Color science Color spaces : Color science. Virtual cameras. How virtual cameras work : Virtual cameras Mathematics of depth of field : Virtual cameras. We realized early on, however, that having two different standards of quality in the same studio was bad for our souls, and Disney readily agreed that the sequel should be a theatrical release.
The creative leadership, though, remained the same, which turned out to be a problem. In the early stage of making a movie, we draw storyboards a comic-book version of the story and then edit them together with dialogue and temporary music. These are called story reels. The first versions are very rough, but they give a sense of what the problems are, which in the beginning of all productions are many. We then iterate, and each version typically gets better and better.
In the case of Toy Story 2 , we had a good initial idea for a story, but the reels were not where they ought to have been by the time we started animation, and they were not improving.
Making matters worse, the directors and producers were not pulling together to rise to the challenge. Given where the production was at that point, 18 months would have been an aggressive schedule, but by then we had only eight left to deliver the film.
In the end, with the new leadership, they pulled it off. How did John and his team save the movie? The problem was not the original core concept, which they retained. The main character, a cowboy doll named Woody, is kidnapped by a toy collector who intends to ship him to a toy museum in Japan. At a critical point in the story, Woody has to decide whether to go to Japan or try to escape and go back to Andy, the boy who owned him. So the challenge was to get the audience to believe that Woody might make a different choice.
John, Andrew, Lee, and Joe solved that problem by adding several elements to show the fears toys might have that people could relate to.
She wants to go, and she explains why to Woody. The reality is kids do grow up, life does change, and sometimes you have to move on. Since the audience members know the truth of this, they can see that Woody has a real choice, and this is what grabs them. Toy Story 2 was great and became a critical and commercial success—and it was the defining moment for Pixar. It taught us an important lesson about the primacy of people over ideas: If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up; if you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something that works.
Toy Story 2 also taught us another important lesson: There has to be one quality bar for every film we produce. Everyone working at the studio at the time made tremendous personal sacrifices to fix Toy Story 2. We shut down all the other productions. We asked our crew to work inhumane hours, and lots of people suffered repetitive stress injuries. But by rejecting mediocrity at great pain and personal sacrifice, we made a loud statement as a community that it was unacceptable to produce some good films and some mediocre films.
As a result of Toy Story 2 , it became deeply ingrained in our culture that everything we touch needs to be excellent. This goes beyond movies to the DVD production and extras, and to the toys and other consumer products associated with our characters. Of course, most executives would at least pay lip service to the notion that they need to get good people and should set their standards high.
But how many understand the importance of creating an environment that supports great people and encourages them to support one another so the whole is far greater than the sum of the parts? We believe the creative vision propelling each movie comes from one or two people and not from either corporate executives or a development department. Our philosophy is: You get great creative people, you bet big on them, you give them enormous leeway and support, and you provide them with an environment in which they can get honest feedback from everyone.
After Toy Story 2 we changed the mission of our development department. Each team typically consists of a director, a writer, some artists, and some storyboard people. Both the senior management and the development department are responsible for seeing to it that the teams function well. They form a strong partnership. They not only strive to make a great movie but also operate within time, budget, and people constraints.
Good artists understand the value of limits. Indeed, even when a production runs into a problem, we do everything possible to provide support without undermining their authority. What does it take for a director to be a successful leader in this environment?
Of course, our directors have to be masters at knowing how to tell a story that will translate into the medium of film. This means that they must have a unifying vision—one that will give coherence to the thousands of ideas that go into a movie—and they must be able to turn that vision into clear directives that the staff can implement.
They must set people up for success by giving them all the information they need to do the job right without telling them how to do it. Each person on a film should be given creative ownership of even the smallest task. Good directors not only possess strong analytical skills themselves but also can harness the analytical power and life experiences of their staff members.
They are superb listeners and strive to understand the thinking behind every suggestion. They appreciate all contributions, regardless of where or from whom they originate, and use the best ones. Of great importance—and something that sets us apart from other studios—is the way people at all levels support one another. Everyone is fully invested in helping everyone else turn out the best work. Nothing exemplifies this more than our creative brain trust and our daily review process.
When a director and producer feel in need of assistance, they convene the group and anyone else they think would be valuable and show the current version of the work in progress.
This is followed by a lively two-hour give-and-take discussion, which is all about making the movie better. Nobody pulls any punches to be polite. This works because all the participants have come to trust and respect one another. The problem-solving powers of this group are immense and inspirational to watch. This dynamic is crucial. It liberates the trust members, so they can give their unvarnished expert opinions, and it liberates the director to seek help and fully consider the advice.
It took us a while to learn this. Eventually, I realized why: We had given these other review groups some authority. The origin of the creative brain trust was Toy Story. During a crisis that occurred while making that film, a special relationship developed among John, Andrew, Lee, and Joe, who had remarkable and complementary skills. At Disney, only a small senior group would look at daily animation work.
John, who joined my computer group at Lucasfilm after leaving Disney, participated in these sessions while we were creating computer-animated effects for Young Sherlock Holmes.
As we built up an animation crew for Toy Story in the early s, John used what he had learned from Disney and ILM to develop our daily review process. People show work in an incomplete state to the whole animation crew, and although the director makes decisions, everyone is encouraged to comment. There are several benefits. First, once people get over the embarrassment of showing work still in progress, they become more creative. Second, the director or creative leads guiding the review process can communicate important points to the entire crew at the same time.
Third, people learn from and inspire each other; a highly creative piece of animation will spark others to raise their game. The dailies process avoids such wasted efforts. Getting people in different disciplines to treat one another as peers is just as important as getting people within disciplines to do so. Barriers include the natural class structures that arise in organizations: There always seems to be one function that considers itself and is perceived by others to be the one the organization values the most.
In a creative business like ours, these barriers are impediments to producing great work, and therefore we must do everything we can to tear them down.
In addition, a good majority of the films produced by Pixar are among or have been the top 50 highest-grossing animated films of all time, with Finding Nemo 47 , Finding Dory 32 , Toy Story 3 26 , and Incredibles 2 15 all currently in the top 50 highest-grossing films of all time.
The award was granted by Lucasfilm founder George Lucas. In Ralph Breaks the Internet , Anna referred to it as "the other studio". Pixar was founded as The Graphics Group, one third of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm which was launched in with the hiring of Dr.
After moving to Lucasfilm, the team worked on creating the precursor to RenderMan, called REYES for "renders everything you ever saw" and developed a number of critical technologies for CG—including "particle effects" and various animation tools. A factor contributing to Lucas' sale was an increase in cash flow difficulties following his divorce, which coincided with the sudden drop-off in revenues from Star Wars licenses following the release of Return of the Jedi.
Pixar spun off from Lucasfilm as a result. In , Edwin Catmull was named President of Pixar. Initially, Pixar was a high-end computer hardware company whose core product was the Pixar Image Computer , a system primarily sold to government agencies and the medical community.
One of the buyers of Pixar Image Computers was Disney Studios, which was using the device as part of their secretive CAPS project, using the machine and custom software to migrate the laborious ink and paint part of the 2-D animation process to a more automated and thus efficient method. The Image Computer never sold well. In a bid to drive sales of the system, Pixar employee John Lasseter —who had long been creating short demonstration animations, such as Luxo Jr.
As poor sales of Pixar's computers threatened to put the company out of business, Lasseter's animation department began producing computer-animated commercials for outside companies. In April , Jobs sold Pixar's hardware division, including all proprietary hardware technology and imaging software, to Vicom Systems, and transferred 18 of Pixar's approximate employees. During this period, Pixar continued its relationship with Walt Disney Feature Animation , a studio whose corporate parent would ultimately become its most important partner.
At that point, the software programmers, who were doing RenderMan and CAPS, and Lasseter's animation department, who made television commercials and a few shorts for Sesame Street , was all that was left of Pixar.
Despite the total income of these products, the company was still losing money, and Jobs often considered selling it. Even as late as , Jobs contemplated selling Pixar to other companies, among them Microsoft.
Only after confirming that Disney would distribute Toy Story for the holiday season did he decide to give it another chance. Disney 's Pixar custom logo used from - Pixar and Disney had disagreements after the production of Toy Story 2. Originally intended as a straight-to-video release and thus not part of Pixar's three-picture deal , the film was eventually upgraded to a theatrical release during production.
Pixar demanded that the film then is counted toward the three-picture agreement, but Disney refused. Though profitable for both, Pixar later complained that the arrangement was not equitable. Pixar was responsible for creation and production, while Disney handled marketing and distribution. Profits and production costs were split , but Disney exclusively owned all story and sequel rights and also collected a distribution fee. The lack of story and sequel rights was perhaps the most onerous aspect to Pixar and set the stage for a contentious relationship.
The two companies attempted to reach a new agreement in early The new deal would be only for distribution, as Pixar intended to control production and own the resulting film properties themselves. The company also wanted to finance their films on their own and collect percent of the profits, paying Disney only the 10 to 15 percent distribution fee.
More importantly, as part of any distribution agreement with Disney, Pixar demanded control over films already in production under their old agreement, including The Incredibles and Cars. Disney considered these conditions unacceptable, but Pixar would not concede.
They broke down completely in mid, with Jobs declaring that Pixar was actively seeking partners other than Disney. Pixar did not enter negotiations with other distributors. After a lengthy hiatus, negotiations between the two companies resumed following the departure of Eisner from Disney in September In preparation for potential fallout between Pixar and Disney, Jobs announced in late that Pixar would no longer release movies at the Disney-dictated November time frame, but during the more lucrative early summer months.
This would also allow Pixar to release DVDs for their major releases during the Christmas shopping season. An added benefit of delaying Cars was to extend the time frame remaining on the Pixar-Disney contract to see how things would play out between the two companies. Pending the Disney acquisition of Pixar, the two companies created a distribution deal for the intended release of Ratatouille , in case the acquisition fell through, to ensure that this one film would still be released through Disney's distribution channels.
The completion of Disney's Pixar acquisition, however, nullified this distribution arrangement. Following Pixar shareholder approval, the acquisition was completed May 5 , The transaction catapulted Steve Jobs, who was the majority shareholder of Pixar with Jobs' new Disney holdings exceeded holdings belonging to ex-CEO Michael Eisner , the previous top shareholder, who still held 1.
Pixar's shareholders received 2. Steve Jobs' position as Pixar's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer was also removed, and instead, he took a place on the Disney board of directors. Lasseter and Catmull's oversight of both the Disney and Pixar studios did not mean that the two studios were emerging, however.
In fact, additional conditions were laid out as part of the deal to ensure that Pixar remained a separate entity, a concern that analysts had expressed about the Disney deal.
Some of those conditions were that Pixar HR policies would remain intact, including the lack of employment contracts. Also, the Pixar name was guaranteed to continue, and the studio would remain in its current Emeryville, California location with the "Pixar" sign. In this new position, Morris is in charge of the day-to-day running of the studio facilities and products.
There were additional conditions laid out as part of the deal to ensure that Pixar remains a separate entity, a concern that many analysts had about the Disney deal [1] :. The roughly 2, square meters studio is primarily producing shorts and TV specials based on characters from Pixar's feature films. The studio's first production was the Cars Toons episode " Air Mater ". A large number of animators that make up the animation department at Pixar were hired around the time Pixar released A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2.
Although Toy Story was a successful film, it was Pixar's only feature film at the time. The majority of the animation industry was and is still located in Los Angeles, California, while Pixar is located miles north in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Also, traditional 2-D animation was still the dominant medium for feature animated films. With the death of Los Angeles—based animators willing to move their families so far north, give up traditional animation, and try computer animation, Pixar's new-hires at this time either came directly from the college or had worked outside feature animation.
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